Why do most conlangers dislike digraphs when romanizing?

[Chagen]

Title says it all.

A lot of conlangers dislike digraphs, but I much, MUCH prefer them to diacritics when it comes to consonants (with vowels, on the other hand, I love absurd amount of diacritics--Vietnamese is one of my favorite natlangs for that reason). Diacritics on consonants look ugly as hell. Digraphs are so much prettier and nicer-looking--but just like with modern-day conworlds, I appear to be in the minority about this.

I just recieved a copy of the LCK (great book, by the way!) where Rosenfelder compares two orthographies for Verdurian, and said that <dh> was an uglier symbol than a <d> with circumflex (seriously, I cannot find this symbol anywhere). Personally, I think <dh> is a very pretty and nice digraph, while the d-with-circumflex was one of the ugliest letters I have ever seen.

So yeah. I just felt like asking this.

[Valkura]

Title says it all.

A lot of conlangers dislike digraphs, but I much, MUCH prefer them to diacritics when it comes to consonants (with vowels, on the other hand, I love absurd amount of diacritics--Vietnamese is one of my favorite natlangs for that reason). Diacritics on consonants look ugly as hell. Digraphs are so much prettier and nicer-looking--but just like with modern-day conworlds, I appear to be in the minority about this.

I just recieved a copy of the LCK (great book, by the way!) where Rosenfelder compares two orthographies for Verdurian, and said that <dh> was an uglier symbol than a <d> with circumflex (seriously, I cannot find this symbol anywhere). Personally, I think <dh> is a very pretty and nice digraph, while the d-with-circumflex was one of the ugliest letters I have ever seen.

So yeah. I just felt like asking this.

'Ď' looks nice to me, although i don't like the lowercase version ('ď') because it looks like an apostrophe.

I don't like digraphs because they superficially lengthen a word in print; make collation, transliteration, etc. more complicated; and can cause confusion. I think digraphs should only be used for diphthongs and affricates, and possibly phonemes with complex features or secondary articulation if they're used consistently.

Of course, if you're going for a completely natural language, it's probably not going to perfectly align with your or my preferences.

[Chagen]

I don't like digraphs because they superficially lengthen a word in print

See, I don't get why this is such a problem.

Then again, I make languages where Wrlsjtvrdhya is an acceptable word, so...

[Thakowsaizmu]

Many of my conlangs use digraphs.

[Valkura]

I don't like digraphs because they superficially lengthen a word in print

See, I don't get why this is such a problem.

Then again, I make languages where Wrlsjtvrdhya is an acceptable word, so...

So do i, but i prefer all of those letters to mean one phoneme.

[Ilocar]

digraphs are scary to me because they leave open the possibility of orthographic ambiguity, and since the roman alphabet is generally not supposed to be the standard orthography for a language in-world, I prefer to keep romanization as phonetic and easy to read as possible

[Chagen]

digraphs are scary to me because they leave open the possibility of orthographic ambiguity

Only if you're an idiot. There are plenty of ways to make unambiguous orthographies with digraphs.

[Ilocar]

digraphs are scary to me because they leave open the possibility of orthographic ambiguity

Only if you're an idiot. There are plenty of ways to make unambiguous orthographies with digraphs.

also, at least to me its an aesthetic choice, I don't usually like my words to be these big long clusters of symbols, it makes things hard to read, and if I had to put a line or city name in a book I would want people to have a vague idea of how it's pronounced.

[Khemehekis]

Diacritics (like the circumflexes I use to transliterate Hapoish) require a lot of characters when they're on an HTML page, and my American computers always make typing characters with diacritics a pain, so I use digraphs whenever possible. Kankonian and Shaleyan have KH, SH, PH, etc., and it fits the feelings of the languages. With Hapoish, however, using X instead of SH and J instead of ZH gave it the feel I wanted. I found a few diacritics (such as the umlaut over a U) unavoidable for Javarti, and what better creates the feeling of a delicious Javarti marine animal than "txiva", rather than "tshiva" (or "chiva").

[Ilocar]

Diacritics (like the circumflexes I use to transliterate Hapoish) require a lot of characters when they're on an HTML page, and my American computers always make typing characters with diacritics a pain, so I use digraphs whenever possible. Kankonian and Shaleyan have KH, SH, PH, etc., and it fits the feelings of the languages. With Hapoish, however, using X instead of SH and J instead of ZH gave it the feel I wanted. I found a few diacritics (such as the umlaut over a U) unavoidable for Javarti, and what better creates the feeling of a delicious Javarti marine animal than "txiva", rather than "tshiva" (or "chiva").

diacritics can also have the same problem of being hard to read, sadly there's no way to get around it, my solution is usually to use a diacritic heavy orthography when designing and building the language and then making simpler orthographies for place names and such. and trust I know about diacritics, I didn't even realise how complicate my orthography had become until I started typing words into this site (I do my conlanging and all world-building on analog paper)

[Sangfroidish]

I prefer to have them either on consonants or vowels, but never both otherwise it just ends up looking like diacritic salad. Personally I think vowels with diacritics look a lot better than consonants with diacritics, on the whole, so I usually gravitate towards vowels. (The only issue I have then is deciding which diacritics; I've gone from marking long vowels with macrons to marking them with circumflexes, then acutes, then graves, then acutes again, then I overhauled my vowel phonology and started marking short vowels with diaereses, and now I'm denoting short vowels with graves and phonemic stress with circumflexes. Lord only knows what I'll be doing by next week.)

