Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

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Avo
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Avo »

How necessary are the weird consonant spellings if you want to cover both Southern and Northern Vietnamese with the same orthography?
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by cybrxkhan »

Avo wrote:How necessary are the weird consonant spellings if you want to cover both Southern and Northern Vietnamese with the same orthography?
Not too weird at all, in my opinion - the only major distinctions that need to be made, as in those that are noticeable enough, are few; the only ones I can think of is <tr> and <ch> and syllable-ending <ng> and <nh> (forgot which dialect has which, though), which is already indicated in the current orthography. I think there's a couple more too, but the orthography covers them relativey fine with a few minor tweaks. I think it's the vowels that's more the issue. Vietnamese has tons of vowels and tons of diphthongs and triphthongs, I'm a little relieved there aren't more diacritics for them all.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Creyeditor »

Thakowsaizmu wrote:
cybrxkhan wrote: Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed! :mrred:
But what might it look like without them?
Edit: This is actually making me think about how it might look
Tat ca moi nguoi sinh ra deu duoc tu do va binh dang ve nhan pham va quyen. Moi con nguoi deu duoc tao hoa ban cho ly tri va luong tam va can phai doi xu voi nhau trong tinh bang huu.
That's how it looks, if you just delete the diacritics [:D]
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Thakowsaizmu »

Creyeditor wrote:
Thakowsaizmu wrote:
cybrxkhan wrote: Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed! :mrred:
But what might it look like without them?
Edit: This is actually making me think about how it might look
Tat ca moi nguoi sinh ra deu duoc tu do va binh dang ve nhan pham va quyen. Moi con nguoi deu duoc tao hoa ban cho ly tri va luong tam va can phai doi xu voi nhau trong tinh bang huu.
That's how it looks, if you just delete the diacritics [:D]
I wasn't thinking of simply deleting them, more so of how a reform would look where it got rid of a lot (or all) of them
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Creyeditor »

Thakowsaizmu wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:
Thakowsaizmu wrote:
cybrxkhan wrote: Also, I really hate Vietnamese's love of diacritics. Diacritics are eviillllll they make my eyes bleed! :mrred:
But what might it look like without them?
Edit: This is actually making me think about how it might look
Tat ca moi nguoi sinh ra deu duoc tu do va binh dang ve nhan pham va quyen. Moi con nguoi deu duoc tao hoa ban cho ly tri va luong tam va can phai doi xu voi nhau trong tinh bang huu.
That's how it looks, if you just delete the diacritics [:D]
I wasn't thinking of simply deleting them, more so of how a reform would look where it got rid of a lot (or all) of them
I was aware of that, I was just to lazy, because I know, I often tried it, but it is rather difficult if your only source is Wikipedia...
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by cybrxkhan »

Funny thing is most Vietnamese who are fluent in Vietnamese can read Vietnamese fine without the diacritics based on the context (sort of like that thing you've esen online where English is written without vowels and you can still understand it). Heck, even I, despite my somewhat dubious knowledge of Vietnamese, can read Vietnamese without diacritics well enough to some extent.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Khemehekis »

Similiter for us Semitic folks. Adults who can read and write in Hebrew or Arabic will be able to tell which form of the word it is and where the vowels go even without the abjad vowel marks.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Sangfroidish »

Well, I've just had yet another massive change of heart about my orthography, which apart from <ng> for the velar nasal is now going to be completely digraph-free :v (Still a little iffy on /ṭ ḍ/ for dental fricatives, so /th dh/ may be staying also.) The phonemes they represent aren't really common enough to cause any particularly unsightly mess, and half the time the digraphs look even worse in consonant clusters as far as I'm concerned, so who knows, maybe I've finally hit on an orthography I'm not going to suddenly hate after six minutes. (There still weren't any diacriticed <L>s I liked, though, so I decided to transcribe /ɬ/ using <x>. Which seems daft but whatever.)

In the event that anyone is interested:

<m n ň ng> /m n ɲ ŋ/
<p b t d q j c g> /p b t̪ d̪ c ɟ k g/
<f v ṭ ḍ s x š č ǧ> /f v θ ð s ɬ ç x ɣ/
<w i u h l r> /ʋ j w h l ʀ/

<a e i o u y> /æː eː iː ɔː uː yː/
<ä ë ï ö ü ÿ> /ɐ ə ɪ ɑ ʊ ʏ/
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Valkura »

Sangfroidish wrote:(There still weren't any diacriticed <L>s I liked, though, so I decided to transcribe /ɬ/ using <x>. Which seems daft but whatever.)
At one point i was using <c> for /ɬ/, and i'm now using <x> for /ⱱ/, so you're fine.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Sasquatch »

Personally, I hate diacritics. Each one is used in multiple ways depending on which language uses it. So there's no way to parse the meaning when you see it. If the meanings were absolute and standardized like punctuation marks are then I might find them useful.

