--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:

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

> > > Please confirm that the Potawatomi syllabary at this URL is in
> error
> > as you
> > > say.
> >
> > I think greater heed should have been paid to Suzanne's smilie.
>
> I was only half-joking . Of course, it is the roman alphabet
> arranged in syllables. (For those for whom this was a non-functional
> link.)
>
> They
> > look like PR jobs to me:
> >
> > 'You can't handle a paleface alphabet? OK, try a syllabary.
> That's
> > the Native American thing!'
>
> I am uncomfortable with that interpretation - did Evans think of it
> as a native American thing? Was he familiar with the Cherokee
> syllabary?

I was referring to the 'syllabaries' based on the Roman alphabet which
seem to be nothing more than alphabets.

> Maybe there is no phonological voicing contrast. Syllable charts
> were called syllbaries, that's all. It was a syllabary, in the other
> sense of the word.

I nearly said 'phonation contrast', but decided it might be too
obscure. Potawatomi no more has a voicing contrast than does Mandarin
Chinese. The contrast is between aspirated and unaspirated consonants.

Richard.