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0ne of the most welcome chengea which cen occur
if
the govemment
were itself to obtein further lint!)listic counsel would be that thay
would adopt the use of just 'he three vowels, and eliminate this
linguistic atrocity of five. where only three are phonemic, although
the Conference did not feel at liberty to eliminete
~e*
and
~o}
because of the cultural aituation.
11
It should aleo be noted that Dr. Laubach was very wise when he waa
making his beginning charts to have only three columna of vowelo
headed "1", "a" and
nun
with
11
e
1
i
and "o" elipped in unobtrusively
after "q". ThiH type of thing should be preservad in all literature
of the primer variety leat the instructora find themselves teaching
a welter of ayllables which do not occur as separata elemento in
that languaga, (such as "te" and "to
11
in addition to /ti/ and /tu/).
"There are two mejor exceptione to the diecuesion just given. The
first is the vowel system of Ancash which will be treated in a
separata paragraph. The second is that sorne nativas who are now
learning Spanish have absorbed enough of i t to learn the actual
contrasta within the Spanish five vowel system. The only place where
I was completely convinced that this had occurred was with a few
informante in the heart of Cochabamba. Elaewhere the bi-linguala
when speaking Spanish tended to impose
~uechua
vowels upon the latter
languaga; in speaking
~uechua
they ueed
~echua
vows le in the Spanish
loan e. But the tendency observad in Cochabam1la, that ie, the assimi–
lation of the Spanish vowel eystem, is probably a strong one, and
1e
likely to increase oo that in the futura a wide-spread five-vowel
eystem might aotually develop for the
~echU8.
In this case the five
vowels which would first come in with the loan words would eetablish
the contrast and then the conditioned variante
~e}
and
~o}
would
themaelves become established as members of the new phonemes. This
situation could probab ly be f ou..cd sporadically in all
~echua
dia–
lecta among culturad bi-linguals, eepecially
if
they had left their
~uechua
environment as regards their every-dBy livee.
11
Sizing
up
the situation as a whole the use of these five vowela
aeems necessary though when to choose between the variante may be
difficult. No doubt the meny variations in English spelling pre–
valent in the 16th century were du.e not only to lack of stendBm–
ization of spelling but aleo perh&pe largely to lack of standard–
ization of sound. It does oeem a pity to oomplioate the phonemic
picture by introducing
11
e
11
and "o" but 1t may be that by restricting
their use as far as poesible to the relatively olear cases as
indicated in the proposals and as the Spanish usage of "e" and
11
o
11
become more widely
known
some more general standardization of
~echUIII
wri ting may
in
time develop. It seems so certain that
11
e
11
and
11
o
11
will be involved in such a development that it ie probably wise to
provide tbem now.
Definite effort should be made to uea them aparingly and, where
used, with complete regularity. The following rules are notad in
the statement above:
(1) Next to the baok velare
ahould be usad consistentl