General Language Thread

No, he wants a thorn, which is perhaps not the worst idea.

Nope, I set myself the restriction that I would not introduce any new letters, nor would I change any spellings except for adding diacritics. This means that Þ and ð both have to be represented by T.

Admirable. Not something I would do, but admirable.

That reminds me, what other symbols were commonly used sounds currently represented by two letters (besides the ae one)?

Interesting, you and I are on parallel tracks. I tried to use variations of the same symbol to reflect voiced vs unvoiced, and stop vs spirant (fricative) versions of the same phoneme. But I was using symbols inspired by Tolkien's, so a vertical stem, and a symbol (open or closed loop, single or double) indicated all four variations (voiced stop, unvoiced stop, etc) by it's position on the stem (right or left, above or below). Diacritics have the advantage of using the standard keyboard, of course.

I could never tell the difference between voiced s and the normal way to pronounce z. "Ts" and tz" are the stopped versions.

Isn't "p" isn't just a stopped "f"—notice the different positions of the lower lip. 'Course, you can cheat and pretend they're the same, in order to simplify things, but that limits you pretty much to English phonemes, and I was going for something a bit more universal (Indo-European phonemes).

Still and all, you've given me another set of tables to compare mine to. Thanks for sharing that.

okay, I had decided to ask Chat GPT for some Goroawase readings and I want to ask Japanese language speakers to verify them for obvious reasons (and figured here was more appropriate than the Japan thread)

• Tidal Wave>Tsunami> 273 (This was done as a test FTR)
• Frostbite>Tosho> 101
• Thudnerstorm>Raiu> 01
• Eruption>Funka> 29
• Light>Hikari> 196
• Wind>Kaze> 93
• Shadow>Kage> 96
• Earthquake>Jishin> 21
• Blaze>Hono> 801
• Shock>Shogeki> 17
• Freeze>Toketsu> 101 (if this and the frostbite one is true, then that measn they share the same number and that one is redundant)
• Flood>Kozui> 53
• Snow>Yuki> 81
• Hail>Hyo> 1
• Ice>Kori> 56
• Moonlight>Gekko> 95
• Sunlight>Nikko> 25
• Starlight>Seiko> 35
• Twilight>Hakubo> 890
• Bind>Shibaru> 486
• Halt>Teishi> 14
• Shatter>Kudaku> 919

Oof… most of them are reaaally stretchy, if not outright bullshit.

Though 21 for "Jishin" kinda works because "ji" can mean "next" and "shin" can mean "new".

"Tsunami" as 273 works though. And "tosho" and 101 I guess.

Edited by Lyendith on Dec 28th 2023 at 11:11:27 AM

that figures, are there Japanese worlds with these meanings that can be rendered into goroawase numbers?

(as for Tsunami, that is done as a test. I can already infer the 273 interpretation if nothing else due to Konami and their use of their own goroawase code 573)

Blame the how the printing press came into English. It's responsible for a lot of things.

The issues with the English printing press are also responsible for a few quirks in Welsh, the biggest being the lack of a letter k in modern Welsh. Welsh used to use the letter k but the presses were designed for English and Latin, which didn't use the letter k very much and therefore couldn't cope with the scale of use in Welsh. So, the letter k got changed to the letter c, and this is why the letter c is always a hard sound in Welsh.

It was a massively controversial decision at the time, and even today there are occasionally debates about whether the k should be brought back. So, Welsh has a boundary where older forms of Welsh use k and not c, whereas modern Welsh uses c and not k.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Dec 29th 2023 at 2:11:12 PM

We had something similar with Irish. Once upon a time, a dot above a letter, known as a ponc séimhiú, was used to indicate lenition; for example, Ḃ and Ṁ would be pronounced as V (and the letter V itself does not exist in Irish, though it is used in some loanwords like vóta, meaning vote). When typewriters were introduced, they weren't able to type a ponc séimhiú, and so the representation was officially changed to a H after the letter. Thus, the word marḃ (dead; pronounced /marv/) became marbh.

Modern computers can type a ponc séimhiú quite easily, but children are thought to use the H séimhiú instead, so that remains the standard. The ponc ṡeimhiú is mostly seen on intentionally old-timey writing, that also used Gaelic typeface.

Typewriters did have another, surprising effect. Traditionally, Irish used the Tironian et (⁊) instead of the ampersand (&). But because early typewriters didn't include the Tironian et, the ampersand came to replace it. The Tironian et is used in the same circumstances you tend to see the ponc séimhiú.

OK, more diacritics English should adopt! Time for the vowels.

Acute accent

The accute accent works the same way it does in Irish, Spanish, Icelandic, and to a certain extent French; it also works the same as the grave accent in Gaelic and Italian, and I believe the circumflex in Welsh also works the same way.

Macron

Macrons indicate the other long vowels in English.

Brève

A brève indicates a schwa-like sound, except on top of Y, in which case it indicates that the Y should be pronounced as I.

I believe that A can also be pronounced as /ə/, but I can't think of any examples, and all the examples I found by googling are for words in which the A is pronounced as one normally thinks it is supposed to be. For example, every language blog and guide page I found says that can is pronouned /kən/, but I've only ever heard it pronounced /kæn/. This illustrates why diacritics are a good idea! They mean that a normal person can write the word as can, while a language blogger can write it as căn.

Ring

A ring on an A indicates that it should be longer, but not, like, long-long. On an O, it indicates that the O should be pronounced as A.

Umlaut

An umlaut makes a vowel long and puts a /j/ before it. This normally only applies to the letter U, but could also go on the first A in the local pronunciation of Co. Cavan.

