Korean script for Cia-Cia

[Paul Geraghty]

Aren't we forgetting here the arbitrary nature of the relationship between
sound and symbol? Any symbol can represent any phoneme, therefore any script
with sufficient symbols is adequate to represent any phonology. As I recall,
nobody claimed that the Korean symbols would have the same 'powers' as in
Korean.

 

  _____  

From: an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au [mailto:an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au] On
Behalf Of David Mead
Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 12:56 AM
To: an-lang at anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [An-lang] Korean script for Cia-Cia

 

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    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 

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