Content
Classes
Lateral approximants
Nasals
M/m (runic ᛗ) for [m]
N/n (runic ᚾ) for [n]
[ŋ]?
some proposals also include [ŋ], what makes sense since this sound is quite common in Germanic languages
mostly the digraph ng is proposed as its written representation
another possibility would be to take an unused symbol, e.g. q (or ᛝ in runes)
maybe only have it as an allophone of /n/ before /k, g/ thus only having [ŋk],[ŋg]? Some varieties of Germanic have it this way; others have multiple sources for [ŋ], such as Thuringian which has it for *nd ("finge(n)" 'find')
Plosives
Fricatives
Semivowels
J/j (runic ᛃ) for [j]
W/w (runic
ᚹ) for [w] or [ʋ]?
Vowels
I/i (runic ᛁ or ᛇ) for [i] or [ɪ]
E/e (runic ᛖ) for [e], [ɛ] or [ə]
A/a (runic ᚨ) for [a], [ɑ], [æ] or [ʌ]
O/o (runic ᛟ) for [o] or [ʊ]
U/u (runic ᚢ) for [u] or [ʉ]
Ö/ö or Oy/oy (runic ᛟᛇ) for [ø]
Ü/ü or Uy/uy (runic ᚢᛇ) for [y] or [ʏ]
Length
A controversial subject is the question about long and short vowels.
Remark: The vowel E has three values, i.e. long, short, and schwa. It must be decided whether, and how, the short value and the schwa are to be distinguished.
Variant 0a: No distinction
Description
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
Variant 0b: No indication
Description
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
not common in Germanic languages
very unphonetic and thus hard to learn, since one has to memorize the pronunciation of every single word (which holds for the majority of the English vocabulary)
Variant 1a: Vowel doubling
Description
single vowels are spoken short
double vowels are spoken long
like in Dutch, Afrikaans and some words in German and English
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
not consistent, since vowel doubling can also occur in composita, where one speaks the vowels separately (like in the German word beenden)
potentially words with triple or even quad vowels (like in the English word seaeagle, which would actually be something like siiiigəl if written more phonetically but with vowel doubling)
some words are harder to recognize (e.g. miin for the word my,mine)
Variant 1b: Lengthening-symbol
Description
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
not common in Germanic languages (except for German, which uses the inconsistent version with h)
quite a posteriori, so words are harder to recognize
Variant 1c: Distinct letters
Description
every vowel has a long and a short form, that are written with different symbols, for example by adding a diacritic ornament (e.g. ā, ã or ȧ)
Example
Advantages
Disadvantages
Hybrid of variants 0b and 1b: Optional indication and no minimal pairs
like variant 1b in that an accent is used to denote long vowels (e.g. acute) but the lexicon is designed so there are no (or only a few) minimal pairs for the short-long distinction.
This means that if you don't put the accents on, there is no (or only a tiny amount of) ambiguity. This is just like variant 0b. If you can't (or are too lazy) to put the accents on, it's okay. Dictionaries would always include the accents.
advantages and disadvantages associated with 0b and 1b, including reduced ambiguity (adv.) but reduced lexicon size (disadv.)
Variant 2: Implicitly on consonant doubling/clustering
Description
in front of single consonants vowels are long
in front of double consonants (or consonant-clusters) vowels are short
like in Norwegian, Swedish and some words in German and English
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
inflexible
not consistent, since consonant doubling/clustering can also occur in composita, so that it can become unclear, if the vowel before is a long or a short one
potentially words with triple consonants (like in the German word Schifffahrt)
doesn't work for vowels at the end of a word
Variant 3 (or "1.5"): Vowel AND consonant doubling
Description
a hybrid of variants 1 and 2
every vowel is short by default, but long if it is in the first syllable of a multisyllabic word and there is only one consonant separating it from the next vowel.
final A and E are short by default; I, O, and U are long by default (?)
if an otherwise-short vowel needs to be made long, it is doubled.
if an otherwise-long vowel needs to be be made short, the consonant after it is doubled.
Examples
Advantages
Disadvantages
Of course these variants can be mixed or bound to conditions (like the stress or the position of the vowel in the word).
