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Re: [romconlang] Re: Orthography Question

Mark G skrev:

--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

Mark G skrev:

Continuing on with my series of disjointed questions:

One of the phonemes in my current romlang is /OE/ (open front
unrounded)... I know in a few Germanic languages, and possibly even
French, it's sometimes an allophone of /oe/, but I've discarded the
idea of French 'oeu' or even the more appropriate 'oau' so as to avoid
confusion (because the language also has a few polyphthongs), and I
really don't want to resort to "ö" for aesthetic reasons (or

actually,

*synaesthetic* reasons; "ö" simply doesn't look like /OE/ sounds to
me). Obviously, this is a much more common allophone than phoneme in
most cases, so it isn't often represented as such-- any ideas how I
might be able to represent in a way that's a little more original but
not beyond convincing?


First of all: have a look at <http://www.theiling.de/ipa/>
for the system of ascii-transliterating IPA current on this
list (and other offshoots of CONLANG). It is more convenient to write [\&] and [9] since the diphthongs 
[OE] and [oe] do actually occur in languages...


Apologies, open front *un*rounded was completely a mistype on my
part...
I didn't even notice it, since I already made up my mind what you meant based on the transcriptions! :-) 


as for the use of /OE/, that was more purism... I'm very
familiar with SAMPA, the conlang variant included-- I'll be sure to
use it in the future if the potential for confusion is that high.
I don't know if the potential for confusion is high, but it's there. If we all know CXS why not use it? 


The question how you should write /6\/ (open front rounded)
depends quite a bit on two factors, namely how you write
/9/ (half-open front rounded) and [2] (half-closed front
rounded) and your position wrt digraphs/polygraphs vs.
diacritics generally and how you use them.



Part of the issue with the way I write /6\/ and /2/ is that they don't
actually appear as phonemes in this language 

But [9] and [2] do?  It would be nice to have
a look at your whole phoneme and allophone
inventory!


(although /Q/ does, I
should add, and tentatively it is written �).


Surely you mean å and not ä?
The new Walloon spelling uses å in words where some
dialects have /a/ and others /o/.


I'm certainly not closed
to digraphs or diacritics, though.


If you use <oe> for /9/ then perhaps you can use
<eo> for /&\/.  If this clashes with a diphthong
you may perhaps use <ëo> for the diphthong or a
sequence of two vowels which are not a diphthong.


I had played with <eo>, <ao>, and <oa>, and I haven't ruled out the
possibility of any of them-- while I mentioned not loving the idea of
making people distinguish between digraphs and diphthongs, 

I know the feeling!  I'm usually all for diacritics,
but sometimes althistorical realism demands digraphs...


I do, to be
objective, know several natlangs and conlangs based in and around
France seem to use both diphthongs and then also letter digraphs such
as <ou> for /u/.


If you have nothing against diacritics
and you use é and è similar to how they are used in
French then you might use something like

		Front				Back
		Unrounded	Rounded		Rounded

Half-closed	é		�`		ó

Half-open	e		ö		o

Open		è		ȍ		ò

If you want to stay within Latin-1 you may use ö ô õ
to get three varieties of non-closed front rounded
vowels.  Swedish dialect spelling uses the circumflex
as a general laxing-centralizing diacritic so that
you get

	â	î	ô		û	ŷ
for	[a]	[I]	[&\] or [3\]	[8]	[Y]

versus	a	i	o		u	y
for	[A]	[i]	[o] or [O]	[u\]	[y]

If you are on Windows I suggest you download BabelMap

<http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelMap.html>

and some suitable Unicode fonts (look at

<http://wiki.frath.net/Help:Free_Unicode_fonts>

for links).  Browsing the Latin script ranges of
Unicode will almost certainly turn up something
which is to your liking.


I actually have Babelmap, and my unicode fonts run the gamut of the
Latin extensions-- I suppose the question was more on orthodoxy than
simple lack of resources, though you answered both very well.

I'm actually having trouble reading most of your diacritics, though--


Yes the Unicode got badly garbled.


reading about this before, though, I'm guessing it's because I'm using
the web interface to read this message, so I'll work on correcting
this for myself before I ask about another way to see them. By your
suggestion to refer to French, though, and what little bit I can see,
I'm getting the idea thus far.


I meant

e-acute o-double-acute o-acute
e	o-umlaut	o
e-grave o-double-grave o-grave


Thanks for your help!



Nau fia renniade!

/Bendetx