And they are often hard to read depending on font size and other factors.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Click »

Sasquatch wrote:Personally, I hate diacritics. Each one is used in multiple ways depending on which language uses it. So there's no way to parse the meaning when you see it. If the meanings were absolute and standardized like punctuation marks are then I might find them useful.
Punctuation also varies from language to language.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Xing »

Click wrote:
Sasquatch wrote:Personally, I hate diacritics. Each one is used in multiple ways depending on which language uses it. So there's no way to parse the meaning when you see it. If the meanings were absolute and standardized like punctuation marks are then I might find them useful.
Punctuation also varies from language to language.
[+1]
The same is true for most things when it comes to orthography...

Perhaps one could argue that diacritics are even less standardised that other things, like capitalisation, punctuation, or the very pronunciation value of vowels. If one sees an <a> in a random foreign language, it's rather probable that it represents some kind of open vowel - even if one is uncertain about it's exact realisation. And also, it's very common in languages using the Latin alphabet to begin sentences with a capital letter, and end it with a full stop. Though one could hardly claim that either capitalisation or punctuation is absolutely fixed or standardised - there's a lot of variation when it comes to, for example, capitalisation of various types of names, and how punctuation is used in abbreviations.

I suspect that there is even more variation among languages in how they used di- or multigraphs (since these are presumably often used for the more unusual or exotic sounds).
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Sasquatch »

Seems then the simple solution is to quit using silly noises in languages. Then you wouldn't need diacritics or digraphs.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Creyeditor »

Sasquatch wrote:Seems then the simple solution is to quit using silly noises in languages. Then you wouldn't need diacritics or digraphs.
good point
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Ànradh »

Sasquatch wrote:Seems then the simple solution is to quit using silly noises in languages. Then you wouldn't need diacritics or digraphs.
Define 'silly'.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Sasquatch »

Ànradh wrote:Define 'silly'.
Anything I can't pronounce after drinking a few beers. [:P]
Joking aside, there does seem to be a fascination with "exotic" sounds. I can't hear a difference between many of the IPA sounds. I'm told there's a difference between the /t/ in "top" and the /t/ in "stop". I can't hear it. When I do hear a difference it's far too subtle for me to imagine it being useful in a noisy environment. So when I read any conscript I simply ignore the diacritics. I'm sure I mispronounce most digraphs as well.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by denarii »

That's simple L1 bias. You have a hard time distinguishing them because you didn't grow up speaking a language that contrasts them. Many conlangers such as myself prefer their conlangs to be significantly different from their L1.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by sep »

In my orthography for Gwimmegeliat, I just tack an h on the end (th for ð, nh for ɲ, etc), mostly because it's just so mych easier on my computer than a word with diacritics. It also helps that there is otherwise no h in the orthography, keeping ambiguity at a minimum.
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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Lao Kou »

cybrxkhan wrote:Funny thing is most Vietnamese who are fluent in Vietnamese can read Vietnamese fine without the diacritics based on the context (sort of like that thing you've seen online where English is written without vowels and you can still understand it). Heck, even I, despite my somewhat dubious knowledge of Vietnamese, can read Vietnamese without diacritics well enough to some extent.
With no grounding in Vietnamese whatsoever, I've kind of assumed that's how the game is played in daily life. Otherwise, I should think composing a shopping list or the simplest billet-doux would take hours. A Vietnamese manga, if there are such beasties, with all the diacritic bells and whistles? Oy.

I'm rather fastidious about crossing my t's and dotting my i's, and you can drop a plumb line through my e-accent aigu's, but sheesh, Vietnamese just plain scares me. Diacritic-less, hence toneless, pinyin for Mandarin is legible, if slightly jarring at first (mind, I haven't read a treatise on hermeneutics written that way). So I would imagine that if your significant other texted you to pick up a couple of bowls of phở on the way home, one would start to play rather fast and loose with the diacritics.

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Re: Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

Post by Valkura »

Sasquatch wrote:Joking aside, there does seem to be a fascination with "exotic" sounds. I can't hear a difference between many of the IPA sounds. I'm told there's a difference between the /t/ in "top" and the /t/ in "stop". I can't hear it. When I do hear a difference it's far too subtle for me to imagine it being useful in a noisy environment. So when I read any conscript I simply ignore the diacritics. I'm sure I mispronounce most digraphs as well.
Really? I think you're just not trying hard enough, or not separating yourself from English. The reason the differences are subtle to you is because you aren't used to distinguishing between them. I'm sure that someone from China would initially find English's contrastive voicing hard to distinguish and aspirated consonants naturally different than their plain equivalents.

I assume that everyone on a conlanging website is interested in linguistics, which makes your willful ignorance weird. I mean, shit, i know i'm bad at pronouncing non-English sounds, but at least i try.
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