Also

If two vowels occur together, they are pronounced seperately, with diacritics indicating how each one should be pronounced. Thus, for example, real would be spelled rēal, and re-use would become rēüse as a noun, but rēüṡe as a verb.

They are pronounced the same. Try pronouncing one, and as you do so, switch to the other. The difference is in the fact that Z uses your vocal chords, while S does not.

There are actually a number of pairs of English letters whose pronunciations differ by voice: B/P, D/T, F/V, G/K, S/Z; J can represent the voiced form of both CH (as in jump) and SH (as in bijou).

Pretty much. Likewise, B is the stopped form of V, and languages that lack /v/, such as Spanish and Japanese, tend to replace it with /b/.

French doesn't have lexical stress. The acute just makes an E pronounced [e] (closest vowel in English is that in fit), instead of being silent or a schwa. Our diacritics are a bit of a mess (and our spelling in general is quite messy).

I could never figure out how to pronounce the grave and circumflex, but É seemed to be pronounced about the same as in Irish.

You are specifically making a phonetic alphabet, right?

As I said, it's a mess. The grave only changes the pronunciation of an E (on an A or U, it's used to distinguish between homophones), and the circumflex of an A, E or O (it often indicates there used to be an S after the vowel). A diaresis indicate the letter isn't part of a digraph or trigraph. Ç is [s] (used before A, O or U where C would be [k]).

Edited by Khudzlin on Dec 29th 2023 at 3:30:03 AM

I think a lot of these diacritics are superfluous for daily use, because the pronunciation of those vowels is already determined by their place in the word in many cases. Diacritics should only be used for ambiguous cases and where multiple pronunciations are allowed.

They should also be meaningful, so no ^ like in French.

I could see using an O-circumflex in cases where earlier English /o/ shifted to /ʌ/: for example, "côm," "sôn," "wôn," "ônion," and "dôzen" for come, son, won (and maybe one?), onion, and dozen. It would partially preserve the spelling we're unshakably used to, while providing an explicit sign of how to say the word.

Edited by Jhimmibhob on Dec 29th 2023 at 7:05:49 AM

I want to talk about obsolete English symbols again and their viability in reintroduction. (Prolly a bit biased I know)

• Þ: both my favorite of the bunch and I think the easiest to bring back as the /th/ sound is prominent enought to warrant its own character and make things more easier overall for learning dental fricatives.
• Ð: I don't this this is as viable as it shares some sounds with þ while also resembling a D too much. It has no niche basically and if we had to have a letter for its phonic I'd prefer something more original. Also, crypto meme coin associations kill it for me.
• The long s: I cannot find the glyph for it with my phone but know that it tends to resemble an f. Now then I don't think there should be two separate forms for the same lowercase letter with its own rules as English is already chaotic enough as it is. If there has to be alternate glyphs they should be cosmetic and more to the point, not easily confused with other letters or needlessly complicated.
• Æ and other variants: I can see them returning, but not as their own letters but rather specialized glyphs for kerning issues. That said I'd prefer more original symbols for letters representing the /ae/ sound and other long vowels and even diacritics would be less... Redundant than this.
• Ƿ(Wynn): the fact that symbols isn't rebderable in the edit window is rather telling of it's redundancy. We already have W so it's original purpose is obsolete and it needs a new niche is we are to bring it back to the language, as it stands there is no way to have this glyph be useful without being confusing
• Ȝ (Yogh): the main issue here is (why is there a 3 in that word), that is the main obstacle to it's readoption.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 5th 2024 at 9:32:31 AM

Oh, K. :P

case in point :þ

But there is a different between using multiple letters for one sound and having two different lowercase versions of a consenant for arbitrary reasons and use cases.

I think thorn is quite cool ... but despite its Anglo-Saxon cred, "th" is a perfectly good digraph that represents the sound well without having to add a whole new character to the modern keyboard. I believe "dh" ought to represent the voiced equivalent /ð/, which we currently have no way of distinguishing from /θ/ in writing.

Sometimes I represent that phoneme as "thz".

/θ/ and /δ/ still exist as letters besides their use as phonemes in the IPA...in Modern Greek. And they are pronounced pretty much identically to English.

Main problem is that I find overused digraphs annoying and am soemthing of a maximalist in general (which would bleed into my opinions on symbols natch)

Like there is a reason why we use "W" over "uu". It is also why I think Ask and Ether could have a niche (though I'd still go with more original symbols for the respective sounds). As it stands "th" is too common for a mere digraph.

(my issues with Qu are related but that is more because of the "why?' aspect. It has the worst of both worlds by having a unique letter but also having its only purpose being to be saddled to U for English words and sometimes summing in for K on spellings of foreign words. Just Why?)

As for the keyboard thing, that could be addressed by having keybinds (Alt is rather useless to most people as is. Alt+T and Shift+Alt+T would work for Thorn. Having the same thing apply to D for eth would work as well if we have to add that glyph) until the hardware catches up (likely by shortening the right shift key and adding the thorn key between M and ,/< and shifting the latter and subsequent keys to the right)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 7th 2024 at 12:59:05 PM

The French BÉPO keyboard has a special dead key command (altgr+S) to type foreign characters like þ (t), ð (d) or ß (s), it’s pretty neat.

Neat.

Ahem, for clarity's sake (not speaking to any person specifically). I want to stress that the alt key could be expanded because as it stands its only common use is to access the task manager. If keybinds exist allow that to access certain characters much like how the BEPO keyboard does it, then it would allow a stop gat for the early adoption period of new glyphs until the hardware adapts (or doesn't)