Orthography & Phonology

1. Introduction

It will be seen on this page and subsequent pages that Dr Outis had some ideas which probably seem a little eccentric to many of us in the 21st century.

As for an alphabet, although Dr Outis looked towards ancient Greek for the source of his language, he chose to use the Roman one. He observed that what is now called the Greek alphabet was descended from an Ionic version of the Eastern Greek set of alphabets, and that the Roman alphabet was merely a variant of the western Greek set. Now only the Greeks, who in his view had corrupted the ancient language, used the latter-day Greek alphabet, though he conceded that some of the Slavic nations used a "deformed" variant of it.

Also, as he observed, even then the Roman alphabet was more widely used among European nations and had been spread to the Americas and was being taken to other parts of the globe; further, as he observed, even Greek speakers, for example in Crete under Venetian rule, had written their language in the Roman script.

Dr Outis did not, however, use the full 26 letters, but only the seventeen letters: A B G D E Z I K L M N O P R S T U.

The reason for the restriction to just seventeen letters and their slightly odd ordering is explained below. It is not entirely clear whether other letters were acceptable in 'foreign' names or not.

1.2 Important Note:

In the next two sections we give both the way Dr Outis transliterated Greek into Roman letters (which was different in some important respects from the traditional way in his time which was based on that used by the Romans themselves) and the way the letters are pronounced in Outidic. The two must not be confused, for Dr Outis subjected the transliterated Greek to the same sort of process that:

• Labbé had subjected Latin, e.g. pat ← pater, cel ← caelu(m), deb ← debere/ debitu(m), lib ← libera(re);
• Schleyer was to subject English as it became Volapük, e.g. blod ← brother, flen ← friend, pük ← speak/ speech, vol ← world.

Thus, for example, we find that ἀνήρ (man, adult male) "aner" whose genitive is ἀνδρός "andros" turns up in Outidic as ner, and that νύξ (night) "nuks" whose genitive is νυκτός "nuktos" becomes nuk.
 

2. Vowels & Diphthongs

2.1 Introduction

After considering whether to distinguish between long and short vowels either by writing long vowels double or by using a macron, Dr Outis (happily for us) chose not to retain this distinction. The two things that decided him against were:

• They Greeks themselves did not distinguish them as far Α, Ι and Υ were concerned. Indeed, it was only among the eastern Greek that one found distinction between short Ε and Ο on the one hand and long Η and Ω on the other; the western Greeks had used Ε and Ο for both long and short sounds as had the Athenians until the adoption of the Ionic alphabet in 403/2 BC. As he had chosen, for reasons given in the section above, to use the Roman version of the western Greek set of alphabets, it seemed logical to him to ignore the distinction the Ionians had made.
• He observed that different European nations treated this distinction quite differently (nowadays we would talk of those languages where the difference was phonetic, and those where it was phonemic).

Thus Outidic does not have either the phonemic distinction between long and short vowels nor, indeed, between the long and short diphthongs of ancient Greek (or any other language).

2.2 Simple vowels

Of the six vocalic symbols used by the Romans, Dr Outis discarded Y as it had not properly been part of the Roman alphabet; it was an Ionic letter added during the 1st century BC to represent /y/ or, what Dr Outis claimed was a "deformed" pronunciation as it moved towards the barbarous modern sound of ee (i.e. /i/). Also he was aware that in the earliest borrowings from Greek, it was rendered with u as in Burrus (= Pyrrhus) and Bruges (= Phryges) and that while the Ionians and Athenians had begun the "deformation" of the sound the Dorian Greeks retained the older "purer" sound, i.e. /u/. Therefore Dr Outis consistently transcribed Υ as U, whether it was a simple vowel or the second element in a diphthong. To summarize:

Greek	α	ε	η	ι	ο	ω	υ
Dr Outis' transcription	a	e		i	o		u
Pronunciation in Outidic	/a/	/e/		/i/	/o/		/u/

Thus the five vowels were pronounced as in modern Spanish.

2.3 Diphthongs

Dr Outis regarded the ancient ΕΙ and ΟΥ as true diphthongs, not as the "spurious diphthongs" (i.e. digraphs representing simple vowel sons) of later ages. Also he scorned the Byzantine practice of writing the iota subscript and not pronouncing it in the long diphthongs ᾱι, ηι and ωι, which were certainly diphthongal in early Greek (for convenience, these are shown in the table below with iota subscript). Thus Outidic has six falling diphthongs:

Greek	αι, ᾳ	ει, ῃ	οι, ῳ	αυ, ᾱυ	ευ, ηυ	ου, ωυ
Dr Outis' transcription	ai	ei	oi	au	eu	ou
Pronunciation in Outidic	/ai/	/ei/	/oi/	/au/	/eu/	/ou/

The diphthong ωυ is rare; it occurs in Ionic words and the occasional foreign name, e.g. Μωυσῆς "Moses" who, in Outidic, is Mouse /mouse/ [mɔu̯'se].

