Use of Diacritical Marks in Grammar Texts

[KarakTea]

I'm in the process of writing a grammar document for Shadzire, which has quickly become my primary language over Chereeadei. In the orthography of Shadzire, a number of diacritical marks are used for consonants and vowels. However, I'm conflicted on whether or not to use these in my grammar document, as it will eventually be a publicly available text. What are your thoughts; Should I use diacritics, or favor the simple Latin alphabet?

Šajire Alphabet utilizing diacritics
Aa Āā Áá Ā́ā́ Bb Cc Čč Dd Ee Ēē Éé Ḗḗ Ff Gg Ii Īī Jj J̌ǰ Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Ōō Óó Ṓṓ Pp Rr Ss Šš Tt Uu Ūū Ww Xx Yy Zz Žž

Shadzire Alphabet without (as many) diacritics
Aa AAaa Áá ÁÁáá Bb Cc Chch Dd Ee EEee Éé ÉÉéé Ff Gg Ii IIii DZdz Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo OOoo Óó ÓÓóó Pp Rr Ss SHsh Tt Uu UUuu Ww Xx Yy Zz ZHzh

[Creyeditor]

Depends on your goals. I you are aiming for a Sankrit/Vietnamese feel, Option 1 fits better. ,if you are trying to invoke a Bantu feel, Option 2 looks promisimg. Of course, there are more possible "feels".

[KarakTea]

I think what I'm really asking is whether or not to use diacritics for accessibility. I know that I prefer the romanization with many diacritics, but for my grammar document which will be publicly available at some point, I wonder if I should prioritize ease of reading for me or the hypothetical reader?

[Creyeditor]

Unless you are aiming for an auxlang, I don't think it makes a difference for the ease of reading, IMHO. YMMV.

[Salmoneus]

I think what I'm really asking is whether or not to use diacritics for accessibility. I know that I prefer the romanization with many diacritics, but for my grammar document which will be publicly available at some point, I wonder if I should prioritize ease of reading for me or the hypothetical reader?

Who is your hypothetical reader?

If your hypothetical reader is an incurious monolingual English speaker whose brain explodes at the idea of a mark above a letter, then yes, diacritics will be a problem. Although even your alternative orthography includes diacritics, so that's still a problem.

On the other hand, if that's your reader, you have much bigger problems, because that reader will not read your grammar however you spell your words. Virtually nobody reads conlang grammars. About the only situations where that happens are a) a weird conlang enthusiast (or occasionally just conlang-curious linguist) reads a random grammar out of curiosity, and b) you are a megastar author/showrunner and you have millions of obsessive fans, a hundred of whom might be obsessive enough to take a superficial interest in your conlang if it's featured prominently in your novel/TV series/film, of whom maybe one or two of whom might be obsessive enough to actually read your grammar.

Both these plausible audiences - weird conlang enthusiasts and obsessive fans - will have no problem with diacritics. The enthusiast because to anybody who isn't completely incurious and language-ignorant there's nothing any more 'inaccessible' about a diacritic than a digraph, and the obsessive fan because they're obsessive and willing to push through the difficulty.

The bottom line here is that of all the aspects of inaccessibility a full-scale grammar of an imaginary language has, the presence of marks over some of the letters is one of the least significant. If somone is willing and able to read and understand a conlang grammar, they will have no problems with diacritics (why would they?); and if somone has a problem with diacritics, there's zero chance of them reading and understanding your document anyway, no matter how you spell the words.

In terms of audiences, I'd focus much more on how you want the language to look in terms of creating a certain impression superficially - because the level of superficial appearance is the only level 99% of people who see your language will ever look at, and also because that's the level that needs to hook in people in order for even the other 1% to actually want to investigate it further...