19 / 70
8
3) If two letters are 1ncons1etently applied to two sounde, it
increases the difficulty both of reading and writing.
4)
If conditioned variants are written
it
increases somewhat the
burden both of reading and writing, and frequently !I!lkes the
grBDlll8r appear more complicated than it actually is by
representing conditioned changas of members of sound units,
when there i s no gre:nnstical sub stitution of the uni ts
themselves, (ns a suffix beginning with fq-/
changes QUechua
final /-i/ to
~e~),
"(7) :L'he clesire to avoid diacritics and digraphs:
It
was recognized that the
employment of diacritic !I!lrks allowed the rstention of Spanish letters, while
differentieting sounds, but that such m'Jrlcs tended to be omitted from "riting,
On the other hand,
1t
m~s
recognized that the use of two letters to repr&se»t
a single sound unit was to be deplorad beCBuse
1t
prevented the establishment
of a simple one-to-one ratio between sound and eymbol which most eaeily allows
the nativa to learn to raed and advanced rsadere to echieve easiest fluency,
Solutione like that ueed in Lisu in which letters are turnad upside-down in
order to represent aspireted stops or other sounds are technically far superior
to using either a diacritic IIBrk or a combination of two letters, becauee they
avoid the difficul ties of both diacriti ce and di grephs, but the conference
felt
constrai~ed
to adopt the technically less fortunate solution because of
the nece ssity of using Spani
ah
types,
"(8)
5\lrnnsry
of some of the conflicting desires in respect to the alphabet:
The desire to:
vs.
a) write phonemically
-but-
b) represent all the sound unita -but-
c) use single letters
-but-
d) use no atrenge letters
-but-
e) provide the easiest alphabet
for illiteretes
-but-
f) obtain popular approval
g) use Spani sh let te rs to the
flexible advantage
-but–
best
-but-
h) write from the point of view
of the native
-but-
the desire to:
follow Spanish completely
use no new letters
avoid diacritics
avoid digraphs
follow Spanish and provide
easiest tyensfer from
Spanish-reading to Quechua
provide for all sounds
avoid non-Sp!lnish values
wri
te from the point of
view of Spanish
"(9) The desire for a uniform alphabet in so far as the sounds are unifr.·::-.
It WBs considerad wiee that all dialects of the area should use the same
method of writing sounds when the sounds in the respective dialects were aleo
the sama: with the proviso, however, that a dialect which had a phoneme which
did not occur in the other dialects should use an additional eymbol to repre–
eent the particular sound. Thus, Riobemba needs
n
z
11
as well es
11
s
11
whereas
Cu•co needa only
"a".
It is subject also to the proviso that the dialect
which lacke a phoneme should omit the corresponding letter, thus, for example,
Ecuadorean dialecte should not write the glottalized stops which occur in
Cuzco. A further proviso (which was tecit and cama up in specific instences
bu.t was not votad upon as a conference principie) """ that if two ne ighboring
dialecta were to bring out union literatura, the alphabet should represent the