He talks about the first part of the diphthong being "deeper" than usual. He seems to mean that the /e/ and /o/ in these diphthongs are like [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively, rather than [e] and [o].

The text books give υι as a diphthong; but it was not common and occurred only before another vowel. It probably represented [u] or [y], according to dialect, followed by [jj]. I have no doubt that Dr Outis would have written it as ui, but he considered it odd and it does not occur in Outidic.

Whether i and u are pronounced as semivowels before other vowels is not at all clear. I leave this to the preference of the reader.
 

3. Consonants

3.1 Introduction

The consonants for the most part are transliterated as one would expect. The Romans had transliterated Greek Κ with their C, and that was still the custom in the 17th century; indeed, it is only in recent times that we have begun using K, so we find, e.g. in English both cinema ← κἰνημα /ki:ne:ma/ and kinetic ← κινητικός /ki:ne:tikos/. Dr Outis decided as C was no longer uniformly /k/ in European languages, it would be misleading to use it. He, therefore, did not use C in Outidic but uniformly transliterated Greek Κ by Roman K.

This is hardly surprising to us moderns. Other points where he departed from the tradition of his time are given below.

3.2 Aspirates and Plosives

The loss of /h/, which is characteristic of modern Greek and many other languages, e.g. Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, was also known also in ancient times; the loss of /h/ in ancient Greek was termed psilosis (ψίλωσις) and dialects that had lost /h/ were termed psilotic (ψιλωτικός).

The most well known of the psilotic dialects was Eastern Ionian; but psilotic dialects were also found in all the other ancient Greek dialect groups: in Lesbian of the Aiolic group, Elean of the northwest dialect group, Cyprian of the Arcado-Cyprian group, and Cretan of the Doric group. The western Greeks had a symbol for the sound, but as the Ionic alphabet came more widely used, the Greeks came more and more not to show the sound in writing (the rough breathing ʽ and soft breathing ᾿ diacritics were inventions of the Alexandrian grammarians of the 3rd century BC).

Dr Outis decided that as, indeed, many of his own fellow countrymen tended to lose /h/, that several nations had lost the sound entirely and that several ancient Greek dialects had already lost the sound, Outidic would have no /h/.

The Greek aspirated plosives φ, θ and χ were rendered by the Romans as ph, th and ch respectively. Dr Outis knew that the modern pronunciation as voiceless fricatives (or what he called "sprirants"), i.e. the /f/, /θ/ and /x/ of modern Greek, was not that of the ancients. He was aware, indeed, that many found some of these fricatives difficult; his fellow countrymen generally pronounced /x/ as [k]; continental languages generally pronounced th in Greek derived words simply as [t] and, when pronouncing English, tended to sound /θ/ as [s]. Indeed, he had heard /θ/ pronounced as [f] by some of the uneducated of his fellow country men and he has noticed in noisy environments [f] and [s] are not always readily distinguishable. He came to the conclusion that Outidic "shall have only one spirant, viz s."

He knew that in some of early dialects where the letters φ and χ were unknown people had often been content to write π and κ. Also, as he appears not to have appreciated that, for example the /t/ in English stop and top are different (the first being unaspirated and the second aspirated) he concluded that "[O]ur knowledge of the ancient aspirated mutes is deficient; our nearest approach is in words like hothouse, blockhead and uphill, but with us the h is not in the same syllable as the mute."

Therefore, he decided that no distinction would be made in Outidic between aspirated and unaspirated plosives.

The ancient Greek plosives are, therefore, rendered thus in Outidic:

Greek	π	φ	β	τ	θ	δ	κ	χ	γ
Dr Outis' transcription	p		b	t		d	k		g
Pronunciation in Outidic	/p/		/b/	/t/		/d/	/k/		/g/

For γ see also nasals below.

3.3 Sibilants and consonant-groups represented by single letters

3.3.1 Σ (Sigma)
As we saw above, Dr Outis determined that only voiceless fricative in Outidic would be s /s/; therefore, the transliteration of σ is uncontroversial. Whether the sound may be voiced between vowel, as for example in reason, is not discussed by Dr Outis.

3.3.2 Ζ (Zeta)
This on the other hand, was more problematic. Where we find it in ancient Greek, it either represents a /sd/ inherited from Indo-European, e.g. ὄζος "branch", cf. German Ast, Hittite hasd-, and ἵζω ← *si-sd-ō "I sit", cf. Latin sīdō ← *sisdō, or from a palatalized /d/ or /g/ of Proto-Greek.

