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HRHSpence wrote:
What you are looking for is the separation of all the allophones from each phoneme. That, is beyond the scope of what I wrote.
This isn't quite what I'm saying. /k/ and a variant of /c/ (really the postpalatal, so /k̟/ or /c̠/) are allophonic in English, however, my proposal is that Ragi distinguishes them, that is to say, that they are not allophones from the perspective of a Ragi speaker, much like how English distinguishes the /d/ and /ð/ sounds that are allophonic in Spanish. Ragi might, then have two separate letters for these distinct sounds, which could then be transcribed as K and C in the romanization system seen in the books, thereby creating a romanization that preserves the distinctions between the original words while remaining intuitive to the English-speaking reader because both sounds are perceived as K sounds for us. Cajeiri, for example, might be /cad͡ʒeɪ̯ri/ (or /c̠ad͡ʒeɪ̯ri/), while "Kajeiri" would be /kad͡ʒeɪ̯ri/, and he would perceive that as a mispronunciation, not just a misspelling, of his name, even though both versions would sound the same to Gene and Irene and company -- at least before they all learn enough Ragi (Maybe another reason why they all call him Jeri, yeah?)
Last edited by Elliefint (7/23/2023 9:15 am)
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Is this the reasonable place to post another thought I have about the phonology? Right now I'm thinking about the "ph" sound in "Mospheira". That sound could fall under the rule of "consonant + H makes a palatal" stated in the appendix to the first couple of books, in which case it would be pronounced /mospʲeɪ̯ra/, which is straightforward, if a little unintuitive-seeming to the English-speaking reader (something like "Mospyeira"). However! I think a consideration here is that as far as I recall, we don't see that "ph" in any of the other examples of Ragi text we get to see, right? So I feel like it might be possible that the sound represented is not necessary a Ragi phoneme. After all, Mospheira was where the Edi and Gan lived before everything happened, and they have their own language, so perhaps the "ph" in "Mospheira" exists to transcribe an Edi and/or Gan sound! In that case, we have to consider what sound it might be that's not found in Ragi and maybe not in Mosphei', either! My proposal is that this sound is /ɸ/, the voiceless bilabial fricative. (Pronounce it like a P but without closing your lips all the way, or an F but without using your teeth.) This is the sound of the letter phi in ancient Greek for a certain portion in its history (hence the IPA symbol) and it's traditionally romanized as "ph", as in "philosophy" (pronounced as /f/ since that's the closest sound we have in English) so that's consistent with the spelling of "Mospheira", and would produce the intuitive pronunciation while providing a history that makes sense from a Watsonian perspective. (Does anyone know if we have an official word from Ms. Cherryh as to how "Mospheira" is pronounced? That would be useful in deciding which of these explanations to adopt mentally -- as it stands, I read it as /mospʲeɪ̯ra/ and /mosɸeɪ̯ra/ and /mosfeɪ̯ra/ interchangeably.)
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Interesting thoughts, though I’m probably one of the least well read on this board in the Foreigner books. They don’t speak to me the way they do to others, or the way, for instance, the A/U books do. So I can’t add anything.
But I can tell you that I doubt anyone will much ruffled about which threads you put things in. That used to happen in the distant past, but it’s been a very long time since we’ve had a kerfuffle about anything. Which is excellent.
Thanks for jumping in with all your ideas!
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starexplorer wrote:
, but it’s been a very long time since we’ve had a kerfuffle about anything. Which is excellent.
No food fight????
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We can still do that 😃, just no real ones!