Bah, it still kinda bothers me to see "no" used as a "no" in a language so far off from any human counterpart. But yea, I guess I will survive, even if it stays the same.
As to the writing system, if one is to be implemented, then yes, I very much agree with what you have said regarding it. The pronounciation of vowels, in my humble oppinion, can be left as "pure", as I see no need to make the common language phrases excessively rough. After all, we will hopefully implement roars and such onomatopeic niceties, which are bound to spice it up a little, no?Ā Ā
About the
' and
h now. The alphabet on the wiki lists the letter "Han" as being pronounced as the h in "hammer", but I am sure you knew that already. Now, why would we want to throw a perfectly good letter away? We could use, say, that same "niche" or maybe two of them, put togeter, to signify accented pronounciation of the preceding (or maybe, the following, would be a better option) sound? Then, the letter Han could be either left alone and used as the current alphabet suggests, or it could come to signify
the hiss. Think of a domestic cat's response to seeing a dog - that is what I have in mind when I say "the hiss"; originating deep in the throat and with an intrinsic emotional value to the felines. It could help enormously when constructing aggressive/defensive/swear words, et simile. This is not to say that the same role could not be taken on by, say, W or Q. It is just that "H" seems like a godsend for the role.
I got carried away with this. Let me see if I can remember what other points was I to make...Ā
Oh yes. The length of the glottal stop. Personally, I think that it should be an audible interjection of silence (...did that make any sense? ...I'm in my bed and it's 3am...). Now, if my proposal for the salvation of the letter h gets accepted, the rules you propose could be carried out by the use of one (') and two ('') niches for the mid-word glottal stop and for accenting the following sound respectively.
Ok, now for some lightheaded deliberation concerning roaring and hissing.
What do you say about using repeated "r" for signifying the occurance of roaring, when writing Enkien in the English alphabet? I see Enki roaring in a sentence in a slightly more controlled, i.e. shorter, fashion, but with much the same intended intensity as say, lions. Ditto with the "h" for hissing.
I'llĀ try and illustrate:
Imagine two Enkis dueling, looking each other over before they leap... The moment comes and they toss them selves ferociously into the fight... "
vaarrr'jho!!!" - one of them screams: a roaring insult, a mere idiot momentarilly degraded into an imbecile- cretin, impossible of coherent thought. His opponent, equally dismissive and enraged, screams "
ulbrrreti dirhhh''gho!!" - literraly, son of an Ulbernaut.
Now, due to the fact that both roars and hisses are easily influenced by the vowel immediatelly before or after them, this is how I believe one should read words like the ones in the example.
1. the "
vaarrrjho " - the long "a" flows into a roar, much like you and I would yell "aaaa!" in our deepest, scariest Count Dracula voice; but the resulting sound is about 3 octaves deeper and, well, 3 times as ferocious, I guess. The "rrr" is there as a symbol of a roar, then, determined by parameters. The niche (') is there to give more strength to the intrinsically insult-bearing -jho sufix. I hope I make my vision clear enough.
2. the "
ulbrrreti " - the word would be pronounced very fast, the "ulb-" comming from the bowel, basically as a suffix to an immensly powerful yet short roar that ends in spitting the "ti" out.
3. thw "
dirghhh''gho " - beginning with a loud "di(r)-" and then immediately transforming into a ahort, edgy, fightcall hiss. I was quite happy to include the two niches (a rule I made up about four paragraphs ago, which mind you, is not exactly a rule just yet)р that signiffy the strength and ferociousness of the "-jho" suffix, the lowest common denominator in Enkien.Ā
I trued pronouncing these, and they do indeed sound quite rough and ferocious, just what we need, for a bloodthirsty (prejudice) race of destructive felines (racial slur) that we are, IMHO.
To be honest, I'm a bit lost by now. I'm very tired and my thoughts are fleeting. I'll give this thing one more proofread and then I'll call it a night. Or go play Hobowars. Anyway, I'm very keen on getting your oppinion, guys.
