Conlang orthographies [was Re: Latin grammar]
From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, September 4, 2002, 7:27 |
Quoting Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
> My conlangs also tend to have very reg'lar orthographies. Steianzh has,
> however, quite unintentionally evolved a number of spelling weirdities,
> particularly a consistent inconsistency in how close the spelling is to
> pronounciation. Eg, almost all of the assimilated and reduced variants of
> the copula are recognized in spelling, but the very heavy and quite regular
> reductions of noun endings are not - f'rinstance _zedelener_ "girls
> (dative)" is pronounced [zEdl=nr=].
The romanization of Phaleran has a number of oddities that
make it less than a perfectly phonemic script. First, all
words borrowed from C'ali languages, most of which have
a series of voiced stops, spell such words as if Phaleran
had a series of voiced stops, which it does not. However,
because voiceless stops are allophonically voiced between
vowels or sonorant consonants, some of these words borrowed
from C'ali in fact accurately reflect the phonetic facts.
Moreover, because some phonemes become positionally neutralized,
many words are spelled morphophonemically to maintain the fiction
of paradigmatic unity. Sonorants typically have both voiced
and voiceless varieties, but only the voiceless version surfaces
word-finally.
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Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
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