Re: comohota

----- Original Message -----

From: P&G

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 10:32 AM

Subject: Re: [SPAM]Re: [SPAM]Re: [SPAM][tied] comohota

>Modern languages like English or French
>have traditions ....
>I suppose Umbrian had nothing like that,
>2 000 years ago.
>they started from nil and from a white page.

Have you forgotten the Greeks? And the Etruscans?
Have you also forgotten that standardised spelling is an 18th century
European idea?

>2. why is it they chose -h- to display morphemic (?) cut ?
>Neither Greek nor Latin can be a "model" to create such a -h-.

Actually, both can be. Don't forget words such as ahena in Latin, or
prehendo, or mihi..
And don't confuse "Greek" with our way of spellling the Attic dialect.
There were other Greek alphabets, and other dialects, and other ways of
spelling.

>1. why is it they wrote mota as mo-h-o-ta ?
>You are selling the "just-forget- it" explanation.

Actually, I'm selling the "we don't know" explanation. Or better, "we don't
know, but we do know it may be nothing but a meaningless aberration of
spelling."

>I cannot buy this "explanation" :
Good. Keep explporing.
>it just does not sound as a possible explanation at all.
Unfortunately, it is. We can't say it is the answer, but we can say it is
possible.

>What is a "spelling marker" ?

It's a device for indicating what a single letter cannot indicate. For
example, Latin had no way of marking long vowels, so one "spelling marker"
they tried was writing the vowel twice, or writing it bigger. (It didn't
catch on). Another that was tried in Latin was a sign to indicate word
accent. That also didn't catch on.
German uses <h> as a spelling marker. It indicates a long vowel - as in
gehen - but elsewhere it is a phoneme, as in Gehirn.
We know Umbrian spelling was inconsistent and chaotic. We know <h> was
used as a sign of hiatus in both Umbrian and Oscan. So I think you are
trying too hard.

Peter