My conlang has the following consonant inventory:

f, v, m, t, d, s, z, n, t̠ʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ, ç, ʝ, j, w

I wanted every sound to be represented by one letter, where every letter is found in the English alphabet. I did this so I could easily type it. I came up with the resulting orthography (letters are in the same order):

f, v, m, t, d, s, x, n, q, j, c, z, h, g, y, w

Obviously here, many of these are quite confusing. Z means ʒ, while x is used for the z sound. I keep trying to pronounce g as an actual 'g' sound. Q for t̠ʃ is also turning out to be counter-intuitive to me. And funny enough, I keep forgetting that j is supposed to be the same as in English. I'm used to it representing either a 'y' sound, or ʒ.

Having a program generate words for me, I often get confused by the stuff its outputting. I think I need to change the orthography somehow to be more intuitive. Literally half the letters don't sound anything like they do in English. Honestly, it feels like I'm trying to learn Cyrillic all over again.

As for why I made the choices I did, I needed a symbol for both t̠ʃ and ʃ. I'm used to 'c' representing both of these. I saw no better alternative for ʃ, but I think I've seen languages use 'q' for t̠ʃ. J was the only letter I could think of that could ever represent a dʒ sound. As for why x and z are all screwy? Well, originally there was no 'z' sound. X originally represented the voiceless velar fricative. I removed it though because I thought it made the language sound too harsh. Later, I didn't like having just v and ʒ for voiced fricatives, in particular because I imagined the the ʒ sound evolved out of a palatalized z. Since the letter z was already used (and I couldn't think of a better alternative for ʒ), I chose to re-cycle x for it since it makes sense to pronounce x as z. I also added in the voiced palatal fricative just to complete the set of voiced fricatives, and because this conlang doesn't have that large of a consonant inventory. I will admit though, I'm a bit annoyed at including the palatal fricatives but no velars at all, for the same reason why having ʒ but no z annoyed me (originally ç evolved from a palatalized velar fricative).

I don't really see any better way I could transcribe my own conlang here. I do intend to make a conscript for it, so the Roman orthography doesn't matter too much, but it is still making the output from my word generator confusing.

What can I do to fix this? Am I just going to have to get used to it?

ed

This is a just-for-fun post, stfu with the "it's our tradition it shouldn't be changed" comments :)

I'm studying French, but I'm only going to need it orally, so I'm gunna just be using IPA and foregoing its orthography, as it's just been wasting me a lot of time and interfering with the phonology. I've been doing some experimenting, I find when I just put IPA on my Anki cards, without an accompanying French orthography, I both recall and perform the oral forms of the words and sentences better.

And so I'm curious if any of you out there have studied a language only concerning yourself with the oral form. And if so, how was that experience?

I know the actual IRL explanation for the following is quite different, but this is just my proposal for an in-universe reason:

Thinking about how the reason why the pinyin romanization of Mandarin and the Vietnamese alphabet don't line up with how the same letters would be pronounced in English being because those systems were influenced by Portuguese orthography, Portuguese missionaries being some of the first Europeans to transliterate many East/Southeast Asian languages into roman letters, I thought about how this could be similar to why a lot of the "English" spellings of Klingon words and names don't match up with how they are written in actual tlhIngan Hol, examples:

betleH = bat'leth

daqtagh = d'ktagh

Qo'noS = Kronos

beylana = B'elanna

One noticeable pattern of difference is more apostrophes in the "English" versions where the actual Klingon words would either have a vowel or otherwise wouldn't need one.

Then I thought about how in the very beginning of ENT "Broken Bow," it is made very clear that Earth's first official communications with the Klingons, and basically all the information they had access to, came via the Vulcans. Now, the Vulcans, from what we've seen, DO have a lot of apostrophes in their languages, as evidenced in women's names like T'pol, T'pau, etc.

Thus, it stands to reason that all Federation spellings of Klingon words and names are actually romanizations of Vulcan transcriptions of those words, which explains the spelling dissonance with actual thlIngan Hol.