Non-standard vowels
Another question is the inclusion of non-standard vowels, which are present in most Germanic languages:
[ø]/[ö]
present in all major Germanic languages (except English)
several cases in which having such a sound is practically inevitable (e.g. the word for to hear, høra seems to be the only viable solution)
possibilities
representation by the symbol ö
representation by the symbol ø
representation by a yet unused symbol, e.g. c or q (e.g. hcra/hqra)
representation by the symbol group oe
representation by the symbol group oy
[y]/[ü]
present in many Germanic languages, but not in all
several cases in which having such a sound is practically inevitable (e.g. the word for south, syd seems to be the only viable solution)
possibilities
representation by the symbol ü
representation by a yet unused symbol, e.g. y (e.g. syd)
representation by the symbol group ui
representation by the symbol group ue
representation by the symbol group uy
-
Consonant-cluster-shortcuts like these are more common in Romanic and Slavic languages. The orthography becomes less phonetic when using them and as shown above it starts to get weird when having short and long vowels in the language. So i guess they are only relevant if using vowel-variant 0a or 0b, since except of #1 none of the options above is common in any Germanic language or any other language i know. I tend to use the explicit forms ks, ts, …
--- [[fenris@wh17.tu-dresden.de|Fenris Wolf]] 2014/10/31 11:35
Open questions
What are the names of the letters of the alphabet? A simple approach would be to let the vowels be themselves, and the consonants be themselves plus A; thus a, ba, ca, etc. This way, the names are obvious, and conflict with other words is minimised (if the letter D was di instead of da, for example, there would be ambiguity between the pronoun and the letter).
Something else that people might like to think about is the possibility of enabling "invisible little schwas", such as exist in words like apl and spasm. NB, the only other popular auxlang that does this is Idiom Neutral.
See also
Discussion
Just a note: there could theoretically be another variant, just using the most "common" spelling of each word, which would give a mix of variants. If the languages do not differ to much, or if one minimises the differences, this would give a not to complex orthography - interlingua is done in this way, keeping differences but minimizing them. If not, this would just be inconsequent and cluttery.
A way of deciding, on the other hand, would be to look in more detail on how common and widespread each system are, and chose the most common (or, as in the above, two very common).
The possible disadvantage with consequence is that it makes some words less recognizible. Depending on the individual, this may make it harder to understand. Likewise, some will probably feel like inconsequent spelling makes the language hard, and inconsequence may for others not be any bigger obstacle. I'm getting lost here, but I don't think that inconsistent spelling, nor a bit lessened recognizability is any larger problems. (And personally, inconsistent spelling hasn't been any big obstacle when learning a language.. As you probably even can see here though, I'm not sure about the English spelling in all cases. But practically, spelling errors is not that much of a flaw in the understanding and usage of a language, it shouldn't be over-estimated. One still understands the language, and can make yourself understood - the disadvantage is that it has a low status and risk making you look incompetent..).
Z and X
Are we going to use the letters Z and X to represent consonant pairs? If so, the first question is which values precisely they will take; Z will be /ts/ and/or /dz/, and X will be /ks/ and/or /gz/. A second and more esoteric question is how to double them, assuming a consonant-doubling system is chosen. The following options exist:
no doubling (Z and X) which is simple but either leaves the length of the preceding vowel unclear, or means that it must always be short;
simple doubling (ZZ and XX) which though simple, is misleading, because you'd think the pairs should be pronounced "tsts" and "ksks";
explicitness (TS and KS) which is simple but which is incongruous alongside the "implicit" originals;
first-half doubling (TZ and KX) which chimes nicely with German for TZ (e.g. Schnitzel, rather than Schnizel) but which is unfamiliar with KX;
second-half doubling (ZS and XS) which is functionally just like the previous option but visually more unfamiliar.
Decisions made so far
L/l for [l]
M/m for [m]
N/n for [n]
bigramm ng for [ŋ] since this representation is used in all Germanic languages and therefore it is the one that is most easily recognizable (according to goal #1)
P/p for [p]
B/b for [b]
K/k for [k]
G/g for [g]
T/t for [t]
D/d for [d]
[θ] and [ð] are not included and get replaced by [d] or sometimes [t] in the word-derivation from English and Icelandic (the only two Germanic languages that still have these sounds)
H/h for [h]
S/s for [s]
V/v for [v]
F/f for [f]
R/r for [ɾ]
J/j for [j]
[w] is not included
[x]/[χ] is not included
C/c for [ʃ] — whether this one is used in normal words will be decided later. [[User_Ob]] says: I believe it was me who proposed this, but maybe it's too weird/unusual. See my "sc" idea.
it is allowed to pronounce the letters a little different, for example v as [ʋ] or s as [z], where the sounds from above are the default
If you've got strong arguments against any of these decisions, feel free to add them here or visit the IRC-channel!