Creating a Conlang Family Part 9: Romanization

Hello! This time, we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming of morphology for romanization! As a warning, this post is going to be fairly chart-heavy. I’m just going to show the completed IPA tables with their romanizations, and briefly discuss some of the choices I made in making them. Let’s get into it!

Lang 1a Consonants		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Stop/Affricate		p ⟨p⟩	t ts ⟨t ts⟩		k ⟨k⟩	q ⟨q⟩
Fricative	Voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩	ç ⟨sh⟩	x ⟨kh⟩	χ ⟨qh⟩
	Voiced	v ⟨v⟩	z ⟨z⟩	ʝ ⟨j⟩	ɣ ⟨gh⟩	ʁ ⟨rh⟩
Liquids		–	ɾ l ⟨r l⟩	–	–	–
Nasals		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩

 

Lang 1a Vowels	Front	Back
Close	i iː ⟨i ī⟩	u uː ⟨u ū⟩
Mid	e eː ⟨e ē⟩	o oː ⟨o ō⟩
Open	ɐ ⟨ă⟩	ɑ ɑː ⟨a ā⟩

Some things to note:

• The use of ⟨ă⟩ for /ɐ/, inspired by the Romanian use of ⟨ă⟩ for /ə/.
• The use of ⟨rh⟩ for /ʁ/. As far as I know, this isn’t precedented. However, in the languages that have /ʁ/ as a dedicated phoneme, the prevailing standard seems to be ⟨ğ⟩, which I am not a fan of.
• The use of ⟨j⟩ instead of ⟨zh⟩. I just like it better for this language.

 

Lang 1b Consonants		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop/Affricate		p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩	tʃ ⟨ch⟩	k ⟨k⟩
Fricative	Voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩	ʃ ⟨sh⟩	x ⟨kh⟩
	Voiced	v ⟨v⟩	z ⟨s⟩	ʒ ⟨zh⟩	ɣ̞ ⟨gh⟩
Approximant		β̞ ⟨bh⟩	ð̞ l ⟨dh l⟩	j ⟨y⟩
Taps		–	ɾ ⟨r⟩	–	–
Nasals		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩

 

Lang 1b Vowels	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i iː ⟨i í⟩	y yː ⟨ü ű⟩	ɯ ɯː ⟨ı ıı⟩	u uː ⟨u ú⟩
Open	ɜ ɜː ⟨e é⟩	ɞ ɞː ⟨ö ő⟩	ɑ ɑː ⟨a á⟩	ɒ ɒː ⟨o ó⟩

The vowel system’s romanization is very wacky, probably because the vowels themselves are pretty weird. That’s one of the shortcomings of romanization – it has issues when dealing with extremely non-latin-like phonologies. This may not be the final version, but it’s good enough for now. Some things to note:

• Acute accents for long vowels, including double acutes for long umlaut vowels – think Hungarian. I like this better than double letters, because ⟨oo⟩ and ⟨ee⟩ are weird for English speakers, and I just don’t like the look of ⟨öö⟩. 
• A digraph for /ɯː/. I just couldn’t figure out how to distinguish ı with an acute accent from í. Besides, ıı looks cool. However, it’s not great, and I may change it later.
• The very English-y ⟨o⟩ for /ɒ/.
• The digraphs for the approximants. Yeah, I could have used the single letters /b d g/, but the language is already non-intuitive enough.

So that’s the romanization! With that out of the way, we can get back to our next order of business: more morphology!

…Wait, we’re going to be making protolanguage 0 instead?

…Why are we doing that now?

…OK, I guess we’re doing it. Next order of business: making protolanguage 0!