Recently I’ve become much more aware of the underlying sound shifts that make English spelling the way it is e.g. the great vowel shift among others. However the ‘ough’ sequence is something I can’t rap my head around. It has at least 4 different main pronunciations that I can think of most of which seem totally separate from one another /oʊ/ in ‘though’ /ʌf/ in ‘rough’ /ə/ in ‘thorough’ some kind of /aʊ/ in ‘bough’ Could someone explain where this insane variation in its pronunciation comes from?

probably have c,q,x nerfed and in less favoured locations? and z may get buffed if ppl decide to use it mor?

lang belta orthography really confuses me…

like, <dzh> for /dʒ/, but /tʃ/ is <ch> (not <tsh>), <zh> isn't used because belta doesn't have /ʒ/, and <j> isn't used whatsoever?? then <ow> for /ɒ/? where does THAT come from? <aw> would've made some sense bc of the heavy english influence, but from what i can tell, not a single language uses <ow> for /ɒ/- variants of <a> and <o> are basically the only spellings you ever see for that sound.

also, <x> for /x/, which historically evolved from /h/ (i.e. "xeta" from "hate, hater"), and <h> is completely unused outside of digraphs? …what's even going on here????

like, in-universe, this makes no sense. in a creole like lang belta, the spellings would either be entirely regular and logical (think tok pisin), or entirely etymological (think of some systems made for mauritian creole, or even english). but a lot of the spellings used in belter creole just genuinely make no sense, and seem like the creator was just trying really hard not to look like english. i guess that in-universe there is no single standard belta orthography, but the system nick farmer uses still just doesn't make sense.

someone in the comments told me to, so i'll propose what I would do if i was making an orthography for lang belta.

a – /æ/ (English: cat, Belter Creole: pampa)

aw – /ɒ/ (ow; EN: lot, BC: owkwa)

c – /tʃ/ (ch; EN: cheese, BC: pochuye)

h – /x/ (x; EN: ~loch, BC: xeta)

j – /dʒ/ (dzh; just, dzhush)

n – /n/ [n~ɲ~ŋ] (n, ng, ny)*

s – /s/

x – /ʃ/ (sh)

y – /j/ (same as regular Belta, just included to specify that /j/ was not <j>)

*the ng and ny sounds are allophones of the n sound, so there's not really a reason to spell them differently.

for a more "english-y" orthography, you could simply replace <c> with <ch>, and maybe unmerge the allophones and perhaps do <o> /ɒ/ <oh> /o/.

Whilst reading Dead Souls, the word "fetyuk" is noted to be untranslatable and to have fallen out of use.

Did the reforms to any damage to the language in your opinion? Apparently they were unpopular among some conservative figures at the time - do you know the reason why?

Do you believe the reforms were necessary? Do you believe they were consequential? If you could, would you have preferred to have gone a different route?

Which one do you think is better? They both have clear advantages and disadvantages.

This question popped up in my mind while dealing with the Spanish verb "haber," which used to be spelled "aver" but was changed for some reason, probably to reflect it's etymology.

Based on the spelling reforms I've seen so far, linguists seem to prefer etymological spelling while the common folks absolutely hate it. I can't be sure since I'm not really an expert on this matter, which is why I'm asking you people what you think about it.

🇬🇧

So, I've put up a translation for Anno 1800 into pre-1918 Russian orthography. If you play the Russian version (which is seemingly locked out from non-CIS regions and vise versa), I reckon this could be a nice touch for the game. It's set in the 19th century after all.

Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/anno1800/mods/136?tab=files

Nexus keeps quarantining the files, although they just contain the mod file with a localization .xml in it and a keyboard to type in old orthography in-game. So here's a mirror:

Mod: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJ58gJhta8Qawz9uZRlAi14Js5Xa-CPU/view?usp=sharing

Keyboard: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bhC2LirKeB2oPtSuhkMUwawkD5eOKMd3/view?usp=sharing

To install, follow the steps described in readme.txt

🇷🇺

Во время своей очередной прокрастинаціи я перевелъ Anno 1800 на дореформенную русскую орѳографію. Не спрашивайте, зачѣмъ. Мнѣ кажется, что разъ игра про XIX вѣкъ, то старое правописаніе очень хорошо в нее впишется. А вообще, изначально я просто хотѣлъ поправить пунктуацію и описанія персонажей...

Nexus гавкаетъ на файлы и кидаетъ въ карантинъ, поэтому заодно даю ссылку на гуглъ-дискъ. Для установки слѣдуйте указаніямъ въ readme.txt

Въ комплектѣ с переводомъ идетъ клавіатура для ввода ятей и прочихъ ижицъ въ самой игрѣ. Изъ-за того, что вводъ черезъ правый Alt не распознается, они всѣ расположены на цифровомъ ряду.

Если вы — знатокъ стараго правописанія и замѣтите ошибку — сообщайте. Желаю хорошихъ партій!

