LL-L "Orthography" 2005.10.27 (08) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 29 October 2005 * Volume 08
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From: Ian Pollock <ispollock at shaw.ca>
Subject: Orthography


  From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
  Subject: Orthography

  Salut, Luc!

  Had you said "seven consonants + two vowels," I'd have said, "I can do 
better than that: "schrikplank" (*nine* consonants + two vowels).


Yeah, but that's nine *orthographic* consonants and, if I'm not mistaken, 
only 7 phonemic ones. That's cheating. :)

As far as consonant clusters I believe the Native American speakers of 
languages in the Salishan family have us all beat - check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salishan

-Ian

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

> Yeah, but that's nine *orthographic* consonants and, if I'm not mistaken,
> only 7 phonemic ones. That's cheating. :)

Oy, Ian!  You weren' supposed to notice!  Shoot!  That ain't fair!  I feel 
exposed.  ;-)

> As far as consonant clusters I believe the Native American speakers of
> languages in the Salishan family have us all beat

Yeah, that couldn't be closer to home, at least not geographically (here in 
an around Seattle).  But ... and there's a but, a riposte, here too ... I've 
long suspected that this is an orthographic problem also.  I'm under the 
impression that, due to stress-conditioned rules, a very large portion of 
vowels are devoiced.  Since most speakers of Western languages are 
unfamiliar with this, those that first put Salishan languages into script 
left out all those voiceless vowels.  All those occurrences of superscipt 
"w" in Salishan indicate rounding of the preceding consonant(s), which in my 
book points to devoiced /u/.  I've closely listened to and watched the lip 
movements of speakers of Lushootseed, Skokomish Twana, and Samish, and I 
could swear they use voiceless vowels.  And I suspect the very same to be 
the case in several Caucasian language varieties that are likewise known for 
alleged vowel scarcity (and happen to share ejective consonants with the 
Salishan languages).

Yes, vowels *can* be voiceless, absurd though this may appear.  In other 
words, they are whispered.  (When you whisper you actually use only 
voiceless vowels.)  The generally best known cases of vowel devoicing are in 
Japanese (e.g., /site/ _shite_ -> _shte_, /imasu/ _imasu_ -> _imas_). 
Listen to ordinary speech in Portuguese of Portugal!  Most of the time you 
hear only the vowels of syllables with primary stress (although native 
speakers claim to hear all of them, while they may only *know* they are 
there); e.g., _desculpe_ sounding like _dshkuwp_ to our ears.

Fortunately, we don't seem to have such a "problem" in the Lowlands area. 
Or do we?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

***

Links:
http://www.lushootseed.net/
http://www.native-languages.org/lushootseed.htm
http://www.native-languages.org/famsal_words.htm 

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