How to write sh-sound?

[Michael Everson]

On 19 Mar 2012, at 22:10, Kevin Behrens wrote:

> The thing with English learners is, for them the "sh" is already really common and familiar.

And many people who are interested in Gothic, also speakers of Germanic languages, may very well not prefer "sh". Germans might prefer "sch". Certainly "sj" is widespread, found in Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, and Norwegian. In terms of "marking a sibilant for palatalization" I think that a Jot has more gravitas than a Ha.

> And sure, <sh> could be devided into two syllables, but that should be clear when reading it. But there is no other possible pronounciation thinkable, except maybe an aspirated [s]. If we all decide about <sj> as to be [ʃ] we will always have the problem of ambiguation between [ʃ] and [sj]. For "foreign" people this might end in confusion. This is my biggest problem with this version.

I don't know who "foreign" people are, but all you're talking about is where the ambiguity is held. It's either between S-H or between S-J in that case. But I suppose that readers of Gothic 

> I already talked to Robert Pfeffer, the creator of the Gothic fonts,

Of "the" Gothic fonts? I have made two Gothic fonts. Everson Mono supports Gothic in glorious monowidth, and Sadagolthina is based on the recommendations of Fairbanks and Magoun. 

> if he had time for creating and extended gothic font with added signs for not-gothic transcription.

Added signs? 

> But he doesn't have the time for it. In the gothic wikipedia we have to big problem, that we don't have any rules of transcription from English to Gothic yet. I would be really happy if this discussion will go further and might end into a set of rules for a standardized transcription.

Well, you start with phonology. Unifon and Deseret and Shavian transcriptions may help, but it would be good not to get all tied up in knots about British vs American pronunciation. In deference to J.R.R. Tolkien, a pioneer in Revived Gothic, I would suggest using the former.

> If we could make changings on the gothic font, we could make a sign for <sj> that both letters are a bit more closer so that they appear more as belonging together. 

I would not counsel inventing new Gothic letters as they will not get into Unicode.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20120319/850c0b23/attachment.htm>