Нѣкоторыя названія я тоже чуть обрусилъ

So I’ve had this idea for a while that goes something along the lines of “what if we just used the most frequently-occurring letter or combination of letters for each phoneme of the 48 or so phonemes in English? (assuming the most prevalent between different dialects)”, like basically, a bit like phonetic spelling reform, but entirely based on frequency without any regard for usefulness, phonemic clarity, etc. Not at all a practical orthography, just a very statistically average and regular one; an incredibly “normal” orthography some might say, so “normal” that it’s actually pretty abnormal.

And thus was born Normole Ingliti (“Normal English”). I’m guessing there’s a reasonably high chance I’m not the first one to do this, but I’ve never seen it personally so I’m going to go ahead and pretend like it’s new. I based the frequency data on phonemic representations on this: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/teaching-ideas/spcat/. The pronunciations are intended to be dialectally-average, but there’s a good chance I still succumbed to bias toward West Coast American English (my own dialect), so I’m just going to say that the beauty of Normole Ingliti is that you can spell words any way that seems normole to you as long as it is based on the following phonemic representations:

Consonants:

• b /b/
• c /k/
• ch /ʧ/
• d /d/
• f /f/
• g /g/
• ge /ʤ/
• h /h/
• i /j/
• l /l/
• m /m/
• n /n/
• ng /ŋ/
• p /p/
• r /ɹ/
• s /s,z/
• si /ʒ/
• t /t/
• th /θ,ð/
• ti /ʃ/
• v /v/
• w /w/
• wh /w̥,hw/ *

Vowels:

• a /æ/
• ai /e/
• e /ε/
• ee /i/
• i /ɪ/
• o /o,a,ə,ɒ,ɔ/
• u /u,ʊ,ʌ/

Diphthongs:

• oi /ɔi/
• ou /aʊ/
• y /ai/

R-colored vowels:

• ar /a˞,e˞/
• er /i˞,ə˞/
• or /o˞/
• ur /u˞/

Other semi-vowels:

• le /ɫ/

as you can see, there is no “j”, “k”, “q”, “x”, or “z” as all the phonemes these letters represent in Standard English are more frequently represented by other letters. “qu” is counted as two phonemes, and “x” as well (because it usually represents /ks/). I did, however include “wh”, because there seems to be a lot of controversy between dialects with this digraph, and while sometimes it is treated as two phonemes (/hw/), it is also treated as an unvoiced /w̥/ in others, and as just a regular /w/ in yet others. I have noted that this phonemic representation particularly sucks with an asterisk.

As you can see, this orthography really is quite cursed, maybe even worse than regular English orthography (at least it’s regular?); “i” can be a consonant, “y” is on

hi everyone!

this is a post about the phonology and orthography of my english-based international auxiliary language, globalang.

globalang uses the basic latin alphabet.

it uses all letters aside from <q>, and <c> is only used in the digraph <ch>. there are 3 digraphs: <ch>, <sh>, and <ng>.

Full Globalang Alphabet

there are a few sounds that form no minimal pairs with each other. these are L & R, V & W, and Ch & Sh. this means these pairs are allowed to be pronounced the same. note also that <h> is allowed to be silent.

The Voiceless Plosive Sounds

globalang has 3 voiceless plosives, plus one voiceless affricate. however, these sounds have a special quality in globalang: they are aspirated. as a rule, no globalang phonemes are distinguished exclusively by voicing. this is one of the reasons why <z> is pronounced /dz/, why <v> can be pronounced /w/, and so on.

the aspiration of /pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ/ not only makes the sounds much more distinct from /b d dʒ g/, but also makes the phonology much easier for speakers of aspiration-only languages like mandarin chinese.

The Digraph <ng>

the digraph <ng> should be pronounced as /ŋ/ at the end of a word, as in "sing". within a word, it's just pronounced /ŋg~ng/, as in "finger". however, the pronunciation /ŋg~ng/ is also acceptable word-finally, like in dialects of english without NG-coalescence.

The Letter <X>

the letter X is pronounced as /ks/ normally and as /gs~gz/ between 2 vowels. additionally, it can alternatively be read as /s/ in any position. the letter X is therefore treated as a single segment rather than a cluster. between vowels, the /ks/ sound is spelled ks as not to confuse it with the gs sound- “eksiti” (to excite) rather than “exiti”, because “exiti” would be read “egsiti”. this letter X is used to preserve the spelling and pronunciation of words such as “fox”, which would otherwise be the nearly unrecognizable “fos” or the phonotactically banned “foks”.

