The CBB

Hi all,

I am making a new conlang and I can't think of a way to romanize my vowels.

My vowels are:

/ɪ/ /i/
/ɛ/ /e/
/ʊ/ /u/
/ɔ/ /o/
edit: I missed /a/

Each row is a short / long distinction used in vowel harmony, so I want the romanization to reflect that. Could anyone help me with this?

What are some ideas you had so far?

Edit: Welcome!

anatolewilson wrote: ↑09 Jul 2024 05:04 Hi all,

hello

I am making a new conlang and I can't think of a way to romanize my vowels.
Each row is a short / long distinction used in vowel harmony, so I want the romanization to reflect that. Could anyone help me with this?

hmm...how about this?

<i i e e u u o o a a>

/ɪ/ i
/i/ ii
/ɛ/ e
/e/ ee
/ʊ/ u
/u/ uu
/ɔ/ o
/o/ oo
/a/ a (or aa)

e/ė

e é

/i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ <i y e x a q o v u>
/i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ <i î e ê a ô o û u>
/i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ <i į e ę a ǫ o ų u>
/i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ <i ị e ẹ a ọ o ụ u>
/i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/ <ey o eigh ea ai ough owe oo eue>

For your conlang's vowels, you could consider using something like:

/ɪ/ /i/ -> i/ī
/ɛ/ /e/ -> e/ē
/ʊ/ /u/ -> u/ū
/ɔ/ /o/ -> o/ō
/a/ -> a/ā

This way, the single letter represents the short vowel, and adding a macron (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) denotes the long vowel.

TBPO wrote: ↑09 Jul 2024 08:25e é

This would have been my suggestion too, i.e.

/ɪ i/ <i í>
/ɛ e/ <e é>
/ʊ u/ <u ú>
/ɔ o/ <o ó>
/a/ <a>

1) It pops up in Icelandic (well, not exactly these vowels, but close), so natlang precedent, and 2) the acute accent, at least in my experience, is by far the easiest one to type on a keyboard (altgr+[letter], boom, done)

(also, personally, I prefer acute accents to things like macrons, double vowels, overdots, etc. so little bit biased)

Short / long or lax / tense?