Re: Unofficial alphabet lists for Lojban/Latin/English, Greek,

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!BRADFORD.AC.UK!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!C.J.Fine>]

Dean Gahlon says:
>
> I don't know about Devanagari, but as for Japanese kana, given that
> (with the exception of <n>) they already represent syllables, would it
> not make sense for the letteral for each one to be the pronunciation
> of that particular symbol, possibly with some additional syllable
> added for those whose values are simple vowels? (I'd produce a sample
> set of letterals under this scheme, but don't have a list of kana
> here)

I agree, but with reservations. There are a couple of kana which are
phonetically different from their theoretical phonological values
because of subsequent effects (such as palatalisation). Consider the
following paradigms:
        kaku    kakanai kakimasu
        karu    karanai karimasu
        kasu    kasanai kashimasu
        matsu   matanai machimasu

You could reasonably name the kana "tsu" as either "tsu" or "tu"


        .a      .i      .u      .e      .o
        ka      ki      ku      ke      ko
        sa      ci      su      se      so
        ta      tci     tsu     te      to
        na      ni      nu      ne      no
        ha      hi      fu      he      ho
        ma      mi      mu      me      mo
        ya              yu              yo
        ra      ri      ru      re      ro
        .ua     (.ui)           (.ue)   .uo     .un

Also nigori (thickening) and han-nigori (half-thickening).

The ones in parenthesis are not used in modern Japanese. Of course you
need two different shift-words, because there are two separate sets of
kana - katakana and hiragana.

I think this is getting out of hand!
                kolin
                        c.j.fine@bradford.ac.uk