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Do you know any natlangs that look like conlangs or have unusual representations of phonemes in their orthography?
I know that Saanich and Taa are like this, they are written with an unusual orthography (Saanich all uppercase, Taa uses IPA with additional letters).

What do conlangs look like?

Since when are conlangs frequently written all-uppercase, and since when are natlangs markedly less likely to be written using IPA or Americanist characters than conlangs? (Note, e.g. African languages, where ⟨ɛ ɔ⟩ are very frequently used orthographically, a range of languages in which ⟨ə⟩ or its Cyrillic counterpart ⟨ә⟩ is used orthographically (for things ranging from /ɨ/ to /æ/), and the languages which use ⟨ʼ⟩ to mark ejectives.)

there is a natlang called Ulithian

Birdlang wrote:Taa uses IPA with additional letters

It uses clickbars (and why not?), but it's really not written in IPA. Here's the consonant inventory of West !Xoon in IPA:


And here it is in the orthography:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that <gq> is a good way to represent /ɢ/.

Wait, Taa has voiced ejectives? I thought those were impossible.

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Wait, Taa has voiced ejectives? I thought those were impossible.

The voiced aspirate and ejectives are said to be mixed-voice, at least phonetically -- they start out as a normal voiced consonant, then devoice in the middle before the release.

Thus: [dtʰ, dtsʼ].

‮suoenatroN wrote:there is a natlang called Ulithian

Ok that does sound like a conlang

I think langauges like Taa are too complicated for even a conlanger to make up

cntrational wrote:

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Wait, Taa has voiced ejectives? I thought those were impossible.

The voiced aspirate and ejectives are said to be mixed-voice, at least phonetically -- they start out as a normal voiced consonant, then devoice in the middle before the release.

Thus: [dtʰ, dtsʼ].

It's a bit more complicated than that. Voiced ejective stops in !Xoon have a voiced closure, but it is different from a normal voiced closure-- the voicing is weaker and less regular (the article I have just calls it "glottal pulses of decreasing amplitude"). The release is also different from that of a regular ejective: there is no audible posterior release of the glottal closure, and the vowel onset is strongly laryngealized, i.e. the glottal closure slowly releases instead of there being a burst release. There's also a less prominent pause between the release of the consonant and the onset of the vowel.

Ulithian uses a, e, and o with a single dot over them in the alphabet, for who knows what, and I have seen a Taa example using a small capital g.

Travis B. wrote:Since when are conlangs frequently written all-uppercase, and since when are natlangs markedly less likely to be written using IPA or Americanist characters than conlangs? (Note, e.g. African languages, where ⟨ɛ ɔ⟩ are very frequently used orthographically, a range of languages in which ⟨ə⟩ or its Cyrillic counterpart ⟨ә⟩ is used orthographically (for things ranging from /ɨ/ to /æ/), and the languages which use ⟨ʼ⟩ to mark ejectives.)

I have seen at least one conlang with all capitals called High Speech that appears to be a mixed language. And Americanist letters are used in some linguistic papers instead of the IPA, even though some of those precomposed base letter and diacritics are hard to make (not many fonts have capital m with hook in them, more have the combining comma), schwas and turned e are used all over the Pacific Northwest in the native tribal languages as well as Taos and a few other southwestern US languages, and turned e is used all over Africa, Dan language also uses turned h from IPA, but in this language it apparently is a vowel. It also uses turned e. I have seen more than one language that uses Latin extended C characters (Melpa, Ktunaxa, some languages in Africa in Senegal that use a p with a stroke, w with hook in Africa), but Latin extended D for the Saltillo and modifier letters.

There is a thread around here called "If natlangs were conlangs": viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42608
Similar enough innit?

Birdlang wrote:Ulithian uses a, e, and o with a single dot over them in the alphabet, for who knows what, and I have seen a Taa example using a small capital g.

Lithuanian also has single dots on letters how is that weird.

