Korean script for Cia-Cia

[David Mead]

Hi,

Besides 1. glottal stop,  2. the l -r contrast 
and 3. the voiced/unvoiced versus 
aspirated/unaspirated mismatch which Chris 
mentions, 4. Cia-cia also has implosive b and d 
as distinct phonemes.  Perhaps they use Hangul 
doubled consonants for those?.  But of course, 
Korean pp and tt are "tense" (glottalized? 
faucalized? lengthened?) consonants, not 
implosives.  (BTW, according to Greenberg 1970 
"Some generalizations concerning glottalic 
consonants", IJAL 36:123–145, there is a 
universal correlation of implosion with laxness.)

5. Also, Korean is like English in that /ng/ 
occurs only at the end of syllables.  My 
understanding about Hangul, however, is that the 
same symbol (a circle) is used to represent both 
/ng/ (when it occurs as the final of a syllable 
block), and zero (when it occurs as the initial 
of a syllable block) (that is, representing a 
syllable without any onset consonant).  Since 
Cia-cia allows /ng/ at the beginning of 
syllables, and also has syllables without 
consonant onsets (not to mention syllables with 
glottal stop onset), I'm not sure how they 
would/could represent the difference in 
Hangul.  (To be fair to Sejong the Great, these 
were originally different symbols, but over time 
merged graphically so that now it is considered just one "letter".)

6. Finally, Korean syllables have at most only 
one onset consonant, whereas Cia-cia has 
prenasalized consonants mp, mb, nt, ns, nd, ngk, 
& ngg, as in the words ndoke 'monkey' and 
nggaanggaa 'crow'.   Hmm, would these require 
some innovative Hangul consonant digraphs, or 
resurrecting some obsolete ones?  I'm not sure about that.

If I'm wrong about anything I've said about 
Hangul I hope someone will correct me.

David Mead


At 8/7/2009 11:46 AM -0700, Christopher Sundita wrote:
>I am able to read/write Han'geul/Korean script 
>and going by the words for the numbers 1-10 in 
>Cia-Cia, it looks like that they're probably had 
>to make some modifications in the script.
>
>For example, in Korean, the distinction between 
>voiced and unvoiced consonants is not phonemic; 
>instead it's aspirated & unaspirated (as well as 
>"tense" sounds) When transliterating foreign 
>words into Korean, voiced sounds are represented 
>by the unaspirated letters and the unvoiced ones, the aspirate ones.
>
>Looking at the words for 4 (pa'a) and 6 (no'o), 
>I wouldn't know how they would write a glottal stop in Han'geul.
>
>Also, it looks like /r/ and /l/ are sounds in 
>Cia-Cia, however in Han'geul they are written 
>with the same letter. Korean has both sounds, but only in allophonic variation.
>
>I see a photo of the book they published: 
><http://photo-media.daum-img.net/200908/06/yonhap/20090806063009295.jpg>http://photo-media.daum-img.net/200908/06/yonhap/20090806063009295.jpg 
>It says "bahasa cia-cia" on the cover.  I think 
>"bahasa" looks right, but I wonder why they 
>wrote "cia-cia" with the letters they did.
>
>--Chris Sundita
>
>
>--- On Fri, 8/7/09, John Ulrich Wolff <juw1 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>From: John Ulrich Wolff <juw1 at cornell.edu>
>Subject: [An-lang] Korean script for Cia-Cia
>To: an-lang at anu.edu.au
>Date: Friday, August 7, 2009, 7:01 AM
>Re: John Bowden's citation of the article in the Jakarta Globe about
>the Korean script to transcribe Cia-Cia.  Does anyone know how
>adequate  the Korean script is to transcribe Cia-Cia?
>John Wolff
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/an-lang/attachments/20090808/e9c2fd5f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang