Korean script for Cia-Cia
David Mead
mead2368 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Aug 10 20:40:53 UTC 2009
Yes, from that perspective points 3 and 4 are
minor issues. But at points 1, 2, and 5 there
really may be an insufficiency of symbols. 6 may
only be an issue for Unicode and/or for those who
program how Hangul characters combine into
syllable blocks, not for Hangul itself. In fact
as I was turning this over in my mind, it
occurred to me that maybe what they've done or
what you could do for a word like ndoke 'monkey'
is to turn it into an orthographic trisyllable,
using a vowel character which by convention
everyone agrees is always "silent" for Cia-cia,
e.g. n^ - do - ke or ^n - do - ke.
At any rate, I think we could debunk the notion
that Korean is _inherently_better than Latin for
representing Cia-cia. If anything they are equal
or maybe I'd give a slight edge to Latin-based
(for which only the implosive b and d are
slightly problematic). If you want to talk about
transfer to the national language, then Latin
definitely wins. However, my experience in
working with other people on Buton Island (but
not the Cia-cia) is that they'd just as soon
transfer to an international language, because of
the greater promise of economic advancement. So
if Korea's providing that avenue (and let's hope
they do for a long time), then Hangul is the way
to go. From the articles, the new script seems
to have become a reason for Cia-cia people to
take pride in their language, and that's a good thing.
Hmm, if they use Hangul, then they don't have to
learn any capitalization rules, right? That's a bonus right there!
David Mead
At 8/10/2009 04:05 PM +1200, Paul Geraghty wrote:
>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>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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>An-lang at anu.edu.au
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