Hello

[John Sullivan, Ph.D.]

Matthew,
	Long vowel notation is a problem that has never been resolved,  
partly because of the different communities involved. Nahua writers  
have never given importance to marking vowel length (except those who  
work for linguists). The few colonial texts which show vowel length  
use a macron. And today only professionals working on language  
documentation projects consider it important, which it is for that  
purpose (they tend to use a semi-colon).
	So the question is, Why do you want to show long vowels in your  
file? If it's for reference, that's fine. If it's for everyday  
writing, than neither semicolons nor capital letters will work,  
because they are used for other purposes. I like to use macrons for  
language documentation because of their tradition, but as you imply,  
they come out as rubbish when most people open the file.
	At this time I don't think it's possible to come up with an answer  
that all participants will embrace.
John

John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
Tacuba 152, int. 47
Centro Histórico
Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
México
Oficina: +52 (492) 925-3415
Fax: +52 (492) 925-3416
Domicilio: +52 (492) 768-6048
Celular: +52 (492) 118-0854
idiez at mac.com
www.idiez.org.mx

On Nov 24, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Matthew Montchalin wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, Michael McCafferty wrote:
> | There are not many, but more than that. Joe, do you have a list?
> | One common verb contrast that comes to mind is /toka/ 'follow,  
> chase'
> | but /tooka/ 'bury, plant'. Both, of course, are spelled "toca".
>
> Although many Spaniards prefer to spell it that way, I prefer to
> spell the long vowels with an uppercase 'O' character.  Hence
> "toka" means chase (with a little 'o') while "tOka" (with a big 'o')
> means plant.  As soon as I'm done deciphering the Thesaurus file for
> WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS), I'll be putting together a thesaurus file
> with long vowels marked accordingly (so there's no need for
> diacritical marks like macrons).
>
> Now, that may not mean much to your Microsoft "Word" fanatics, but
> to the rest of the world, we will have something much more practical
> and useful to use.
>
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