Various "pi" terms.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

> One of the things there is disagreement on is the spelling system. Some think that the small letter next to the regular letters is too confusing while others feel that double and triple lettering is confusing. Lawrence uses the double and triple lettering method which I tend to find more complicated than the linguist version with the apsirations and dipthongs and such. I'm leaning towards phonetic spellings with the usage of semicolons and dashes like Oliverio. However is easiest for laypersons to learn it. I'm sure there will not be easy answers and I'm sure we will all have to bend and comprimise in order to reach agreement on the best approaches.

I hope you don't get into the situation Dakotanists find themselves in.  There are comprehensive writing systems numbering well into the teens and little agreement.  Schools and even individual teachers preach their own systems.  And it's not even that any particular one of them is bad.  For the most part they all work.  It's just that there is so little in the way of a standard.

I understand the folks who find ph, th, kh etc.or an, in, un a bit confusing, but I can't really sympathize with them.  As I said before, if you want to learn, say, Russian you simply learn the Russian alphabet.  You don't whine about it and say it's "confusing".  Trust me, it's the easiest part of the language and you learn it the very first day of class.  A handful of new symbols shouldn't deter people who want to learn Tutelo.  It's simply the case that there are a few sounds in Tutelo that aren't in English.  If that confuses people, they aren't studying
hard enough.

That said, you're not tied to any particular symbol set.  The guttural sound that linguists write with x can be spelled with "x" or "q" or "hh" "ĥ", "ħ" or &  and so forth.  Same for nasal vowels.  For nasal "a" you can use "ã", or "ą", or "an", or "aŋ" or anything else.  The main thing is to be consistent.  And I guess it would be a good idea to use Oliverio's system IF everybody is going to use her work as a reference.  Likewise it would be best to use Meuse if folks want to use him as their source.  You get the idea.

Bob
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