On the subject of <dh>, despite using it myself, I just find it considerably uglier than other consonant+<h> digraphs for reasons I'm really not certain of, especially at the start of words. The only problem is every diacritic-ed variant of <d> looks like a hundred times uglier.

[Click]

I prefer diacritics over most digraphs because they save space (I really like when text in my conlangs takes less space than in English) and because they give a language a more 'exotic' feel.
Nonetheless, I'd rather use digraphs than diacritics if I'm going for a certain aesthetic, for example, if I were to be making something Uralic-inspired, I'd likely spell the long vowels with doubled letters instead of acutes, macrons, circumflexes or whatever.

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

The only problem is every diacritic-ed variant of <d> looks like a hundred times uglier.

Have you tried ⟨ḍ⟩? It's quite beautiful IMO.

[Valosken]

I agree that D with circumflex is kinda ugly...but I don't use digraphs much because it's just more compact.

[Fanael]

I don't like digraphs because they superficially lengthen a word in print

See, I don't get why this is such a problem.

Quote mining. Superficially lengthening a word was not the only problem mentioned.

Diacritics (like the circumflexes I use to transliterate Hapoish) require a lot of characters when they're on an HTML page

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;.

[Erboinq]

digraphs are scary to me because they leave open the possibility of orthographic ambiguity, and since the roman alphabet is generally not supposed to be the standard orthography for a language in-world, I prefer to keep romanization as phonetic and easy to read as possible

Bingo. This is exactly how I view them. In addition, often my languages tend to have small phonemic inventories, so I'd much prefer to use the left over individual letters rather than resort to digraphs or diacritics.

[Sangfroidish]

The only problem is every diacritic-ed variant of <d> looks like a hundred times uglier.

Have you tried ⟨ḍ⟩? It's quite beautiful IMO.

You know what, ḍ actually does look quite nice. I may give some thought to changing my dental fricatives from <th dh> to <ṭ ḍ>, if I can get over the fact that <Ṭ> looks like a really daft exclamation mark.

[Creyeditor]

I like my consonants digraphed and my vowels diacritic

[Ànradh]

For vowels, my preference is to use diacritics, however, I don't like using lots of different types of diacritic, nor do I like stacking them. If it comes to the point where I have what I feel is too many, I'll move to non-Roman or non-standard Roman characters, but only if the phonotactics are such that I can't use digraphs without ambiguity.
For consonants, I really prefer not to use diacritics, but I'm by no means resistant to them; I'm about as likely to use a novel character as I am a digraph in this case, though I only allow one or two novel characters in an orthography in order to avoid confusion.

My goals for Roman orthographies are to make pronunciation as obvious for English speakers as possible (English is my L1 after all) and to make them simple to type, in no particular order; I consider both goals equally important.

My favourite orthographies are those of Gaelic and Polish; both make heavy use of digraphs (and diacritics).

Edit: Clarity.

[Aevas]

First of all, Chagen, please don't call people names.

Secondly, I don't believe the premise is true. "A lot of conlangers dislike digraphs", just as you say, but most? I doubt any of us can say that with any certainty.

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.

Btw, guys, <Ď> has a caron, not a circumflex.

In any case, I don't find it difficult to understand the sentiment of many conlangers here. The idea of "one phoneme = one letter" is common, logical, and has been prominent with many orthography makers throughout history. That said, digraphs are certainly not out of fashion in conlanging, and if you'd just look around for a moment, you'd find quite a few of them everywhere. Personally I prefer digraphs; you can make them quirky in a way I find diacritics often won't allow in their straightforwardness.

[kiwikami]

I like digraphs, and use them, simply because I don't generally like diacritics on consonants. It's just an aesthetic thing for me. I had trouble with HyPry - this is why that orthography was such as mess: I didn't use digraphs, or diacritics on consonants, at all - but for the most part, I don't mind it when words get a bit long. I do like to make digraphs logical, at least to English speakers (my L1) and I'm rather fond of <h> as a versatile second grapheme (Cástían: ch, sh, zh, lzh th, dh, tsh, dzh, mh, and ts, dz - also ny, as it phonetically approximates [ɲ].)

Mostly, I want the orthography to be aesthetically pleasing, and usually for me, digraphs are the way to do it. I have nothing against diacritics, though I'm not likely to use them on consonants if the vowels already have them. Too messy, in my opinion, and rarely consistent. An accented <s> or <z> or <n> or the like, I can handle, and have used (Sśesháza)... but more exotic combinations (<d>s with carons, for example) rarely fit with the "feel" of the conlang I'm working on. So I don't use them. If they did fit, then I certainly would - it's a very situational thing.

But then, to each their own. There are few arts where that's not a golden rule, and conlanging is no exception.