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Here's some stuff on Zokardi. I have a few questions on romanization, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with how I've done it. Any feedback on just the phonology or ortho though would be helpful!

Vowels
short: <i ë ä ü a u o e> /i e ɛ~æ ʉ a u o ʌ/
long: <í ê â û,ú ó é,á> /iː eː æː ʉː oː ɑː/
(long */uː/ has merged with long /ʉː/; long */ʌː/ merged with long /aː/)
diphthongs: <äi ai äu ei eu ou oi ëi ëu> /æi̯ ɑe̯ æo̯ ʌi̯ ʌʉ̯ ɔʉ̯ oi̯ ei̯ ɛʉ̯/
(ei and eu are marginal, and where they are retained from the merger with /æi/ and /æo/ respectively, they are either pronounced /eː/ and /iʉ~jʉ/ respectively)

Vowels can also appear in hiatus, so you can assume any romanized <eu> is /e.u/ (which is a frequent sequence).

Also, how should I distinguish /ʉ/ from /u/ in romanization? I think I might use the tilde by analogy of <õ>, but I have no keyboard on my iPod that has such a key. If I did that, anyways, though, I might as well use <ã> for /æ/ shouldn't I?

Consonants
nasals: <m n ń ng> /m n ɲ ŋ/
plosives: <p b t d k g> /p b t d k g/
affricates: <ts dz c j> /t͡s d͡z t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/
fricatives: <f v s z ł š ž ś ź h> /f v s z ɬ~ɮ ʃ ʒ ç ʝ h>
rhotic: <r ř ṙ> /r r̥ ɹ/
approximant: <w l y> /w l j/

*can someone recommend a way to distinguish /r/ from /ɹ/ in romanization? Geminates are of course a thing, so <rr> for the trill doesn't work.

There is also the letter X which is /ks/ or /gz/ (depends on what it condenses). eg, feuxa /feˈuksa/ "to dream"; aixa /ˈɑe̯gzʌ/ (from "aigtsõ").

Consonant clusters are progressive: if a voiced consonant begins the sequence, every consonant following it will be voiced. Hence /ɑegzʌ/ instead of /ɑeksʌ/.

Usually speakers are very conservative in speech and pronounce every consonant clearly, but in certain words some great deal of lenition occurs. For example, the number 100 is "aigšxib." This should be pronounced /ɑegʒˈgzib/, but this is quite a mouthful and so you say /ɑegʒˈʒib/.

More should come later, but dunno what I want to share first. [Nominal/Adjectival/Verbal] morphology? Numbers? Something else? Dunno.

*can someone recommend a way to distinguish /r/ from /ɹ/ in romanization? Geminates are of course a thing, so <rr> for the trill doesn't work.

First of all, your conlang looks sweet. Now to the question: I've never used those together, so I can only guess. Maybe <q> for /r/? One of them could be <rh> as well. <z, d> (or combinations of those, since you have a /d/ phoneme already) could also be explored, considering that [z, d, r]-based phonemes tend to be quite elastic among one another.

Or you could use a tilde over the <r> for /r/ and just use plain old <r> for /ɹ/ or something.

Vijay wrote:Or you could use a tilde over the <r> for /r/ and just use plain old <r> for /ɹ/ or something.

I would avoid a tilde as that strongly implies nasalization. One could use <ř> for /r/ or /ɹ/, but that too has problems, because that implies a fricative. I personally would just use some arbitrary contentless diacritic for one or the other, such as <ṙ> for /ɹ/ and <r> for /r/.

Travis B. wrote:I would avoid a tilde as that strongly implies nasalization.

I think Hausa does something like this.

I don't get <õ> for /ʌ/. In my own languages, I use stroke/bar + front unrounded vowel for back unrounded vowels. A good way to represent /ʉ/ is <y>, whose IPA value is a close front rounded vowel. As for /r/ vs /ɹ/, I would use an accent (either grave or acute) on it, or perhaps a simple dot. I use doubled vowels for my long vowels, but it helps that vowels in hiatus are very rare and occur mainly in well known words. Of course, vowels in hiatus can be separated with an apostrophe or some other mark (my favorite is the palatilisation sign from Cyrillic). All diacritics used should have one consistent meaning for every vowel it applies to and one consistent meaning for every consonant it applies to. <x> seems to serve no purpose. Otherwise, your romanisation looks great.
If I were making an orthography for the modern languages, not accounting for old phonemes, it would look like this:
<i e è y a u o ø>
<ī ē ḕ ō ū ⱥ>
<èi ⱥe ⱥo øi øu oy oi ei èy>
<m n ň ŋ> /m n ɲ ŋ/
<p b t d k g>
<ts dz tś dź>
<f v s z ł ś ź š ž h>
<r ṛ ð>
<w l j>
Vowels in hiatus can be distinguished from diphthongs by a diaeresis
I don't get this: Is <ei eu> usually /e.i e.u/ or /ei̯ ɛʉ̯/?
However, the language seems to just use an older form for its writing system. To make an orthography for the language accounting for old phonemes, I need the old phonology.

feuksa - to dream
ⱥegzø - ?
ⱥegźib - 100

Other characters you can use instead of bars/strokes are horns, which are only used in Vietnamese. If that is too obscure or you can't get a Vietnamese font, use dots and have a dotless i like in Turkish. If that is not good enough, use a grave accent on <o> for /ɑː/ and a tilde for /ʌ/.

