Re: Alphabets and diagraphs

Carlos Thompson wrote:
>When crating languages, I've see many of you using their owns scripts,
>including sillabaries and logographs but most of the times are letters.
>Many times are related to Latin letters.  When they are not, many ways of
>giving those extra sounds are given, like using diagraphs, supersigns, and
>other.
>
>I would ask which ways you prefered for latinising.
Well, that depends on the language of course. I'm a sucker for regularity
in transliteration, so if I have to create digraphs I create them all on
the same pattern, if I can. For example, if <h> means "fricativization",
then I try to use it as such always.

Let me tell you about some transliteration examples:

Draseleq, my major conlang, uses diacritics on vowels: a diaeresis over
<a> and <u> to show that they are front, not back/central (as in German);
the acute accent to show stress (as in Spanish); and the circumflex to
show long vowels. The problem about this is that you can't place two
diacritic marks on the same letter (in standard fonts, and certainly on
e-mail messages). Then there are three digraphs: th, dh, qg. The first
two are Sindarin digraphs (th = /T/ as in thin, dh = /D/ as in then). The
other is a voiced /q/, and probably the ugliest digraph ever invented :)

I've also used mh, nh for unvoiced m and n, or ny, ly, dy, ty for palatal
n, l, d, t. These, I think, are common devices in transliteration.

I don't like using some standard signs such <x> for /x/ or <c> for /ts/.
I think they are counterintuitive for many people -- and for myself, which
is more important. But in my last (yet unnamed) conlang, I'm using both of
them. I'm experimenting with this: I want no digraphs and no diacritic marks.
Basically a reliable language to be e-mailed. But on the other hand I had too
many vowels...

Vowels are probably the worst part when it comes to transliterate. I took the
Klingon approach for vowels and for consonants: uppercase and lowercase mean
different sounds. In my case, an uppercase vowel means that its roundedness
is reversed: I, E mean "rounded i, rounded e", while O, U mean "unrounded o,
unrounded U".


--Pablo Flores

*******************************************************************

        Fooling around with alternating current is a waste of time.
        Nobody will use it, ever.
                                                Thomas Edison



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