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.)

starexplorer wrote:

, but it’s been a very long time since we’ve had a kerfuffle about anything. Which is excellent.

 

No food fight????