Holy crap that's a lot of comments! Thanks guys ^^

youkai01 wrote:

*can someone recommend a way to distinguish /r/ from /ɹ/ in romanization? Geminates are of course a thing, so <rr> for the trill doesn't work.

First of all, your conlang looks sweet.

Thank you!

Now to the question: I've never used those together, so I can only guess. Maybe <q> for /r/? One of them could be <rh> as well. <z, d> (or combinations of those, since you have a /d/ phoneme already) could also be explored, considering that [z, d, r]-based phonemes tend to be quite elastic among one another.

I have thought about <rh>, but I tend to have intervocalic R.h sequences. So it could still get confusing.

Travis B. wrote:

Vijay wrote:Or you could use a tilde over the <r> for /r/ and just use plain old <r> for /ɹ/ or something.

I would avoid a tilde as that strongly implies nasalization.

And a tilde'd r is no bueno for me. It looks weird.

One could use <ř> for /r/ or /ɹ/, but that too has problems, because that implies a fricative.

And I'm already using it for the voiceless trill, inspired by it's frequent use for the voiceless trilled fricative in Czech

I personally would just use some arbitrary contentless diacritic for one or the other, such as <ṙ> for /ɹ/ and <r> for /r/.

ṙ is not a bad idea, actually…

mèþru wrote:I don't get <õ> for /ʌ/.

It's inspired by Estonian (and Vorõ).

In my own languages, I use stroke/bar + front unrounded vowel for back unrounded vowels.

Hmm, I'm not sure how I like it on vowels other than ø though. It is partially an artlang afterall

As for /r/ vs /ɹ/, I would use an accent (either grave or acute) on it, or perhaps a simple dot.

I should probly use the dot. Then I can change the <ñ> to <ń> for consistency with <ś> and <ź> (all three being palatals)

I use doubled vowels for my long vowels, but it helps that vowels in hiatus are very rare and occur mainly in well known words. Of course, vowels in hiatus can be separated with an apostrophe or some other mark (my favorite is the palatilisation sign from Cyrillic). All diacritics used should have one consistent meaning for every vowel it applies to and one consistent meaning for every consonant it applies to.

Mm, double vowels make words way longer than they need to be though. Hiatus in Zokardi is fairly rare, and really only common with <ei> and <eu>. These are the two most common occurrences of vowels in hiatus, so to mark hiatus would probably be unnecessary in most cases.

<x> seems to serve no purpose. Otherwise, your romanisation looks great.

Thank you! But I like <x>, and it serves to shorten words (aigzõ aixõ), and especially in compounds, this is quite a save. Although, I guess it kinda takes away some morphological information (any instance of k/g + s/z becomes <x>).

If I were making an orthography for the modern languages, not accounting for old phonemes, it would look like this: […]

That actually isn't that bad But some favourite letters are missed

Vowels in hiatus can be distinguished from diphthongs by a diaeresis
I don't get this: Is <ei eu> usually /e.i e.u/ or /ei̯ ɛʉ̯/?

Usually /e.i e.u/, yes.

However, the language seems to just use an older form for its writing system. To make an orthography for the language accounting for old phonemes, I need the old phonology.

I don't usually make proto-languages before the modern form. I tend to make the history of the language up as I go along. Only till I make a sister language or something like that do I start to actually develop older forms of the language(s). So, I'm sorry I can't show you any old phonology But there's no harm in having a historical orthography, just look at English, French and Thai (yeah, refer to the three most complicated orthographies in the world)

ⱥegzø - 8

Thanks everybody for your feedback! ^^ Really helps

What's a good way to indicate frontedness? I was thinking about how pinyin e is /ɤ/, and figured that Zokardi <e> could be /ʌ/. Then the three front vowels /ʉ e æ/ could use the same diacritical for short frontedness, and the circumflex could be used for long frontedness. I'm not sure how I feel about the umlaut, but that seems the most logical choice, eh?

So that'd give me the following:
<i ë ä ü a u o e>
<í ê â [û,ú] ó [é,á]> (square brackets = same chroneme)
<äi ai äu ei eu ou oi ëi ëu>

I quite like that honestly. It's consistent, at least. How you guys like this?

