> > "chinniúint", line 2: A double narrow "n" is supposed to be /N/,
> > though I would have ignored this rule for this word (I'm not sure why).
>
> Well, we're intending it entirely readable, so I guess we shouldn't
> ignore that.

I do think we should be faithful to readability rather than simply
reproducing the orthodox orthography in cyrillic letters, but in this
case what I meant was that I was under the impression that slender
double-n was supposed to represent /N/, but that in this word (and a
good few others) it seems wrong to pronounce it thus. Unfortunately
I have no real affiliation with any dialect, and my Irish probably
embodies random elements of a number of traditions. Can any more fluent
speaker assist...? Keith?

The 'nn' problem also has the following aspect: is /N/ a distinct
phoneme or an allophone of /n/ (or /n:/)? If it is phonemic, it's
unusual in that it can't, when represented by slender 'nn', occur in
a broad environment. If it's not a phoneme, we shouldn't represent it
distinctly from slender 'nn'. Also, /N/ occurs in other ways: e.g. in
the word 'longa' in my sample text, in which I believe 'ng'=/Ng/. Or is
it just /N/? Where does this fit in?


> Also (cf. the "nt" in "chinniúint"), where a consonant cluster, or a
> double consonant is narrow but followed by a broad vowel,
> I've used one soft sign, after the cluster. Is this how it works in
> Russian?

> In Russian, the soft sign is only used to mark phonological
> palatalization, but we have regressive assimilaition by palatalization
> which is NOT uniform (e.g. labials are NOT assimilated to dentals). So a
> soft sign after a cluster may mean that either both or only the second
> consonant is palatalized. To avoid ambiguity, I think that in these
> cases we should mark all palatalizations.

I'm not sure I understand your description of the situation in Russian.
Does 'phonological' mean 'phonetic', as opposed to 'phonemic'? And
do you mean that in a cluster, the earlier consonants don't always
assimilate in palatisation to the last consonant? (Hey, it seems fairly
clear what you mean now that I've tried to explain it back to you.)

In any case I understand the jist of the argument, but in Irish, and
AFAIK in other Gaelics, all the consonants in a cluster agree in all
being broad or all being narrow. Hence (or because of) the "narrow with
narrow, broad with broad" spelling rule. So a cluster-final soft sign is
always sufficient.

> > "éagóir", line 3: I've used broad-e (the "reversed euro symbol") as the
> > initial, so as to suggest /e:go:r'/, not /je:go:r'/. In this case it
> > doesn't seem to cost anything to conform to RL Cyrillic user's tastes :)
>
> Actually, we shouldn't do this. Bulgarian safely has word-initial 'e'
> which is NOT /je/, just as Serbian (I mean, of course, Serbo-Croat
> written Cyrillic :-)). We should keep in mind that we have things like
> 'oiche', which will have to be written with "bl", so that the word
> remains uniform and still make the t- broad in 'an t-oiche'. That is a
> similar case I guess.

Yes. But I'm unsure why you object. I was proposing using broad vowels
when a vowel occurs initially. My reasoning was "why not? and besides
it won't suggest an initial /j/ like the narrow vowels would, e.g.
in Russian". Like you say not all languages wich use Cyrillic have
this convention, but you provided a better reason for my proposal: to
preserve the broad t- in masculine nouns beginning with a vowel. So I
think, e.g. "an t-eolas" should have a "backwards euro" not an 'e'.


> > "Deonaíonn" ("to deign", I think :)). I don't like using a modified
> > "e" to indicate an [o] vowel, but I haven't seen anything better in
> > Cyrillic.

> Well, for example, Komi has _ö_... But how would you indicate it long
> As in Hungarian?

But then you have one vowel whose length is indicated differently from
the others. The Hungarian system has two umlauted vowels, with the
"italic umlaut" forms for long vowels, so "ö" isn't a one-off. As for
other possible "o" shapes, when writing the sample, I was going by the
(about 200) Cyrillic glyphs I could find in the LaTeX encodings I was
using (OT2 and X2), but I couldn't see anything "o"-like apart from
broad-o, and a few archaic omegas. Of course Unicode is what we're
really aiming for, but all I can see there is

U+0451 ë
U+0461 old cyrillic omega (overkill!)
U+0473 old cyrillic fita (I know, it's not a vowel and it's completely
unsuitable)
U+047A to U+047F assorted baroque looking old cyrillic omegas (overkill)
U+04A9 abkhassian ha (the curl I used)
U+04E9 barred o (similar to fita/theta)

I would suggest that (unless other people think "ë" + acute accent is a
ok solution [though I do also dislike using an "e" glyph to represent
and "o" sound, just because of a sound change in Old Russian]) we use
some modification of "o" for soft o, with the modification occuring
underneath the glyph. For example, o-cedilla would quite acceptable.



> > #1. Note that there *is* a use for "h" apart from "aspiration", and it
> > was used even in the old uncial script: it occurs in various magical
> > situations before initial vowels, e.g. in "a haon", "one".

> We've settled on _x_ for 'h', no?

Good point. I must have mentally thrown out _x_ when "k+dot" was decided
for /x/. Two things might be said in favour of "h": first, in Gaelic
written with dots instead of "following h", the rare "h" sign, used
occasionally before inital vowels, seems to be more of an auxillary
sign than a true letter. This might suggest not using such an ordinary
cyrillic letter as _x_. Second, on account of _x_'s origin in greek chi,
and it's value of /x/ in Russian, it seems disconcerting to use it for
/h/, especially when the target language has a /x/ sound [even given
that we use "k+dot" for that].

So my argument against _x_ is aesthetic. To me, it looks too significant
to use for the rare pre- initial-vowel /h/. Compare with the occurance
of /h/ in (ancient, at least) Greek. It's just not important enough -
it can only occur in one position - to have a full letter. Instead a
diacritic (`) is used on the initial vowel. In Gaelic it's event rare,
and although I don't think we should use an accent to indicate it (too
hairy), the /h/ symbol seems to me to be admirably unencumbered.

Anybody think I'm making some kind of sense?


> > #9. Here the "ao" digraph, since it's before a narrow consonant or
> > a final "i", represents /i:/. I've written it with backwards-n-breve,
> > and not merged it with backwards-n-acute (as in "sí", "she"), since
> > it may have distinct values dialects and gaelics I'm not so familiar
> > with.

> The thing in Russian and Ukrainian (at least) is /j/.

I know.

> I guess it should be altered.

Probably. It was more or less a place holder. However, I don't think we
should follow *too* closely either the practice of orthodox Gaelic
orthography, or the practice of Cyrillic using languages. If we overadhere
to Cyrillic practices, we'd have to come up with for awkward glyphs for
common sounds. But I'm going to reexamine the orthography of vowel digraphs
and diphthongues anyway, so the |/|-breve will probably go.


> The things I've snipped are the ones that I can't answer due to
> inadequate knowledge of Irish ;-)

Me too. Outstanding issues:
1) the /N/ debacle.
2) vowel digraphs like éi, and the i in "sliocht" (is it really /s'l'oxt/?)

> Hmm, I guess we ave to get such texts
> going to debug the Cyrillic orthography :-)

In a book called "Teach Yourself Irish" (there's a few - the one by Ó
Sé & Sheils), which I had previously dismissed, I noticed there's a
fairly good description of the writing system, including the answer to
questions like "What is ei?" (answer: /E/. But is éi = /E:/?). It'll
help to resolve a few of the vowel issues, at least. I'll revise and
extend the sample text when I've learnt a bit more. What I really need
is Ó Siadhial's "Modern Irish", which I'm told will be returned to the
library during the week.

stephen