Article series of diacritics project on FrathWiki

[Qwynegold]

Hi! I've created this page on FrathWiki. This project deals with different diacritical marks in the Latin alphabet. It should have lots of lists of what different languages use different diacritics for. The purpose is to be a resource for conlangers designing an orthography or romanization. You can check this project for natlang precedences. Though I have opened up the project for conlangs and phonetic transcription systems too after receiving some criticism (see Tilde for examples of how they have been included).

Now I'd like to ask everyone for help filling in data about various languages. But please read the front page, and also the talk page so you'll now what the layout is supposed to be like. I'd like it to be coherent throughout. It's quite a lot of text though, so I'm afraid that it will either scare people away, or that people will simply ignore the guidelines and fuck things up with inconsistent design.

Right now I'd especially like someone who knows shit about French to add information about French diacritics, because Wikipedia wasn't comprehensible enough. See for example Diaeresis and Umlaut where I have added French, but no information about the letters' pronunciation or any notes about why French uses them.

[Qwynegold]

I have questions about Esperanto. Does the /u̯/ really contrast with /u/? What about /i̯/? It seems to be in complementary distribution with /j/. I've only written this about it.

[Porphyrogenitos]

I have questions about Esperanto. Does the /u̯/ really contrast with /u/? What about /i̯/? It seems to be in complementary distribution with /j/. I've only written this about it.

Yes, /u̯/ contrasts with /u/ in Esperanto. All vowels are syllabic except for /u̯/. So <aŭ> is always /au̯/ and <au> is always /a.u/. Admittedly, I'm not sure if there are any minimal pairs, but it still definitely has phonemic status - take laŭ /lau̯/ "according to, along" vs. balau /ba'la.u/ "sweep!" - or Belaŭo /be'lau̯.o/ "Palau".

And if you're going by Wikipedia's description of /j/ as a non-syllabic vowel after vowels, then, yeah, I'd say that's misbegotten. There's no reason to analyze Esperanto /j/ as anything but a consonant/semivowel.

[Pole, the]

What about /i̯/? It seems to be in complementary distribution with /j/. I've only written this about it.

There isn't any /i̯/ in Esperanto, is there?

[Qwynegold]

I have questions about Esperanto. Does the /u̯/ really contrast with /u/? What about /i̯/? It seems to be in complementary distribution with /j/. I've only written this about it.

Yes, /u̯/ contrasts with /u/ in Esperanto. All vowels are syllabic except for /u̯/. So <aŭ> is always /au̯/ and <au> is always /a.u/. Admittedly, I'm not sure if there are any minimal pairs, but it still definitely has phonemic status - take laŭ /lau̯/ "according to, along" vs. balau /ba'la.u/ "sweep!" - or Belaŭo /be'lau̯.o/ "Palau".

And if you're going by Wikipedia's description of /j/ as a non-syllabic vowel after vowels, then, yeah, I'd say that's misbegotten. There's no reason to analyze Esperanto /j/ as anything but a consonant/semivowel.

Aha, thanks!

What about /i̯/? It seems to be in complementary distribution with /j/. I've only written this about it.

There isn't any /i̯/ in Esperanto, is there?

The Wikipedia article says so. There's a table that says that <j> is either /j/ or /i̯/. But I had a feeling it was dumb. The thing with /u̯/ though is that there's no /w/ which it could be grouped with.

[Qwynegold]

I have a question about Danish.

Standard Danish orthography has no compulsory diacritics, but allows the use of an acute accent for disambiguation. Most often, an accent on e marks a stressed syllable in one of a pair of homographs that have different stresses, for example en dreng (a boy) versus én dreng (one boy). It can also be part of the official spelling such as in allé (avenue) or idé (idea).

Less often, any vowel except å may be accented to indicate stress on a word, either to clarify the meaning of the sentence, or to ease the reading otherwise. For example: jeg stód op ("I was standing"), versus jeg stod óp ("I got out of bed"); hunden gør (det) ("the dog does (it)"), versus hunden gǿr ("the dog barks"). Most often, however, such distinctions are made using typographical emphasis (italics, underlining) or simply left to the reader to infer from the context, and the use of accents in such cases may appear dated. A common context in which the explicit acute accent is preferred is to disambiguate en/et (a, indefinite article) and én/ét (one, numeral) in central places in official written materials such as advertising, where clarity is important.

Does anyone know how Danish intonation works? Does the stressed word receive higher pitch, which ↗ would be appropriate for marking?