Autonym of Mosopeleas-Ouesperies-Ofos

[David Costa]

That's not Algonquianist usage -- that's French missionary practice of the
17th & 18th centuries. They used it for Algonquian languages, but they also
used it when writing Iroquoian languages.

As Bob points out, it's equivalent to French 'ou' -- thus, it's primarily
used for /w/, /o(:)/ or /u(:)/, depending on context, but sometimes it's
even used for /w/ + schwa, or schwa + /w/.

Technically, it's not exactly an '8' the way the French wrote it -- they
actually wrote it as an '8' with an open top, often a descending character.
But to make life simple, it's usually printed with plain '8'.

Dave

 
 
>> Pardon me; I think I was confused on a point of orthography.  I had been
>> thinking the Algonquianist use of 8 was for schwa; I seem to recall now that
>> it is either for /wa/ or some kind of long /oo/.  I believe the @ sign is
>> what we've been using for schwa, isn't it?

> W usually next to a vowel.  [u] generally otherwise.