Well, it depends on a number of factors, doesn't it?Solarius wrote: ↑06 Jul 2022 17:32 Debating the romanization for a the palatal series of a language I'm working on. The current romanization is /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/<tj nj lj y> because I liked the odd and clunky look of the Cj digraphs, but that clunky look makes a lot of words look sort of strange, especially since <i l> are pretty common too, giving it a weird homogeneous appearance. I also don't like the inconsistency of using <Cj> when there's no <j> in the language.
I'm considering either:
/t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/<j ñ ll y>
or
/t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/<c ñ y j>
Digraphs are totally fine (the syllable structure prevents basically all consonant clusters), so it's really just a measure of phonaesthetics. What do y'all think?
1) If set in the "real world" or an althistory, where is the language spoken? What languages could its orthography have been based on/influenced by?
/t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/<j ñ ll y> has a pretty Spanish vibe, possibly hinting at historical contact with Spanish, while /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/<c ñ y j> is pretty unique AFAIK and would make me think of the language's spelling having been reformed/standardised recently. The former would make sense if the language had (historical) contact with Spanish, if whoever/whichever committee conically devised the orthography perceived Spanish as prestigious and worth emulating, etc. On the other hand, the latter could be indicative of the conical orthographists having decided "we'll do something practical" without consulting anyone else, which could be divisive among linguists, language nerds and/or the language's speakers themselves (see eg. the ongoing Kazakh orthographic reform), and competing orthographies might also exist; AFAIK this kind of situation is fairly common with American indigenous languages.
2) Is the orthography supposed to be "naturalistic" (whatever that means for an orthography; obviously ANADEW always applies) or not?
As in, did the orthography arise gradually through historical spelling reforms or was it recently revamped and modelled after a different language's orthography, or was it pulled out of thin air by a field linguist as an ad hoc system that then spread among the speakers? Things like this can make a huge difference for what an orthography "should" be like. Obviously you can handwave anything easily, but a language whose orthography gradually developed to its current form through various spelling reforms is more likely to be more "reserved", since they probably wouldn't just randomly for no reason decide that /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/, written as <j ñ ll y> for centuries, would be written as <tsch nghy lghy ı> from now on. I mean, it can happen, but... on the other hand, if the orthography wasn't standardised until recently, especially if the language was historically mostly unwritten, it could be whatever. They'd probably model it after some other orthography to some degree, likely a language perceived as prestigious, but not necessarily; if /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/ had been written in a dozen different and inconsistent ways, there's less incentive to "maintain a tradition" because a tradition wouldn't even exist.
3) What kind of orthography do you think is most fitting, purely personally?
I mean, we all have our own phonaesthetic associations stemming from both purely personal and cultural factors. Do you want to evoke a certain abstract vibe through the orthography, and if so, what kind of vibe is that? Do you want to intentionally mismatch the vibe you get from the phonology with an entirely different vibe from the orthography? If for example <j ñ ll y> make you think "elegant" and <c ñ y j> make you think "cute", what does the phonology altogether make you think? What adjectives would you use to describe the language's sound? Is it "elegant", "cute", or the dreaded "guttural", or...?
4) What is the rest of the orthography like?
If you have /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/ contrasting with /t͡s n l ɹ/ for example, it's worth considering if the former would be represented as "paired" with or "variants" of the latter. You know, how a bunch of languages have /t͡ʃ/ as <č> and /t͡s/ as <c> and whatnot. With /j/ and /ɹ/ it might be less likely to follow that kind of pattern since they're likely perceived as a semivowel and rhotic (but not necessarily), but with /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ and /t͡s n l/ most languages would make some kind of orthographic link between them. So, if you have /t͡s n l/ <ts n l>, then something like <tš ň ľ> or <tś ń ĺ> or <tsy ny ly> or whatever for /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ would make sense. If they don't contrast with alveolar (or velar, or...) consonants that they could be perceived as "paired" with or "variants" of, then they'd be more likely represented by "simpler" letters. But again, this kind of things are pretty arbitrary and not necessarily entirely "consistent" and those kinds of associations may well arise later from the spelling rather than the other way, so you can handwave pretty much anything.
5) What is the rest of the phonology like?
You said it has no consonant clusters, but what about other considerations? If you do have /t͡s n l ɹ/ or something as well, are they and /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ j/ differentiated in all contexts or do they (or some of them) merge in some environments, eg. before /i/? If they do merge, is the orthrography more phonemic or phonetic? As in, if it has eg. /t͡s n l/ <z n l> and /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ <ch ñ ll> modelled after Spanish and they merge before /i/, would [t͡ɕi ɲi ʎi] be written <zi ni li> or <chi ñi lli>? If you use consistent digraphs, having eg. /t͡s n l/ <c n l> /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ <cy ny ly>, and they merge before /i/, then writing [t͡ɕi ɲi ʎi] as just <ci ni li> would make sense; if there are no diphthongs or consecutive vowels, you could well also have /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ written <ci ni li> to begin with. Or would it be etymological, as in they didn't merge until after the orthrography was established, and would still be differentiated in writing? And if they don't merge, then would eg. /t͡ɕ ɲ ʎ/ <ci ni li> be unaesthetic because you'd end up with [t͡ɕi ɲi ʎi] <cii nii lii>? And so on.
Of course I didn't say anything deeply insightful or anything, but the point is that orthographies are best considered as a whole and together with the phonology.