On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

> How would you all react to a (non-Slavic) Cyrillic-based
> alphabet using upside-down Cyrillic {s} and {z} for /T/ and
> /D/? The idea is that a 19th century alphabet maker was able
> to turn existing lead types upside down to create new
> symbols, but not to add diacritics or wholly new shapes.

Makes sense to me, and I'm sure I've seen that kind of practice before
(though I can't think of one right now).

Ah wait, I remember seeing upside-down <G> as a surrogate for an eng,
and also seeing upside-down upsilon-circumflex and iota-circumflex in
early Modern Greek to indicate semivowel /j/.

I read an article saying that they were intended to be written as a
right-side-up iota or upsilon with a breve underneath, but an
upside-down letter (so the circumflex would be "beneath" the
character) was the best they could do in their typesetting.

So - sounds like a plan to me.


On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 9:09 AM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> Wasn't their a native Cyrillic character for /T/? If I'm remember
> right, it looked like an upper case Roman V. The letter I'm
> thinking of is a V with a little tail on the upper right. It's pictured
> here, but it doesn't give it's value, unless I'm missing it:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet>

I think you're looking for the one to its left instead, that looks
like an O with a horizontal bar in the middle.

I'm not sure whether izhitsa or fita ever stood for [y] or [T],
though, or whether they were merely etymological conventions
indicating that this [i] or [f] (respectively) were an upsilon or a
theta (respectively) in the original Greek.

Later on, they got chucked because they did not indicate separate
phonemes and were, therefore, redundant. (A bit, perhaps, like the way
<K> got all but discarded in Latin in favour of using <C> for /k/
everywhere.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>