Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

[Chagen]

Also I believe you're misquoting Mark Rosenfelder. He's comparing the spellings of the city of Ďarcaln (Verdurian spelling) / Dhârkalen (Barakhinei spelling) to show how different orthographies can give a significantly different feel. In his opinion the Verdurian name feels rather civilized, while the Barakhinei name suggests something darker. Again, that's his personal preference.

Actually, I'm talking about the comparison on page 50 of the print LCK.

1990's called, they want their entities back. It's 2013 now, you can just use Unicode and write ệ when you mean ệ, no need to mess with &egadswhatamisupposedtowritehere;.

No you can't, when you're on a 'MURRICAN keyboard like I am.

As for ⟨dh⟩, it IMO smacks of cheap fantasy unless it's in an Indic-looking language.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

[Fanael]

1990's called, they want their entities back. It's 2013 now, you can just use Unicode and write ệ when you mean ệ, no need to mess with &egadswhatamisupposedtowritehere;.

No you can't, when you're on a 'MURRICAN keyboard like I am.

So am I, yet I have no trouble typing all kinds of weird characters.

As for ⟨dh⟩, it IMO smacks of cheap fantasy unless it's in an Indic-looking language.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

Click. Said. "IMO".

[Ceresz]

No you can't, when you're on a 'MURRICAN keyboard like I am.

Sure you can. Just make a custom layout. It's really not that difficult.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

Just ignore him if he annoys you that much. There's no need for that kind of behavior. And like Fanael pointed out, Click did add IMO.

Honestly, as far as I'm concerned it all comes down to personal preference. I see plenty of conlangs where digraphs and diacritics are used equeally. I don't really see what the big deal is. To be honest, this, along with your modern day conworld thread, just seems like unnecessary whining to me. Get over yourself.

[Thakowsaizmu]

As for ⟨dh⟩, it IMO smacks of cheap fantasy unless it's in an Indic-looking language.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

You should probably read the whole comment before overreacting.

[Click]

What happened?

[Fanael]

Chagen overreacted. Nothing to see, carry on.

[Keenir]

As for ⟨dh⟩, it IMO smacks of cheap fantasy unless it's in an Indic-looking language.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

why not? you certainly have no problem speaking for everyone else.

[Valkura]

I just went through relib's orthography and made the diacritics more consistent (albeit there's still six different kinds), and changed the implosives, ejectives, and clicks to digraphs — so i guess i don't dislike them that much.

[Aevas]

Also I believe you're misquoting Mark Rosenfelder. He's comparing the spellings of the city of Ďarcaln (Verdurian spelling) / Dhârkalen (Barakhinei spelling) to show how different orthographies can give a significantly different feel. In his opinion the Verdurian name feels rather civilized, while the Barakhinei name suggests something darker. Again, that's his personal preference.

Actually, I'm talking about the comparison on page 50 of the print LCK.

So am I, although it's on page 51 in my copy.

As for ⟨dh⟩, it IMO smacks of cheap fantasy unless it's in an Indic-looking language.

In whose fucking eyes except your own? Please do not speak for me, or anyone else, again.

Tone down this kind of hostility, or you're gonna get yourself in trouble.

[H.Á.]

I'm using both single letters/digraphs for alveolo-palatal consonants in Naniuk:

/n̠ʲ/ is written either <ni>, <nj> or <ň> (I'm somehow particularly fond of <ň>, yay for :ces: :tuk: )
/t̠ʲ/ is written either <ti>, <tj> or <ť>
etc.

/ʍ̝/ has various digraphs or trigraphs <xi>, <tj>, <hvj>, ...
some vowels have digraphs too. <oi> for /ʌ/, <iu>/<ui> for /ɨ/

Although I agree much of it depends on what kind of style/aura you want your conlang to emit.

[Valkura]

I have no idea what kind of style/aura my latinization emits…

Spoiler:

[sangi39]

I tend to go for diacritics in romanizations over digraphs, but I try to limit myself to the more common ones, e.g. haceks, acutes, umlauts, graves, etc. I will use digraphs where the syllable structure allows it, but in the romanization challenge thread on the ZBB I most often use diacritics to achieve a 1-to-1 correspondence and then see if any unambiguously digraphs could be used instead if it ends up being to diacritic-heavy. If there's no syllable structure or sample text given, I'll go for the 1-to-1 correspondence as a default.

[Xing]

In Wakeu, I use a few digraphs. I use <pw bw mw> for velarised labials. I also use <ng> for /ŋ/. Earlier I wrote /ŋ/ with <g>, but I thought that <ng> would make it more transparent for English-speaking readers.

I can see pro's and con's with both digraphs and diacritics.

Digraphs might give rise to ambiguity - depending on the overall phonology and orthography of a given language. (Wakeu has no consonant clusters, so the aforementioned digraphs are never ambiguous.)

Diacritics can be slightly more difficult to type. Even if most computers can handle them - it might require a little bit of extra work. Digraphs can also more easily be dropped in informal writing.

Digraphs can make words a little longer. But OTOH, I suspect that more compact, diacritic-heavy words might more easily be misread, especially in small print.

[Yačay256]

Apparently I'm in the minority, preferring both diacritics for consonants but strongly favoring digraphs for vowels: Concerning the latter, it is probably because most of my languages are either tonal, like Pola, have vowel harmony, like T'ɩza (/t'ɪza/) and/or are register languages, like Nilcispf (/nɪlkɪs̄pf/).

