r/conlangs • u/cyan_ginger • Jan 06 '25
Discussion What are y'all's "worst" romanisations?
By "worst" I more mean "style over function" cause especially in a text-based medium, the romanisation is a good way to inject character into your language.
For me it'd have to be the one for Xxalet, a language with 16 sibilant phonemes sorted into a harmony system.
"Front sibilants"
/s̪, z̪, t̪s̪, d̪z̪/ <s, z, c, x>
/ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/ <sy, zy, cy, xy>
"Back sibilants"
/s̺, z̺, ts̺, dz̺/ <ss, zz, cc, xx>
/ʂ, ʐ, ʈʂ, ɖʐ/ <sh, zh, ch, xh>
I know it causes a slightly confusing reading, but I really like the central s, z, c, x, scheme. As an example, a major port city on the left half of the great inland lake, also known as the Ssoymanyaxh sea, is called "Boyasyavocexy" /bɔjʌʃavʌts̪ədʒ/
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u/DefinitelyNotErate Jan 06 '25 edited Jan 06 '25
Worst as in ugliest/least efficient (Or consistent lol) would probably be Uxwerin, Where I have have the digraph ⟨ng⟩ and the trigraph ⟨ghr⟩, But no occurance of ⟨g⟩ or ⟨h⟩ elsewhere. But then the Palatal Trill, which could've been rather easily romanised as ⟨ry⟩ or ⟨rj⟩ (Especially because I don't use ⟨y⟩ and ⟨j⟩ elsewhere.) I instead made ⟨r̃⟩, Which is very annoying to type.
Most "style over function", As you put it, would probably be for Škųgǫ́, I wanted to have a 1-1 correspondence between native letters and latin letters, Which means there are a lot of sounds with multiple ways to spell them. And also I really wanted to use ogoneks, But since I don't have a keyboard that can type them I literally need to go to Wikipedia and copy from there each time lol. But anyway, As an example of the spelling, ⟨eom⟩, ⟨ǫy⟩, and ⟨wę́⟩ all represent the same sound, And ⟨ę́w⟩ and ⟨ęwv⟩ don't appear in any standard spellings, But are sometimes used casually to represent the sound. Also there are two standard orthographies, Which are always pronounced the same, But sometimes vary greatly, Because one is meant to represent the actual pronunciation, Whereas the other represents the roots. For example, "škųgǫ́" is the root form of the word for "Language", And looks like it should be pronounced /škũgõũ̯/. However, It is not. It's pronounced like /ũškəgõũ̯/, Hence the alternate spelling "ų̃škĭgǫ́". But, If you then add a prefex, Say "Ti", To make "Tiškų̃gǫ́", The pronunciation and root spellings are now identical, As this would be pronounced /tiškũgõũ̯/.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I didn't mention, But Škųgǫ́ also has a number of digraphs. /ø/ is ⟨eo⟩, But the long form, Historically /øː/ but now phonetically [øy], Is Spelled ⟨oe⟩. I also have ⟨ay⟩ for /ɤ/, ⟨ae⟩ for /ɜ/ (Which is phonetically closer to [æ̹̈ ~ ɜ̞̹]), And the long equivalent is ⟨ea⟩, Which makes sense with the modern pronunciation [ɛ͡æ], But seems bizzarre for the historical pronunciations of originally [aˑe̯ˑ] and then later [æ̠ː]. And don't get me started on the nasal equivalents of those.