Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!festival!edcogsci!iad
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Breves (Re: Diacritic symbol names)
Message-ID: <CyGKLu.Ktz@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <38glpg$pq@agate.berkeley.edu> <Cy9v56.18B@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <donhCyC2sv.FtK@netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 23:44:17 GMT
Lines: 33

[Re why Esperanto uses _u_-breve instead of _w_, and whether it is
because _w_ has the value /v/ in German and Polish, and whether the
a_posteriority of E's orthography, _c_ and _j_ and a', has been a matter
of hi_priority for its designer.]

In article <donhCyC2sv.FtK@netcom.com> donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW) writes:
>To the best of my memory, _j_ is pronounced differently in 
>each of English, Spanish, and Portuguese-French. It would have been 
>impossible to consistently satisfy them all.

Quite true.  Though in most other projects that come to mind _y_ is used for
the palatal glide and _j_ is a voiced palatoalveolar fricative or affricate,
so Zamenhof did have some courage.

Anyway, I'm not saying that there was anything wrong with giving _c_
and _j_ their Polish values.  Re _u_-breve, I favour the explanation
that it was introduced because /w/ mostly occurred in such positions
where the source languages used simply _u_.  (For an alternative,
look at Hom-Idyomo, a monstrous derivative of Esperanto, in which
all _i_ and _u_ adjacent to another vowel are replaced by _y_ and
_w_, respectively.  A profile of it, written by me, was published
in Rick Harrison's _Journal for Planned Languages_ 18, Spring 1993.)

>How many fantasticatillions are there in a zillion?

I'd rather not discuss this subject, as UK and US usage probably differ.
We can't even agree on what to call 1E3*1E6, so why bother with 1EZ/1EF?

-- 
`That's yer oan problem, Judas', they telt him.  `It's nae concern tae us.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk/chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)  (The G-- G--)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