The Sound <Z> /dz/

perhaps globala

Hey guyyyyyyyyyyyyys it's asbakhi man here to shill more cyrillic alphabets

• /m/ = <м>
• /n/ = <н>
• /p/ = <п>
• /t/ = <т>
• /k/ = <к>
• /f/ = <ф>
• /s/ = <с>
• /h/ = <х>
• /w/ = <ш>
• /r/ = <р>
• /j/ = <й>
• /a/ = <а>
• /i/ = <и>
• /u/ = <у>

Example Sentence:

• Original Orthography: Sus kasin ta impasi warija
• Cyrllic: Сус касин та импаси шарийа

I wanted to make it more cursed but my brain started hurting and I couldn't function any further. Just download the Russian Mnemonic alphabet lol

This is quite a controversial topic, but I figured you lot were the best folks to ask. How would you reform English spelling if you could and would? I've played around with ideas from fully phonemic to slight adjustments, but settled on diaphonemic being closest to the optimal answer. I wanted to collect opinions on this matter from people who love writing and aren't afraid of change for the better.

In General, I am trying to understand whether the written form of a language can extend into the verbal form so that it changes the way people speak.

From what I can tell, there are different ways this can happen (which are completely theorized by me, and so I don't know if they are the true reason people started speaking as such):

• when people begin speaking in acronyms or written abbreviations, like when people started verbally saying <k> instead of <ok> after people started to write is as the one letter
• When sounds not written in words began being dropped verbally as well. Like in Arabic, the colloquial dialects dropped almost all the cases, which could be because they do not appear in written Arabic

So in general, what I'm asking is whether those sound and grammatical changes are due to the orthography, or something else, and if there are other ways orthography can influence speech.

-from someone who regularly takes a taxi, not a ‘pay-car’.

I've decided that I want to get into the world of Esperanto but I'm not sure how to go about doing so. My first instinct was to create an orthography based on Esperanto, but I really don't know where to start. I've been looking around but I can only find tutorials and stuff on the web. Is there a better resource to learn more about creating a naturalistic orthography?

Patre nostro , qui es en celos

Santificato siat nome tu

Veniat renios tu

Siat facta volontate tua

Como en celo et en terra

Pane nostro quotidiano da nos oge

et remette nos debitas nostros

et no nos enducas en tentazione mais libera nos de malo

Amen

Hi Everyone,

I recently made a video on YouTube about the Breton language that I'd like to share with you! It is about a new orthographic reform that I came up with for Breton, with a focus on making it look more "Celtic". I'd love it if you guys could take a look and give me some feedback.

The video is here: https://youtu.be/iFVagoE-zEY (or search the post name on YT).

Thanks!

1: What is Ajalaam?

Ajalaam is a dialect of toki ma which modifies the pronunciations of words.

Formally, the rules of Ajalaam^1 are thus:

1. For multi-syllable words, remove the vowel after the last non-semivowel (not w or j) consonant (e.g. lamo > lam, matija > matja, meja > mja)
2. Any syllable ending in /n/ gets its vowel nasalised. (e.g. kiwen > kiwẽ, tenpo > tẽp, lanpan > lãpã)
3. ji, je, wo, wu > i, e, o, u (e.g. neje > nee, mije > mie, pawu > pau)
4. Wherein it doesn't result in an initial conjunct: uw, ow > w and il, el > l (e.g. sitelen > sitlẽ, patila > patla)
5. Word-initial j, w > d͡ʒ, v (e.g. woka > vok, jan > d͡ʒã)
6. Vowels before a semivowel are long
7. Vowels before a conjunct are short
8. Short a > ə
9. Single-syllable grammatical particles become single consonants (except where this would cause triple gemination) (e.g. li > l, te > t, pi > p, kili li lon pona > kil li lõ pon)

2: The Current Orthography for Ajalaam

The consonants (j, k, l, m, n^(2), p, s, t, w) are written as in standard toki ma

The following graphemes are used for vowels:

Nasal vowels are indicated by an n after the vowel. Consonant n following a vowel is indicated by an apostrophe:

pin, pini > pin, pi'n

Grammatical particles are represented with an apostrophe before them, and attached to the previous word:

li, te, pi, ki > 'l, 't, 'p, 'k

mi li utala e monsuta > mi'l utal e monsut

mi li lon pona > mi'l lon po'n

mi li wile e te si li lon pona > mi'l wil e't si'l lon po'n

3: The New Orthography for Ajalaam

Consonants

The consonants stay the same, except that word-initial w becomes v to make pronunciation clear.

