Re: Marking tones in conlangs

On 2/7/06, Joseph B. <darkmoonman@...> wrote:
>
> I'm curious to know how others here mark tones in any tonal conlangs they
> have created.
>
> Thanks.
I've tried a lot of different ways. Some are -

Using the diacritics that others have mentioned. I think this is the
best way if you want your transcription system to be as obvious as
possible.

I've had some langs (phonologies, really) that already needed some of
those diacritics, so it was just a matter of tinkering around until I
found something that was unambiguous and not too bizarre.

Once I toyed with using diacritics both above and below, such as
macron above for level high tone, macron below for level low tone, and
then additional acute and grave accents above for the other tones.

For a different lang with only high, low, and mid (unmarked) tones, I
used a dot below and above, which was both silly and pretty looking.

For a while I was working on one conlang that had too many diacritics
already, and I tried using a following e to mark low tone and a
following y to mark a high tone. I abandoned this lang so I didn't
work on that idea any further.

I haven't really been happy with any of the ways of marking tones
except the first three that I've mentioned, though. I don't really
like using a transcription system that seems to bizarre to me.

--
Katya