long vowel notation

[John Sullivan, Ph.D.]

> Listeros,
> 	The use of the double vowel to represent length can be confusing  
> for variants that tend not to eliminate one of two vowels that come  
> together at a morpheme boundary. In Huastecan Nahuatl we have, for  
> example, niitztoc (ni-itztoc), "I am [estar]"; quiittah " (qui- 
> ittah), "they see him-her-it"; mooholinia (mo-oholinia), "it moves".
John




> On Nov 24, 2006, at 7:37 PM, David Wright wrote:
> John
>
>> For publication, I think macrons look much neater, plus they help  
>> newcomers
>> to relate texts to Andrews' vocabulary (in the *Workbook* of the  
>> revised
>> addition of his *Introduction to classical Nahuatl) and Karttunen's
>> *Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl*. They are a real nuisance to type,
>> though. I like Paul de Wolf's solution, used in his *Diccionario
>> español-náhuatl* (México/La Paz, Instituto de Investigaciones  
>> Históricas,
>> Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Fideicomiso Teixidor/ 
>> Universidad
>> Autónoma de Baja California Sur, 2003). He just hits the vowel key  
>> twice for
>> the long vowels. It looks strange at first, but its logic is  
>> evident. This
>> has the advantage of not being ambiguous, unlike colons and  
>> capitals. I'm
>> going to offer this option to my students next semester, since  
>> several have
>> complained that fighting the software distracted them from  
>> focusing on
>> linguistic issues. (I highly recommend de Wolf's dictionary, by  
>> the way;
>> it's a massive, comprehensive lexicon that integrates most of the  
>> major
>> vocabularies, restoring long vowels and saltillos wherever  
>> possible, with
>> access being through the Spanish translations.)
>>
>> -----Mensaje original-----
>> De: nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org [mailto:nahuatl- 
>> bounces at lists.famsi.org]
>> En nombre de Matthew Montchalin
>> Enviado el: Viernes, 24 de Noviembre de 2006 04:05 p.m.
>> Para: Michael McCafferty
>> CC: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> Asunto: Re: [Nahuat-l] Hello
>>
>> 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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>

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