conlangs: Reconciling scripts, transcriptions and phonemes

Steve (

a_ponbrink) wrote in

conlangs,
@ 2008-02-09 23:05:00

Reconciling scripts, transcriptions and phonemes
I've been struggling to wrap my brain around this predicament. If you have constructed a script/alpha/syllabery for you conlang, how do you handle differences between how a sound is written in your script and in standard Roman/English alphabet transcriptions.

In my Uajiren script, /tS/ (voiceless postalveolar affricate) is written two ways, depending on the vowel that follows it. In /tSe/ and /tSu/ it is a single consonant, which also makes /ta/ and /ti/. In /tSa/ and /tSi/ it is written with a digraph of /t/ and /j/, which transcribe easily as t and y. I'm not sure if it's best to transcribe these syllables using a standard Roman/English ch: cha, chi, che, chu; or a series that more closely reflects what Uajiren does: tya, tyi, te, tu.

This is fairly similar to what happens for natlangs like Chinese and Japanese. Ultimately, I'm aware this is just an arbitrary decision, but I'm curious how you've made it for writing/transcribing your conlangs.

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	stormteller 2008-02-10 04:46 am UTC (link)
	It depends on what you really mean to put into your translations. Do you want them to be something a non-speaker can easily read, or something a non-speaker with perhaps some familiarity with the language might glean a sense of their workings from? (Reply to this)

ranka
2008-02-10 05:14 am UTC (link)

I've used both methods. For Kasshian, for example, I've used tya, tia and cha for the syllable /tSa/. Today, I generally use a more phonetic, as opposed to phonemic, orthography. Although, I'm considering ignoring the allophonic distinction between [e]~[i] and [o]~[u], because it's a bit annoying to have different inflections of a word alterating between e/i or o/u The first-person singular suffix, for example, sometimes shows up as -u and sometimes as -o, depending on what, if any, aspect suffix follows it. The other allophonic distinctions, such as [t]~[tS] or [l]~[r] don't show up nearly as often. Though, the feminine singular suffix does have a lot of variations in the allophonic orthography, being either ch(i)- or t-, while in teh phonemic, it was simply t(i)-, with easily-defined rules for when the /i/ was dropped. Still, that's not nearly as much an issue.

Basically, I've just decided what looks best by trial and error.

(Reply to this)

sarulan
2008-02-10 11:03 pm UTC (link)

Personally, I've kind of started just making it up as I go along. I tend to work on a language first, and a conscript second. But here are some examples from Sari:

Vowels in the native script all have separate symbols, but in the Latin alphabet they are written i ui u y e oe o à ae aoe ao a, where à can be à è ì ò ù, depending on the nearest vowel.

The consonant g has two forms in the native script, but only one in the Latin orthography, because it was originally two consonants, /g/ and /ɣ/, which collapsed into /ɣ/. This presents no ambiguities in pronunciation, it just makes it hard to decline nouns ending in /g if you don't know the origin of the word. Also, the consonant ll is, in the Latin orthography, replaced, under specific conditions, by a diaeresis over the following letter.

Some consonant clusters, such as cw and cs, can be written with alternate forms (qu and x), just 'cause it looks nicer.

All this makes a script more complicated, but also adds a bit of interest. So I would say just do what is more interesting or looks better to you. Ooh, how about chyi, chya, che, chu? Compromise!

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	sarulan 2008-02-10 11:04 pm UTC (link)
	I hate when I mess up html tags. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	scotrid 2008-02-13 02:45 am UTC (link)
	I've found that if you delete a comment soon enough, it won't be sent to the commentee. So you can copy all, delete, and recomment. It has saved me some embarrassment (and I mean worse than messing up html). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sarulan 2008-02-13 08:05 pm UTC (link)
	Hehehe I think someone's done that in response to me before, but it didn't work =P (Reply to this)(Parent)

	gwalla 2008-02-11 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	In Japanese, it's because it really is phonemically /tya/ /tyu/ /tyo/. /t/ becomes palatalized before /i/ and /j/ (which are really the same sound, just treated as a vowel in one instance and as a consonant in another) because of pre-articulation of the high front phoneme (basically, the tongue moves to prepare for the /i/-/j/ sound early). (Reply to this)

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