Re: Tibetan orthography (was: Why my conlangs SUCK!!!)

Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
>Basically that, at best, it accurately reflects the pronunciation in
>the speech of 7th century Yarlung, while the spoken Tibetan
>language(s) have undergone significant phonological changes in the
>interim.  In particular, the orthography is full of formidable
>consonant clusters which are not pronounced in the modern language.
What i don't get is why when Tibetan is written in the Latin alphabet,
they insist on transcribing the unpronounced consonant clusters, rather
than an orthography that *better* fits how it's pronounced (yes, i know,
Latin orthography wouldn't be perfect, but at least you'd see what the
spoken language looks like better if you had a closer representation (and
i HAVE seen the latin transcription, as well as the IPA one).

One of my favorite things is to ask dirty-hippies into "tibetan stuff" to
pronounce the words, and then tell them that's not what the words really
sound like.

Replies