Re: Marking tones in conlangs

Joseph B. wrote:
> I'm curious to know how others here mark tones in any tonal conlangs
> they have created.
>
> Thanks.
If I've got a language with level tones, I'll use acute for high tone
and grave for low tone (in romanization). Double acutes and double
graves can be used for languages with more than 3 level tones (although
I don't have any of those yet...). In the native scripts, there are
distinct letters for vowel sounds with different tones (one letter for à
and a different letter for á, for instance).

Contour tones in romanization would be marked with a circumflex
(falling) or wedge/caron (rising). If there's a difference between high
rising and low rising, the high rising tone is marked with double acute
and the low rising with a wedge. High falling is a circumflex and low
falling is a double grave.

That's the general idea, but there are complications. Yasaro has a pitch
accent system, where the stressed vowel can be long or short, rising or
falling. The rising accent indicates a historical stress on the final
syllable, which shifted back to the next-to-last syllable (like in
Serbo-Croatian). I use an acute accent for the short rising stress and a
wedge for long rising; grave for short falling and circumflex for long
falling.

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