Vowels

Long vowels are written by duplicating the vowel. This is done consistently:

ə, a: > a, aa
e, e: > e, ee
i, i: > i, ii
o, o: > o, oo
u, u: > u, uu

Nasal vowels are written with a tilde diacritic.

Grammatical Particles

The grammatical particles have an apostrophe after them, connecting the particle to the structure it modifies. My reason for this is that in toki ma grammar, particles act on the structures after, not before, them. (e.g. the verb marker, li, is before the verb it refers to; the relative clause marker, t

I have always assumed that the Roman standard of orthography (i.e. "proper spelling") was about the same as Elizabethan English: in other words, that there was no standard of orthography. Henry V scrawled "This boke is myne" in his childhood copy of De Officiis, but he could have written book as well, or mine—the idea of "this is spelled (in)correctly" simply did not exist at the time. Only in the 17th century did there arise the idea that there was one (or possibly two) ways of spelling all the words in the English language (and in the 18th century, Samuel Johnson listed them all).

Would the average educated Roman have an image in his mind of how Latin was "supposed to be spelt", and communicated accordingly? Or are we projecting modern ideas into the ancient world?

EGL • Aj pōl êsar di canbiameint int al têst di publicasiouṅ ch'a scrîv, da zò ch'l'utrugrafî ch'adrōv l'ê sèinpar in evolusiouṅ, par mōd ch'as pôsa cojar el pió peculiaritê dialetêli Emiliâni pusebli cn al nomar ad letar pió ceiṅ pusebil, sèinsa intinimōd dṡmentghêr·as ad arsptêr almânch el pió inpurtânti urtugrafî luchêli.

EN • There may be some changes in the text of the posts I write, as the orthography is in perpetual evolution, in order to embrace the most Emilian differences with the least characters as possible, respecting the most important local orthographies.

Hy there!

I'm used to write in a different language, but wanted to give it a try in English. I'm looking for someone who's good at grammar and orthography and who would be willing to proofread my fanfiction.

If you'd be able to not only tell me what is wrong but also why, that would be a huge bonus :)! I'd like to exchange the text as a word document via email.

Here's the first 250 words:

John looks at him. After what seems like an eternity, he takes a deep breath, holds it and exhales. His brow furrows. Sherlock doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. He just stares back at John and hopes for an answer. „You’re kidding me, aren’t you?“ He doesn’t sound amused. At all. It’s this half bored half annoyed tone he uses, when Sherlock asks something he considers stupid. „You know I don’t do that, John“, he answers, his lips the only moving part. John glances to his side, then back at Sherlock. „You’re in love with me.“ „Don’t be ridiculous, John,“ Sherlock scoffs. John purses his lips to hide a smile. „Listen, Sherlock, what you’ve described to me is clearly and unmistakably the most complete list of symptoms of being in love that’s ever come to my ears. Ever.“

„Sherlock? Sherlock! D’you need anything from the stores?“

„What?“

„Do you need anything from the stores? I’m heading to the shops. Do you want me to get you anything?“

Sherlock blinks at John, expression blank. John rolls his eyes and mutters, while turning: „Why do I even bother asking?“

When the front door bangs shut downstairs, Sherlock lets out a frustrated cry. „Why are you so unhelpful, John?“ He vigorously shuffles his mess of hair and jumps to his feet. He spins, dressing gown swaying around his legs. He takes the few steps to the couch and throws himself onto it. After a moment of angry ceiling staring, he decidedly closes his eyes again.

So, my conlang Usan is a posteriori from American English, with a lot of the sound changes involved being derived from Justin B. Rye's writings about the topic. The phonology itself is all I used - his orthography doesn't have the right vibes, so I constructed a different one that's meant to look a little closer to present-day English spelling convention.

The issue that I'm running across is distinguishing /r/, /ɾ/, and /ɦ/. As it is, /r/ and /ɦ/ are both written as <r>, which I guess is fine, considering that /r/ only occurs in onset and /ɦ/ only in coda, but it bothers me that I could come up with a 1:1 phoneme-to-grapheme system for everything except this, and, like, a couple nasals. I've tried using <gh> for /ɦ/, but it just looks kinda gross.

Also, I've been writing the tapped /ɾ/ as an apostrophe, but it really throws me off sometimes since my brain tries to process it as a glottal stop - be'our from "better," for example.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Or should I just leave it because there's nothing more American than having a fucked up spelling system?

a=ɑ â=ɑ˞ i=i î=ɯ o=o ô=oʊ u=u û=y