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Re: The Moon

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In article <pbmb7c5g3g0jk0t3bjll9ab6pblosembp9@reader80.eternal-september.org>,
Lawrence Watt-Evans  <lwe@sff.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 17:38:59 -0800, Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net>
>wrote:
>
[stuff on the Cyrillic alphabet snipped]

>>And that's not the only time such a thing has happened - try looking at  
>>some of the written versions of American Indian languages. Same thing 
>>happened with several of them - Some missionary or other came along and 
>>said "You guys need to have a written language if you don't want to be 
>>considered savages", and created one for them.

Those were generally replaced, in the twentieth century, by
transcriptions in a standard-ish character set used by linguists.

Back in the lower Pleistocene (i.e., 1960s) I majored in
Linguistics at the University of california at Berkeley.  The
faculty at that department, and most of their colleagues in North
America, were desperately trying to record and describe Native
American languages quickly, like *right now,* before the last
native speakers died.
>
>I dunno about "several."  Most written American Indian languages use
>the Latin alphabet, though with diacritical marks as needed.

More like a whole additional set of characters, borrowed from the
Greek alphabet or wherever they could mine extra characters from.
For instance, there's a Pacific Northwest language called Nootka,
or more properly, Nuu-chah-nulth -- and even that version of the
name is inaccurate, because it's using strings of Latin
characters to hint at consonants no Latinate language ever
dreamed of.  

Visualize the Greek letter lambda.  That represents a phoneme
made up of d+l, the way the phoneme we write "ch" is made up of
t+sh.  Now draw a horizontal line across the bar of the lambda,
linguists call that "barred lambda," and represents the voiceless
version of lambda, t+l.  Now put an apostrophe over, or right
after (depending on what your font is willing to do), and that's
*glottalized* barred lambda, when at the same time you pronounce
the t, you also make a glottal stop.  Sounds weird to our ears;
Nuu-chah-nulth is full of them.

If you want to look at what a page of the language looks like, you
can look here:

https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_noo_vertxt-1


-- 
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

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The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-09 11:51 -0800
  Re: The Moon Yuri Kretin <invlaid@invalid.com> - 2017-01-09 14:25 -0600
    Re: The Moon Yuri Kretin <invlaid@invalid.com> - 2017-01-09 14:32 -0600
      Re: The Moon djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-01-10 07:15 +0000
        Re: The Moon Yuri Kretin <invlaid@invalid.com> - 2017-01-10 09:34 -0600
          Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-10 08:58 -0800
          Re: The Moon shima.tetsuo@dai.tokyo.teikoku (島鉄雄) - 2017-01-11 10:50 +0000
            Re: The Moon djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-01-11 13:48 +0000
              Re: The Moon larry <ljmoore@wightman.ca> - 2017-01-16 13:49 +0000
        Re: The Moon Kuri Yretin <invlaid@invalid.com> - 2017-01-10 15:12 -0600
          Re: The Moon Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2017-01-10 13:38 -0800
            Re: The Moon Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@sff.net> - 2017-01-10 16:47 -0500
              Re: The Moon Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2017-01-10 14:11 -0700
                Re: The Moon Tom Kratman <tomkratman@gmail.com> - 2017-01-11 04:22 -0800
                Re: The Moon Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2017-01-11 08:43 -0700
              Re: The Moon Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2017-01-10 14:55 -0800
                Re: The Moon Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@sff.net> - 2017-01-10 18:33 -0500
            Re: The Moon Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2017-01-10 14:09 -0700
            Re: The Moon Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2017-01-10 17:38 -0800
              Re: The Moon Lawrence Watt-Evans <lwe@sff.net> - 2017-01-11 02:18 -0500
                Re: The Moon Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2017-01-11 06:01 -0800
                Re: The Moon Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2017-01-11 09:08 -0800
                Re: The Moon Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2017-01-11 10:14 -0800
                Re: The Moon Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2017-01-11 13:23 -0800
                Re: The Moon Cryptoengineer <treifamily@gmail.com> - 2017-01-12 23:01 -0600
                Re: The Moon Don Bruder <dakidd@sonic.net> - 2017-01-12 21:52 -0800
                Re: The Moon Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2017-01-13 05:48 -0800
                Re: The Moon Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2017-01-11 15:35 -0800
                Re: The Moon djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-01-11 14:05 +0000
            Re: The Moon Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2017-01-10 21:47 -0700
          Re: The Moon moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) - 2017-01-11 15:00 +0000
  Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-09 21:28 -0800
  Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-09 21:46 -0800
    Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-09 21:49 -0800
      Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-10 09:08 -0800
      Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-10 23:05 -0800
        Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-10 23:16 -0800
          Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-11 14:21 -0800
            Re: The Moon Kuri Yretin <invlaid@invalid.com> - 2017-01-11 19:36 -0600
        Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-12 22:36 -0800
          Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-13 11:01 -0800
            Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-13 22:44 -0800
              Re: The Moon The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2017-01-16 10:12 -0800

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