On Tue, 9 May 2000, Roy McCoy wrote (excerpted):
> It isn't in fact Interlingua that doesn't make sense
> to me, but the traditional Interlingua school that irregular spellings
> should be maintained out of respect for etymology. [...]
> My sympathies are certainly with Inter-
> lingua's phonetic school, since as a longtime Esperantist I find single
> consonants to be strikingly more attractive than their (senselessly?)
> double counterparts.
The Interlingua Collateral Orthography is set forth in section 15
of the second edition (1955) of the "Interlingua Grammar" by Alexander
Gode and Hugh E. Blair. In brief, the allowable changes are:
o Elimination of most double letters representing a single consonant
sound, except for 'cc' representing /k/ before 'e', 'i', and 'y', and
except for 'ss' (so it does not become confused with /z/).
o Replacement of 'y' by 'i'.
o Replacement of 'ph' by 'f'.
o Replacement of 'ch' representing /k/ by 'c' except before 'e' and
'i' (to avoid the 'c' being pronounced as /s/).
o Omission of silent 'h' after 'r' and 't'.
o Replacement of 'j' for 'g' and 'gi' to represent /Z/.
o Replacement of '-aje' for '-age' at the end of a word where it is not
a suffix.
o Elision of final 'e' after 't' preceded by a vowel except in words
stressed on the antepenult (and except for present tense and imperative
verb forms); also final 'e' after 'n', 'l', and 'r' when these are the
collateral spellings for 'nn', 'll', and 'rr'. [Note that this rule
is the only one which would affect pronunciation, and therefore might
be the one least likely to be used.]
But again, even though these rules have "official" sanction, they seem
not to be in favor among netizen Interlinguaists. Even so, they are
there.
--
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Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
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