--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> Do the Inuit agree that length is secondary? As Inuit /ai/ is
> written with <e> syllables and Inuit /aai/ is written with

modified

> <i> syllables, I would not presume that it was secondary. It is

not

> necessarily a complication, for they *might* treat this difference
> as primary but <o> v. <oo>, <a> v. <aa> and <i> v. <ii> as

secondary.

Innuktitut is a different language in everyone's book. It has a
separate language code. They do share a writing system in the way
that many lgs share the roman alphabet. I can't comment on that.

Back to language codes though = I do notice that Naskapi does not
have a code. I wonder if Peter Constable can comment on what the
status of Naskapi is as a separate lg from Cree. However, there
seems to be one code only for Cree from Quebec to Alberta so Eaatern
and Western finals are dual encodings for the final consonants. No?

>
> > >There may be even more issues with the vowelless
> > > consonants (typically syllable final).
> >
> > Eastern and western finals are font differences! IMO
>
> Didn't I also hear that they were often omitted? That would be

like

> the early Philippine scripts, which didn't write syllable final
> consonants at all.

In Native Cree publications now, newspapers and such that I have,
finals are used. Historically and in handwriting not necessarily.
However, I doubt that Cree writers today would expect to publish
without finals. That may be a different story for Innuktitut.

>
> > >Another issue is that there
> > > appear to be fricativisation and affricatisation diacritics.
>
> > Don't know what this is - possibly not Cree.
>
> Compare FI U+1555 with PI U+1431 , and THI U+1560, N-CREE THI

U+1561

> with TI U+144E. There is an extra loop, with different

conventions

> for its placement. When FI is used as Inuktitut /vi/, I doubt the
> loop is seen as a diacritic.

I have to say that I have no idea what the writing system represents
for lgs other than Cree and I would hesitate to comment on any
writing system that I have not seen used in real life. I don't
usually use charts and textbooks as a reference, not enough
probably. Hwever, I cringe when I read in the Unicode list that
someone has read in a textbook that such and such characters are
used in a certain way, unless I know that the author of the text has
lived with those people and listened to them and several other
sources support these interpretations as well.

Suaznne