And I shall change former <tj ñ x> to <tš ń ks/kz/gs/gz> respectively. <Tj> is too Catalanesque for a non-romlang I'm keeping <j> because it's a frequent phoneme, and to represent it with a digraph would require too much respelling and such… and I like it. /ɹ/ will also be represented by <ṙ> since that's a diacritic with no other meaning on consonants.

I realised I used <ø> when I meant <ɇ>
<i e è y a u o ɇ>
<ī ē ḕ ō ū ⱥ>
<èi ⱥe ⱥo ɇi ɇu oy oi ei èy>
<m n ň ŋ> /m n ɲ ŋ/
<p b t d k g>
<ts dz tś dź>
<f v s z ł ś ź š ž h>
<r ṛ ð>
<w l j>

feuksa - to dream
ⱥegzɇ - ?
ⱥegźib - 100

I did my homework on the keyboard of the iPod (well I actually found that of an iPhone, but I assume that it is the same for both). As to front unroundeds, you do not have any good options.
The phoneme is analyzed as /ǝ/, [ɤ] is just an allophone for it when it is syllable-final and not preceded by a glide (which, yes, is very often, but analyzing phonemes also takes into account how they pattern with others). The best way to signify frontness with diacritics is the umlaut, but then you can't use the diaeresis. If you use acutes for long vowels, a double acute for front vowels seems more intuitive. <e> as /ʌ/ makes sense as a historical development, but it makes the language harder for foreigners to pronounce, as this is a unique usage. If you are going to use <j> for an affricate, you may want to use <c> for the voiceless equivalent. Considering that the umlaut is derived from back vowel + <e>, it might be a nice option for the back unroundeds if you don't care about real life usage (just like <e> for /ʌ/).

If I use <c> for an affricate, I'm tempted then to use it for /ts/ and then use <č> for /tS/. I've never been fond of <c>, and even if it's just for romanization, I'm hesitant. But maybe.

As for the ease of learners, well, they'll have to learn what each letter means anyway. And let's say someone does learn my language, certainly the romanization would be used for the first few weeks until they gained enough proficiency in the native script.

mèþru wrote:Considering that the umlaut is derived from back vowel + <e>, it might be a nice option for the back unroundeds if you don't care about real life usage (just like <e> for /ʌ/).

Sorry, this one kinda confuses me, are you saying that it does work on the back vowels to indicate their respective fronts?

Yeah, I'm probably going to ignore real life usage for now. After all, the romanization is mainly for me to write in the language here without having to make a font or something for my conscript.

Actually, I was thinking of <c> /t͡ʃ/ to go with <j>, as c and j are often used as voiceless and voiced versions of palatal phonemes.
Umlauts are added to back vowels to make them front vowels in real life. What I am saying is that if you do not care about real life usage, you could say back rounded vowels /u o ɔ ɒ/ + <e>, the origin of umlauts, was used to indicate back unroundeds /ɯ ɤ ʌ ɑ/ and later became umlauted vowels. This wouldn't work well anyway if the language does not use a Latin script alphabet as its orthography.

mèþru wrote:Actually, I was thinking of <c> /t͡ʃ/ to go with <j>, as c and j are often used as voiceless and voiced versions of palatal phonemes.

I know, but I'd still be tempted (given the graphs <š ž> from <s z>, I'd want symmetry). I've used the pair before in former transliterations of Isyan, so it wouldn't take much getting used to. So maybe.

Umlauts are added to back vowels to make them front vowels in real life. What I am saying is that if you do not care about real life usage, you could say back rounded vowels /u o ɔ ɒ/ + <e>, the origin of umlauts, was used to indicate back unroundeds /ɯ ɤ ʌ ɑ/ and later became umlauted vowels. This wouldn't work well anyway if the language does not use a Latin script alphabet as its orthography.

Oh, okay. No, that wouldn't work very well. I think I'll stick to my last ideas with the vowels, but thank you for all your suggestions, mèþru! ^^

Btw, Koko, Malayalam also has a distinction between /r/ and /ɻ/, and /ɻ/ is often (perhaps even typically) Romanized as <zh>.

Imma get into the pronominal morphology.

First person
Singular
nom.: o
gen./instr.: aiv
dat.: od
acc.: u(t)
pred./voc.: on
loc.: eli

Dual
nom.: ân
gen./instr.: äb
dat.: vë
acc.: win
pred./voc.: osë
loc.: fâ

Plural
nom.: hâu (NOTE: purely etymological, there is no longer a length distinction in diphthongs)
gen.: śü
dat.: ok
acc.: yad
voc.: ońe
loc.: ńä

Second Person
singular
i
yëz
í
ir
yë
yëz

Dual
jü
źa
ire
ës
jug
jüt

Plural
ńe
ńip
śu
śâ
jmi
źno

The third person pronouns are a bit more complex, and I shall get to them later ^^