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# An orthographic monster Last night I suddenly realized what an orthographic monster Rhodrese _gl'ighlisdg_ /LI'gliS/ 'the churches' is: two _l_'s, two _i_'s and two digraphs and one trigraph involving _g_! In a way you might call ghl a trigraph too since it uses _gh_ before _l_ to distinguish /gl/ from /L/, which latter is written with the digraph _gl_. The funny thing is that practically all Rhodrese consonant spelling conventions build on Romance natlang -- in particular Italian -- models as detailed below. Yet these conventions conspire to produce something which looks quite unnaturalistic. Do others have such cases of orthographies where each spelling convention by itself is more 'reasonable' but a lining up of several of them in the same word creates an 'monstrosity conspiracy'? BTW Old Rhodrese scribes handled final devoicing and other things differently and would have written our problematic word _gliclix_, requiring more etymological and/or morphophonemic analysis of the reader, but that's pretty monstrous too! # Overview of Rhodrese consonant graphies (Leaving aside unproblematic things like _b_ = /b/!) Those taken directly from Romance natlang conventions are: * _ch, gh_ for /k, g/ before _e, i, y_ directly from Italian (and Rumantsch). * _gn_ for /J/ directly from Italian and French. * _gl_ for /L/ directly from Rumantsch and similar to Italian. * _sc_ for /S/ before _e, i, y_ is taken directly from Italian. * _g_ for /dZ/ before _e, i, y_ is taken directly from Italian. * _c_ for /s/ or /ts/ before _e, i, y_ agrees with several Romance natlangs. * _ç_ for /s/~/ts/ agrees with French, Portuguese, Catalan and Old Spanish, though word-final _ç_ seems to be a Rhodrese specialty. * _tx_ for /tS/ is taken from Catalan. * _j_ for /dZ/ agrees with the historical stages of several Romance natlangs, though most/all of the modern ones have changed /dZ/ > /Z/. Uncontroversial I think. * _s_ between vowels for /z/ and _ss_ between vowels for /s/ agrees with French. * _z_ for /z/~/dz/ agrees with (Old) French, Portuguese and Old Spanish, and for /dz/ Italian. Those derived by analogy from Romance natlang conventions are: * _ghl_ /gl/ and _ghn_ /gn/ build on the Italian use of _gh_ to denote absence of palatalization. * _sç_ for /S/ is a pretty straightforward analogy on the above uses of _sc_ and _ç_. * _dg_ for /dZ/ is a pretty straight variation on _tg_ for /dZ/ on Catalan and for /ts\/ in Rumantsch. I guess _tg_ was a possible spelling of /tS/ in older Rhodrese, though the truth is I think it looks like a mismatch. Also cf. English _dg_ = /dZ/ in the Romance loan _judg-_. * _sg_ for /Z/ before _e, i, y_ is a pretty decent analogy on the Italian-derived use of _sc_. * _sdg_ for /Z/ is a not quite happy second order analogy on the pattern of _c ~ ç, sc ~ sç, g ~ dg, sc ~ sg_, but I don't have any better alternative unless I use things like s-cedilla or g-cedilla which lack historical naturalism for a western Romance language. Luckily this spelling is rather infrequently needed, but it occurs in some other words like _basdg_ BASIU 'kiss' and even word internally at least in one word: _visdgáu_ VISIONE 'sight'. * _r_ for /4/ and _rr_ for /R/ < /r/ has decent Romance natlang analogies. There is one consonant spelling which lacks a natlang precedent: _ll_ /r`/, but (1) no Romance natlang has a comparable system of five laterals/rhotics /l L r` 4 R/, (2) /r`/ derives from Latin /l:/ and (3) Spanish and Italian use _ll_ for the sounds they derived from Latin /l:/ (/L/ and /l:/ respectively). # A possible 'solution' Perhaps historical /gl/ which didn't become /L/ instead became /g4/, giving _?gl'igridsg_. This would give rise to other monstrosities, however: what of Latin initial GL-? Did it become /L/ or /gr/? And what, in the latter case happens to GLORIA? Does it become _?graugle_ with a further dissimilation of */r_j/ after the newly arisen /4/, rather than _?greure_ or _gleur_ /L-/ or _?ghleure_? Or perhaps _?greuye_ with */r_j/ > /j/? Perhaps ECCLESIA suffered aphaeresis like in Italian, giving the slightly less monstrous _li clisdg_. In either case there will still be recent loans like _hieroghlyf_ and the *name* _Ghlórie_ which will probably need _ghl_, since it feels unnaturalistic to suppose that _gl_ was /L/ in the Rhodrese pronunciation of Latin. ## Further problems with /gr/. And there is still _sacculus_, which by the current GMP becomes _saghle_, though it may likely be replaced by _sachel_ < SACCELLU or _sachet/sacot_ (_sagre_ is out, since that is the first choice for SACER), not to mention CINGULU, ANGULU, and in particular SINGUL(ARI)U, which are currently _cenghle, anghle, singhlair_: the first two may be _?cengre, ?angre_, but _?singrair, ?singriagl_ or even _?singr(i)ay_ are all kind of iffy (though I'm softening to _?singriagl_!), or should I perhaps have a special spelling/reading rule for _ngl_? /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)