Post by Sir C. M. Siervicül on Jun 11, 2007 14:19:22 GMT -6
Lord Hooligan and King John have both proposed regularising the RH digraph so that it is always pronounced "sh" (like in English "ship"). Perhaps we should consider taking this proposal a bit further, and use the RH digraph to indicate all cases where R is pronounced "sh." This would give RH a regular pronunciation and a consistent purpose.
Two actions would be required. First (and smaller), we would have to re-examine the non-verbs that currently use RH to decide whether RH still makes sense if it's always pronounced SH. If not, those words will have to be respelled with a simple R instead of RH. This is what has already been proposed. Of the non-verbs that currently use RH, I believe King John would respell all three, and Lord Hooligan would respell two and keep the current spelling of gavarhál. I would personally respell perheliôn and keep the current spelling of rhesus and gavarhál. But I don't feel terribly strongly about either.
Second (and much bigger), we would have to replace the infinitive ending -ar with -arh. So "cambiar" (to change) would become "cambiarh." Why would we do this? Well, the future forms of Talossan verbs contain RH, which is pronounced "sh." But how did they get that way? According to Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ: "The -arh- endings were originally spelt -ar- (liraréu, etc.) but it was difficult to remember that these 'r's' were to be pronounced. The addition of the helpful letter 'h' was mandated by the Arestadâ of 19 August 1993."
Essentially, the future forms are based on the infinitive, so they originally had -ar- pronounced "ash" (as in English "wash") because the infinitive ends in -ar pronounced "ash." Then the CÚG decided to mark the oddly-pronounced R in the future forms to avoid confusion. But it neglected to mark the same pronunciation of the same letter in the infinitive. Doesn't it make as much sense to add the "helpful letter 'h'" to the source of the "sh" pronunciation (the infinitive), and let the new RH digraph flow through to the future forms from there? It seems like the CÚG's 19 August 1993 Arestadâ left the job of marking Talossan's "funny-sounding R" unfinished. We can finish the job now, with a straightforward and logical extension of that Arestadâ's reasoning.
Why RH in the first place? At some point, somehow, the R in the infinitive and future forms of Talossan verbs became voiceless. This voiceless R sound apparently merged with the closest other sound in Talossan, which happened to be "sh." Since Ben's pronunciation guide is only an approximation of Talossan sounds, describing Talossan sounds in terms more or less familiar to English speakers, maybe the sound of RH still is different from the sound of SCH (at least in some variants of Talossan), which would explain why the latter grapheme was not used in the 19 Aug 93 Arestadâ. RH makes sense because the same digraph is widely used to transcribe a similar voiceless-r sound from ancient Greek.
This would be a pretty big change, and I'm a little ambivalent about it. But I'm willing to at least throw it out for discussion because 1) there is a solid historical foundation for this change in the 19 Aug 93 Arestadâ which inserted the H into the future forms, 2) it would completely regularise both RH and R, so that each of those graphemes has only one pronunciation rather than two, and 3) I have a feeling it may help simplify some details of King John's stress-marking campaign. Thoughts?
Two actions would be required. First (and smaller), we would have to re-examine the non-verbs that currently use RH to decide whether RH still makes sense if it's always pronounced SH. If not, those words will have to be respelled with a simple R instead of RH. This is what has already been proposed. Of the non-verbs that currently use RH, I believe King John would respell all three, and Lord Hooligan would respell two and keep the current spelling of gavarhál. I would personally respell perheliôn and keep the current spelling of rhesus and gavarhál. But I don't feel terribly strongly about either.
Second (and much bigger), we would have to replace the infinitive ending -ar with -arh. So "cambiar" (to change) would become "cambiarh." Why would we do this? Well, the future forms of Talossan verbs contain RH, which is pronounced "sh." But how did they get that way? According to Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ: "The -arh- endings were originally spelt -ar- (liraréu, etc.) but it was difficult to remember that these 'r's' were to be pronounced
Essentially, the future forms are based on the infinitive, so they originally had -ar- pronounced "ash" (as in English "wash") because the infinitive ends in -ar pronounced "ash." Then the CÚG decided to mark the oddly-pronounced R in the future forms to avoid confusion. But it neglected to mark the same pronunciation of the same letter in the infinitive. Doesn't it make as much sense to add the "helpful letter 'h'" to the source of the "sh" pronunciation (the infinitive), and let the new RH digraph flow through to the future forms from there? It seems like the CÚG's 19 August 1993 Arestadâ left the job of marking Talossan's "funny-sounding R" unfinished. We can finish the job now, with a straightforward and logical extension of that Arestadâ's reasoning.
Why RH in the first place? At some point, somehow, the R in the infinitive and future forms of Talossan verbs became voiceless. This voiceless R sound apparently merged with the closest other sound in Talossan, which happened to be "sh." Since Ben's pronunciation guide is only an approximation of Talossan sounds, describing Talossan sounds in terms more or less familiar to English speakers, maybe the sound of RH still is different from the sound of SCH (at least in some variants of Talossan), which would explain why the latter grapheme was not used in the 19 Aug 93 Arestadâ. RH makes sense because the same digraph is widely used to transcribe a similar voiceless-r sound from ancient Greek.
This would be a pretty big change, and I'm a little ambivalent about it. But I'm willing to at least throw it out for discussion because 1) there is a solid historical foundation for this change in the 19 Aug 93 Arestadâ which inserted the H into the future forms, 2) it would completely regularise both RH and R, so that each of those graphemes has only one pronunciation rather than two, and 3) I have a feeling it may help simplify some details of King John's stress-marking campaign. Thoughts?
