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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. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637