Now we know that palatalized /t/, /tʰ/, /k/ or /kʰ/ gave either -σσ- /ss/ or -ττ- /tt/ in ancient Greek according to dialect. We would, therefore, expect a palatalized /d/ or /g/ to give either [zz] or [dd] in corresponding dialects. Indeed, we do find the sound written as -δδ- in in Boiotian, Thessalian, Elean, Cretan and Laconian dialects. Whether [zz] occurred in some other dialects we cannot tell for certain as there was no unambiguous way of writing that. Indeed, /dd/ was odd as geminated voiced plosives were otherwise avoided, and [z] occurred otherwise only as an allophone of /s/ in words such as Λέσβος, κόσμος etc.

There is clear evidence that many dialects simply metathesized the old voiced affricates and merged the sound with inherited /sd/ [zd], thus we find Ἀθήναζε ← Ἀθἠνας-δε, Θήβαζε ← Θήβας-δε and in Greek rendering of Persian names, e.f. Ὠρομαζης = Auramazda (Plato), Ἀρταοζος = Artavazda (Xenophon). Indeed, in Lesbian literary texts we find the spelling -σδ- for the -ζ- of most other dialects; Dr Outis did consider transcribing Greek ζ as sd. But in view of the paucity of examples of σβ in Greek σγ he was doubtful about this, especially if the sound was initial

The Greek letter was unquestionably borrowed from Semitic zayin and this has suggested that some dialects did pronounce the sound as [zz]; in those dialects /z/ had become phonemic, though it was always geminate between vowels. This is likely to have been the common pronunciation in Ionia and certainly became standard before the Roman period.

In fact his discussion on the possible values of ζ is confused and unclear. Certainly he decided to retain the letter; and eventually concluded that "our knowledge of the double sound which this letter denotes is uncertain but it is probable that it was a double sound like our English j." He added that some who find this difficult "may sound it as the French sound their j."

It seems, indeed, that Dr Outis also represented initial ι- before vowel by z, though he does not state this. We find, for example zat "physician, [medical] doctor" (cf Greek ἰατρός) and the name "John" is rendered Zokan (cf. Greek Ἰωάννης, Hebrew יוֹחָנָן, Yôḥanan).

It may be objected that this letter was added to the Roman alphabet in the 1st century BC and that he should have rejected it as he had rejected y. But he knew very well that Z had existed in the earliest Latin alphabets and was dropped later simply because the sound had disappeared from Latin. When G was differentiated from C in the 3rd century BC, it replaced the discarded Z. Dr Outis restored Z to its original position, and G to the position vacated by the C which he had discarded, knowing full well that the letter C had once been pronounced [g]. Hence the odd order of the Outidic alphabet.

3.3.3 Ψ and Ξ (Psi and Xi)
The two Greek letters ψ and ξ represent [ps] and [ks] respectively (phonemically ψ was the realization of /ps/, /pʰs/ and /bs/; similarly ξ was the realization of /ks/, /kʰs/ and /gs/). The Romans represented them as x and ps respectively.

Dr Outis wanted them both to represented in the same manner: either both by a single symbol each, or both with two letters each. He considered first retaining x and representing ψ by the 'antisigma' ↄ; but the letter did not survive beyond Claudius' reign and Dr Outis decided that reviving it more than half a millennium later was probably not a good idea.

His second idea was to simply import that Greek letter ψ. But that symbol was used only in the eastern Greek set of alphabets (the western Greek alphabets used a similar symbol to represent /kʰ/) and, as we have seen, Dr Outis did not like mixing eastern Greek letters with the Roman alphabet (derived from the western Greek set of alphabets).

3.3.4 Summary
Therefore, in the end he decided to ditch the Roman x and to represent both a two-letter combination, thus:

Greek	σ	ζ	ψ	ξ
Dr Outis' transcription	s	z	ps	ks
Pronunciation in Outidic	/s/	/ʤ/ or /ʒ/	/ps/	/ks/

3.4 Liquids and Nasals

The liquids λ and ρ are transliterated, as one would expect, by l and r respectively. He gave no further discussion to the exact sound of each (he would, of course, have been completely unaware of the French uvular [ʀ] or [ʁ], which is now common also in German, as this sound did not become prevalent in Paris and surrounding regions until the 18th century).

Likewise the nasals μ and ν presented no problem. The only one he hesitated on was the nasal γ [ŋ]; as all root words (see below) would be of one syllable he considered that [ŋ] could occur only as a syllable final and wondered whether he should write it as gg (in the Greek manner) or ng (in the Latin manner). But noticing that many of his fellow countrymen pronounced final -ng as [n] in unstressed word finals and that the sound as a syllable final was absent from many languages, he decided the simplest thing was to drop it altogether.