As a general pet peeve, I think linguists should stop making up whacko symbols for the languages they describe. Firstly, it's ncredibly hard to type especially for people who will have only primitive access to digital resources. This is 2015 and even Indians in the amazon have cellphones and many will want access to the internet at least occasionally, and it doesnt help if you make it impossible to type the damn language. Secondly, it's often opaque what is meant with those whacko symbols, or at least it's not more transparent than when you come up with other solutions such as digraphs.

I would keep diacritics and funny symbols to an absolute minimum, preferably not using more than what is used in the lingua franca of the area (so in the brazilian amazon ~s on letters are okay).
Then again the language family I am interested in currently already has a pretty established orthography for most of its languages which is already relatively old for a native american language, so there's little need to deviate from that if it is not necessary for one particular language.

sirdanilot wrote:As a general pet peeve, I think linguists should stop making up whacko symbols for the languages they describe. Firstly, it's ncredibly hard to type especially for people who will have only primitive access to digital resources. This is 2015 and even Indians in the amazon have cellphones and many will want access to the internet at least occasionally, and it doesnt help if you make it impossible to type the damn language. Secondly, it's often opaque what is meant with those whacko symbols, or at least it's not more transparent than when you come up with other solutions such as digraphs.

I would keep diacritics and funny symbols to an absolute minimum, preferably not using more than what is used in the lingua franca of the area (so in the brazilian amazon ~s on letters are okay).
Then again the language family I am interested in currently already has a pretty established orthography for most of its languages which is already relatively old for a native american language, so there's little need to deviate from that if it is not necessary for one particular language.

Just curious, what are some of the "whacko symbols" that you're thinking of? Outside of the IPA I can really only think of Americanist orthographies as having some "whacko symbols", such as the ejective barred lambda. But most of those have been around for the better part of a hundred years IIRC. What strange new symbols have come into use recently?

there's a language somewhere in africa that uses @ as a letter with a capital form. there are other languages in africa that have shit like y with hook, the florin sign, ʋ, etc. as letters.

Quite a few Native American languages use <7> to represent /ʔ/; Tlingit uses <.>--and since it also has /ʔʷ/, this also gives us <.w>.

there's a language somewhere in africa that uses @ as a letter with a capital form.

that's Koalib

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Repost from CBB:

I, on CBB wrote:if it is a natlang, then the text in the spoiler (Sakao) looks like a conlang

More: show

Aan-ohe têtíkuen âl llâth. oevwar maavorghe vôgh loen.
Nnâr rki ghave gharya ghamruerp yehu ghamhavuel ghamtêp omagho kítê thôth nyô luen Sinar. Nnâr ghamlrô ther.
Ghamlrô mayaayan athoengoen kítê vê ghryap vârkuen âpârkoen vê "Kam! Yâru tíhuersa akar vriv tê tíkoeepín toeblâth itha, tíroespín eyeth hoero
Nnâr rki ghavê "Ghe! Tíroesp ohe hâr Tíroesp uevyól pere reghregh usi tê vôgh loen, oetoeloen ghítêp lathalan. Taasêr itê vôgh hâr títa-yalyal-tuet-kos-hov ohe, talro roer lâhân têtíkuen
Nnâr Yetar masangoer voton ghítíruep ohe mam non athoengoen ghavê gharoesp uevyól mam non ghavê gharoesp
Nnâr Yetar vê "Hu! ôruer thôth nyô yethan ghamavssol vôgh, aanengór vôgh têtíkuen âl. âtâm ghamlroes takar va gharoes-írêp-ín tevren va ite
Ghe! Yoen va nasangoer awues-kos-ín na aanengór, itê ghyavroghheri aanen itê
Yetar vê ghrya vusp rki ghahó. Ghamhó-tuet-hov ohe. Nóm moehoen oeroesp oetoehoengór thômôm nyô moehoer nâr
Mâthâm ni tímsyórín aasên tívê "Papel" huer Yetar vueskosín aan-ohe. Vuesp rki ghamhó-tuet-ho(v)-p-r ohe

I suppose nobody's mentioned Arapaho yet.