I very early on saw the merit in imposing a standard orthography on all of these languages. Because they're all spoken by humans and species with similar phonologic capabilities, this standardization does not impose unnecessary constraints on the languages.
My original version of the standard orthography predated my ownership of a computer, so it freely used diacritical marks: the acute accent, grave accent, circumflex accent, and diaresis. The acute accent makes the vowel long. The grave accent gives it primary accent. The circumflex combines the first two (in languages where primary-accented vowels can be short or long). The diaresis marks separations of adjacent vowels into separate syllables where the vowels would normally form a diphthong and also marks vocalic "y" in contexts where it might be mistaken for consonantal "y". Note also that if the first vowel of a pair is marked in any of these ways that the pair of vowels is always two syllables. Sample words for pronunciation are General American English unless otherwise noted.
Note: the simple long vowels lack the English off-glides.
| a | father [short duration] | ||||||||
| á | father [long duration] | ||||||||
| æ | sat | ||||||||
| ai | ice | ||||||||
| au | plow | ||||||||
| e | pet | ||||||||
| é | same | ||||||||
| ei | say [with the off-glide] | ||||||||
| i | lip | ||||||||
| í | leap | ||||||||
| o | soft | ||||||||
| ó | tone | ||||||||
| oi | joy | ||||||||
| u | foot
| ú | moon
| ÿ | rounded i, like French lune [short duration]
| y | same as ÿ, when unambiguously a vowel
| ý | rounded i, like French lune [long duration]
| |
Sonant nasals, liquids, etc., are written with a following colon (:), e.g., n:.
| p | open |
| t | otter |
| c | acme |
| k | [alternate for 'c'] |
| jh | church |
| b | band |
| d | dog |
| g | gold |
| j | jam |
| bh | bilabial voiced spirant, like Spanish abajo |
| ph | bilabial unvoiced spirant, counterpart to 'bh' |
| f | fox |
| th | thick |
| ch | unvoiced velar spirant, like Gaelic loch |
| sh | shoe |
| v | voice |
| dh | that |
| gh | voiced velar spirant, counterpart to 'ch' |
| zh | azure |
| m | man |
| n | north |
| ng | angle |
| n'g | 'n' + 'g' |
| w | west |
| hw | where |
| l | light |
| hl | voiceless counterpart to 'l', like Welsh 'll' |
| r | 'tap' r |
| hr | voiceless counterpart to 'r', like Welsh 'rh' |
| s | some |
| z | zest |
| y | yes |
| hy | voiceless counterpart to 'y' |
| h | host |
| x | 'c' + 's' |
| qu | 'c' + 'w' |
Doubled consonants are phonemic in all languages covered by this orthography. Monograph consonants (p, v, r, etc.) are doubled simply by writing two of them. Digraph consonants are doubled by doubling the second letter: e.g., 'hw' becomes 'hww'. To distinguish 'hw' + 'w', were this necessary, one would write "hw'w". However, the accidence rules in all of the languages described here prohibit such oddities.
Aspirate consonants (stops, etc., + "h") are written as the consonant followed by an apostrophe and then the letter "h". For example, the English word "cat" would be transliterated as "c'hat".
The token Ø is used in some explanations of grammar to denote a zero or empty entity. It is never a letter.
| Return to my Conlangs index. | Last updated 30 September 2006. |