The the liquids and nasal consonants of Outidic are:

Greek	λ	ρ	μ	ν	γ [ŋ]
Dr Outis' transcription	l	r	m	n	Not known
Pronunciation in Outidic	/l/	/r/	/m/	/n/	Does not occur in Outidic

3.5 Geminate consonants

There is no reason to suppose that Dr Outis did not transcribe Greek geminate consonants as geminates. Geminate consonants, however, are not found in Outidic (see Phonotactics below).
 

4. Stress

Dr Outis' discussion of word accent shows that he did not really understand the distinction between pitch accent and stress. He knew that the Greek system relied on the length of the final vowel of a word, and he knew the Latin system was different. His discussion was further confused in that, like all scholars of his time and, indeed, some scholars well into the 20th century, he did not distinguish between vowel length (long and short) and syllabic quantity (heavy and light). In the terminology of the time, he referred to a long vowel or diphthong as being "long by nature" and a short vowel before two or more consonants as being "long by position."

He was not keen on applying the Latin stress system to Outidic but did seriously contemplate applying the recessive accent of Greek verbs which the Lesbian Aiolic dialect applied to all words. But he realized both the Greek and Latin systems operated in a system which distinguished between long and short vowels; he had rejected that distinction for Outidic.

His knowledge of the Classical languages led him to consider that the "natural" place for stress was on one of the last three syllables. He seemed to think that both antepenultimate and penultimate stress tended to make people careless of pronouncing the final syllable properly.

In the end and, possibly influenced by what he understood Hebrew stress to have been, he decided that Outidic should stress the final syllable.

5. Phonotactics & Morphophonemics

5.1 Introduction

Dr Outis did not, of course, know the words "phonotactics" and "morphophonemics" nor, for that matter, the words "phoneme" and "morpheme"; these are all modern concepts and were quite unknown in the 17th century except in vague and imperfect ways. Therefore, he offers no systematic discussion of the topics.

All we can do is to say what we can clean from the odd statements he makes about sounds and from the examples of Outidic that he gives. I summarize this below.

5.2 Root words

These are monosyllabic (exceptions occur with proper names).

5.3 Particles (prepositions, conjunctions etc.)

As with Pierre Labbé's auxlang, particles such as preposition and simple conjunctions are simple open monosyllables, e.g. na "up", ka "down", po "towards", kai "also", te "and", la "but."

5.4 Syllable final

Dr Outis appears to have had some regard to ease of pronunciation in that consonant clusters are not permitted at the ends of words. We have seen that particles end in a vowel; other root words, i.e. nouns, verbs and so forth, end in a single consonant. There are no examples of syllables ending in consonant clusters.

5.5 Syllable initial

Some of the above is reminiscent of Volapük some two hundred years later. Although Dr Outis did not explicitly state that root words should begin with a consonant, nominal and verbal roots seem always to do so. As well as single consonant initials, the following appear to have been permitted:

• Any plosive followed by /r/ or /l/, i.e.
  /pr/, /tr/, /kr/, /br/, /dr/, /gr/, /pl/, /tl/, /kl/, /bl/, /dl/, /gl/ ¹
• The initial combinations /ps/ and /ks/. He did not, however, permit combinations beginning with /s/.²

This allowed for a more than 37 thousand monosyllabic root words of all kinds.

¹He does seem to have considered allowing both /pn/ and /kn/, as they were not uncommon in Greek. Indeed, the latter sound once occurred in English and is still fossilized in the spelling of words such as knee, knife and so on; it was still pronounced /kn/ by some in Dr Outis' day and was only gradually shifting to the /n/ of late modern English. Dr Outis himself comments in one place upon the "laziness" of his fellow countrymen, comparing the weakening English knee with the strong Knee of the Dutch and other Germanic peoples. Elsewhere, however, he does acknowledge that many find the combination difficult and cites as an example the Normans respelling of Cnut's name as Canute. He changed the the /n/ to /r/ in, for example, preum "breath, spirit" (← πνεῦμα) and krid "nettle" (← κνίδη).
²His reason for allowing initial /ps/ and /ks/ seems to have been under the erroneous idea that since the Greeks denotes these two sound by single letters, i.e. ψ and ξ, they considered them as single sounds; also he clearly considered them easy to pronounce. On the other hand, he states that many find /s/ before a consonant difficult and often tend to make it into a "syllable of its own"; as evidence he cites the Spanish and Portuguese habit of writing es- where Latin had s- and said the French had gone further and "reduced it to é-". As further evidence of the "difficulty", he says that many Germanic peoples say it like sh (i.e. [ʃ]).

This odd reasoning sometimes led to his using metathesis as, for example, psek "wasp" (← σφήξ, genitive: σφηκός), where the ancient initial σφ- [spʰ] becomes ps-.