Re: Moraic writing system

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>

wrote:

> > > Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > > > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"

<grammatim@...> wrote:

> > > > > Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > > > > > Pahawh Hmong is just an alphabet - it has eleven oral

vowels and two

> > > > > > nasal vowels. All the Hmong codas are implicit in the

nucleus!

> > > > > No, it is not an alphabet. It is a sort of reverse abugida.

> > > > You have me confused on two counts. If it's an abugida,

what's the

> > > > implicit vowel?

> > > IIRC each vowel letter has an implicit consonant, which is

replaced by a

> > > consonant letter placed beside it.

> > It would have been more helpful to say, 'The implicit consonant is

/k/.'

> Well, perhaps if it hadn't been 1 am and I'd felt like climbing two
> flights of stairs and back again, I might have done; but you'd obviously
> just looked it up in a place where you could count the vowels and must
> have seen that for yourself.

Your sentence was ambiguous (a common implicit consonant, or
potentially a different one) and I had assumed you would have
remembered. I should have counted the consonants, but that's not so easy!

It's interesting that the implicit consonant is the first one of the
Brahmi alphabets. Now I admit that the Thai children in the lesson
referenced at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qalam/message/4986 start
their chanting of syllables with the glottal stop and then go on to
/k/, but I wonder if similar lessons have any connection with /k/
being the implicit consonant.

After all this, my original comment stands - I can't see Pahawh Hmong
as a moraic script.

Richard.