A Transcription Revision Proposal
Saul Epstein 
Wed, 30 Apr 1997 20:26:33 -0500

After all this discussion of glottal stops, I've come to the
conclusion that it's actually a minor matter that can be ironed out
later if it ever needs to be. We aren't, after all, necessarily
concerned with the history of this particular Vulcan dialect in all
its detail so much as we are concerned with the "present" detail. So
I'm going on to something else.

I'd like to suggest the following alternative notation for the
transcription of Vulcan, adapted from the ZC:

VOWELS

ii i				u uu
	ee		oo
	e		o
		^
		^^
	aa		a

i	pit (Brit English)		ii	mean (Brit English)
u	put (Brit English)		uu	prune (Brit English)
e	set (Brit English)		ee	prenez (French)
o	not (Brit English)		oo	fault (Brit English)
^	but (Brit English)		^^	sir (Brit English)
a 	patte (French)			aa	?

ZC says "Nasalization is indicated by a tilde, e,g., e~." Let me say
that I don't like the way working with ASCII requires that
diacritical marks be put beside a symbol instead of above or below:
that's why I'd like to write the so-called "long" vowels by doubling
the corresponding "short" vowel. What I want to get at here, though,
is that the current lexicon has no examples of nasalized vowels. So
I'm wondering if they're phonemic or if each vowel has a nasalized
allophone. If the latter is true I don't need to worry about having
to write e~, etc.

We're not given a sample for <a:> and since my understanding of
French pronunciation is limited I can't guess what might contrast
with <a>.

CONSONANTS

p	t		k	q	=92
b	d		g
	th	(Th)
	dh
f	s	c	x
v	z	j
wh				(H)	h
w	l	y
whl	r	rr
m	n	n~	ng
	ts, tc, dj, ks

p	put (English)		c	shoot (English)
b	but (English)		j	measure (English)
f	folk (English)		y	yolk (English)
v	veal (English)		rr	sparrow (Am English)
wh	white (English)		n~	man~ana (Spanish), mignon (French)
w	wise (English)		k	cat (English)
whl	NA				g	go (English)
m	man (English)		x	loch (Scot Gaelic), bach (German)
t	top (English)		ng	hang (English)
d	door (English)		q	qur'an (Arabic)
th					'	qur'an (Arabic)
dh					h	hut (English)
s	serum (English)	=09
z	zero (English)		ts	tse-tse [English (sort of)]
l	logic (English)		tc	church (English)
r	perro (Spanish)		dj	jewel (English)
n	not (English)		ks	lax (English)

whl: simultaneous voiceless bilabial and lateral fricative (wh +
Welsh ll)

In addition to disliking things like e: and e~, I'd like to avoid
using h as parts of digraphs whenever possible. I actually have a
good reason for this: <s> is not to <sh> what <t> is to <th>, whether
<th> represents an aspirated stop or a fricative. The above
arrangement avoids using h as a kind of miscellaneous diacritic
except in two cases: <th> and <dh> where it represents aspiration,
and <wh> where it represents voicelessness. I'd like to settle on one
or the other, preferably aspiration. If necessary I'm willing to
pretend that <wh> is understood as an aspirated <w>, even though it
is pronounced as a voiceless <w>.

Of course, if we agree that our transcription has little if anything
to do with Vulcan writing, we can designate upper-case letters as
having different values than lower-case, eliminating the need for
diacritics all together.

I invite any comments...

--
from Saul R. Epstein
Terran, Late 20th-Early 21st Century
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
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