With Pola, luckily I have not had too many problems, save with its labial-velars: I originally wanted to use the tilde over <m> and over <p> for /ŋ͡m/ and /k͡p/, as in Vanuatu, but these are not precomposed in unicode, so I decided to use <>, respectively. The only other letters with diacritics are <ş> and <ń> for /ʂ/ and /ɳ/, though <ƞ> (for /ɲ/), if technically lacking any diacritics, is a very weird letter.

[Prinsessa]

Why I don't use digraphs for Vanga:

---

Auz̧ı̨nah ȷıvah lu'aȷuzossı.
O'hı̨ṇah Noṭıtąv.
O'mǫ̇gnolav alah,
t'hȯṣolav,
l'hı̨ṇınah tįnnı̨nnav.
Ǫȷ tonnagav qȯhsı̨nanuppı.
Ǫȷ tıssanav mu̇ṇah aznah,
lu'sąugazu sęuzoppı, tįnnı̨nnah naugav astąnavı.
Navah Noṭıtąv.

---

Auzhıŋnah ȷıvah lu'aȷuzossı.
O'hıŋrnah Nortıtauŋ.
O'mooŋgnolav alah,
t'hoorsolav,
l'hıŋrnınah tiiŋnnıŋnnav.
Oıŋ tonnagav qoohsıŋnanuppı.
Oıŋ tıssanav muuŋrnah aznah,
lu'sauŋgazu seuŋzoppı, tiiŋnnıŋnnah naugav astaŋnavı.
Navah Nortıtauŋ.

---

Nothing stopping me from using it if I actually think it fits a language and if it makes sense, though.

[Ilocar]

I just reworked Rhûnido's orthography,

Spoiler:

bearing in mind the words of my digital mentor, Mark Rosenfelder, I examined whether or not my diacritics were confusing. Yes. They. Were. so I sat down and said: what is each of these diacritics supposed to do? and I realized I had some consistant rules. what it boiled down to, is I was focused too much on grouping the sounds into cognitive groups for the speakers (the language already has a conscript that does a much better job of that) and I had this weird unhealthy compulsion to have j be /ʑ/, so I almost missed the fact that k, g, and s were already using a caron to mark their palattal cousins: ǩ /c/, ǧ /Ɉ/, and š /ɕ/ respectively. so I made /ʑ/ into ž instead.

next, I realized that h (without a bottom dot) was exclusively used as either /h/ by itself or the formation of fricatives: fh /ɸ/, bh /β/, th /θ/, dh /ð/, rh /ʂ/, lh /ɬ/, so I decided I had to fix the odd-ball: ģ /ɣ/ and fh. changing fh to ph was simple and obvious, (even though I have this weird anger at the letter p, I don't know what it, turn it around you get q, I love q, I try to shove a q into everything, as a matter of fact q /k/ was in the original orthography of some very old dead version of Rhûnido lost to the ages, simply because I thought it'd be neat-o to have q instead of k, yet ph, I like, it reminds me of greek, I like greek :)) however, I really didn't want gh in my language, esspecially for /ɣ/ which isn't really thought of as a consonant in the phonotactics, it mostly comes up to help seperate or connect vowels (like w and y) so intead I made a risky move and employed another letter I usually dislike: x, however, it ended up looking okay, so I swapped it.

now, the last issue i wanted to solve was the horrid digraphs I had for /ʨ/ and /ʤ/, tj and dj, respectively. not to say I dislike those digraphs, they just never looked right in Rhûnido, I use them in Nguera (another of my conlangs) and they look beautiful, so I said, well, hey now! I actually have two good options, I could: repeat the pattern of ǩ, ǧ, š, and ž and have them as the digraphs: tš and dž, or I could use that j I freed up earlier have a nice logical (from an english-speaking perspective) pair of c and j. I ended up deciding on c and j because they just looked better.

and with that I had to go through my entire wordlist and re-write the entries that used the new additions to the orthography, that was fun :|

and from that experience, I realized, that I actually do like digraphs, especially with h, alot, but I also like diacritics. when I see a word or sentence with alot of diacritics it actually makes me happy, regardless, expect my Rhûnido words in posts to look different now :)

[kingdemon]

I have to agree with you. I love digraphs, though mostly because when I'm typing it is much easier. Also, I think they look fine while most diacritics are confusing to me and do look better on vowels (I think it makes them look so cute and fancy!) Of course, that's just my opinion and I tend only to see diacritics for their austhetically pleasantness than for their actual function since I've always been more for ease of typing, writing, and memorization. It is simply easier to remember the letters I already know then trying to use diacritics (or even IPA).

[cybrxkhan]

I have to agree with you. I love digraphs, though mostly because when I'm typing it is much easier.

This.

Seriously, it's so much easier. Diacritics are a pain to type up, even with special programs or whatever.



Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed!

[Thakowsaizmu]

Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed!

But what might it look like without them?

Edit: This is actually making me think about how it might look

[cybrxkhan]

Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed!

But what might it look like without them?

Edit: This is actually making me think about how it might look

I think the tone marks are fine and necessary, but some of the vowels could really use a facelift. Actually, some consonants could use a facelift too. I think I've seen people who've managed Vietnamese orthographies with less diacritics and stuff, but I don't remember where.