On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 14:30:59 -0000, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>> Toki Pona is a constructed language with a phonology roughly
>> comparable to Japanese's: syllables are V (only word-initially), CV,
>> or CVn (is that the right notation? CVC is possible, but only if the
>> last C is the sound /n/). Some people have proposed various
>> alternative writing systems to the Latin alphabet which is most
>> commonly used for it, partly because of the regular syllable
>> structure.
>
> I can't think of any way in which any sane way of representing a
> final /n/ would affect the classification of the writing system.

The proposals for the shape of final /n/--which AFAICT nobody has proposed
to be the same as initial /n/--range from full letter shape (in the more
Hangul-type proposals) to a more diacritic-type mark[1] or other
modification (e.g., one person proposed a square around the equivalent
n-less syllable). If the diacritic-type were applied to an alphabet, it
would still be alphabetic (the diacritic being the obligatory "-n" letter)
but if the diacritic-type were applied to what was otherwise a syllabary
it might seem less clear what type of writing system it should be. (I
think it would still be a syllabary though... the n-mark making
essentially a new syllable-sign in a regular fashion similarly to the
voicing marks in kana.)

*Muke!
[1] one could probably call it a diacritic, yes, because it could(?)
possibly be said to represent nasalization of the vowel.
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