Transliteration of ì & ä

Started by Sìkat, January 22, 2012, 03:30:46 PM

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Sìkat

Yawne Zize'ite, you make a very good point with regard to the digraphs, and I agree; it'll screw up the words too badly. 

I like the idea of ^ and "; they're both in the low (<127) end of the ASCII chart (94/0x5E and 34/0x22 respectively), both reasonably approximate the intended accent marks for which they're substituted, and I haven't run into a phone in the last 10 years that couldn't produce either of those characters. 

This is how the Electric Editors tackled the problem; the only difference is that they use a backslash for a grave accent instead of a caret.

Yawne Zize’ite

The advantage of strange digraphs (the Esperanto x-sistemo) is that they're very easy to type and don't disrupt the reading line as badly. Instead of using shifted number keys (which I can't touch type anyhow) I can touch-type cx gx etc. They're also easy enough to read, once you spend enough time using the system. The x-sistemo is horrible for sending a quick text to your friend quoting an Esperanto word, but works great for texting between two Esperantists or keeping personal notes. Except for extreme cases like "eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde" I can read the x-system without any trouble.

The x-system won out online over the traditional h-system because the h-system does lead to rare misreadings (s-h can occur across morpheme boundaries as in ĉashundo/chashundo/cxashundo) and the x-system sorts all ĉapelitaj literoj correctly. It's still a makeshift system, though, and now that Unicode is here, there are several scripts for Esperantists to convert the x-system to real "ĉapelitaj literoj" (letters with little hats) when reading old webpages. Something Na'vi authors don't have to worry about!

Natural language speakers back in those days usually just left the accents off and trusted to the message contents to resolve ambiguity. I never saw Esperantists do this. This worked fine for me with Spanish since words that need an accent mark to disambiguate are rare and by the time I started reading Spanish online I wasn't going to the dictionary every sentence. I have no idea how Poles and Czechs coped. This could work for Na'vi - for Thoth's sake I've seen IMing in accent-less Vietnamese - but isn't going to work out well without a very solid knowledge of the vocabulary.

Tirea Aean

hm. I kinda like

\i "a...

kaltx\i ma oey"a eylan... I could probably get used to that.

Mech

#23
I suggest a quite different, but useable and easy trick: substitute the special vowels for double vowels. That is ä becomes aa and ì becomes ii. Perfectly useable since Na'vi doesn't have double vowels, and also aa is quickier to type than a*, a:, a", ax or aq :)

Tirea Aean


Sìkat

There have been some great suggestions.  The next question is, can we (or should we) try to make these at least semi-official, possibly get LEP involved if they feel it's within their purview?

Ftiafpi

Quote from: Mech on March 21, 2012, 05:51:08 PM
I suggest a quite different, but useable and easy trick: substitute the special vowels for double vowels. That is ä becomes aa and ì becomes ii. Perfectly useable since Na'vi doesn't have double vowels, and also aa is quickier to type than a*, a:, a", ax or aq :)

I like this so much. I don't think there's any way to make it better than this. It can be done on any device, is easy to do (requires no shift keys or extra buttons), is simple to remember, is obvious, is easy to read, AND even looks like a phonetic equivalent of the two vowels (aa just "sounds" like ä in my head).

Tirea Aean

#27
I don't know who here even has the power to call an entire convention official. Not even LEP, I would think.

Actually, I agree aa and ii is easiest and fastest.

All we can do here is make some kind of unofficial community consensus as to which we personally will use. I'd like to leave matters of the proportion of a whole writing convention of a language to its creator.

Personally, I will use ä and ì whenever possible. SMS txt (with iPhone users) is the only time I have unicode issues. (With other Android users all is well using ä and ì) That's the only time I would even use this system. aa and ii seems the fastest/nicest suggestion thus far though they are all good and valid and usable.

Irtaviš Ačankif

Don't forget the KXWERTY translit scheme. It is so perfect for texting!

Kaldj ma oeyx 'eylan! Oe new pamrel sivi fa oeyx mipa xlfapet!

I use KXWERTY for cursive Na'vi writing because x and the diacritics are hard to write quickly.
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Tirea Aean

Aw of COURSE.  I even Created Kxwerty HRH I'm so glad to hear that people use it :D sorry it's not crossplatform. :(

Irtaviš Ačankif

I actually use US-international for most typing (since it has lots of other diacritics (ð©ß FTẂ)) but whenever I find myself on a system with no diacritics and I need to use Na'vi, I use the KXWERTY mapping if I don't intend others to read it. I wonder why Paul Frommer didn't use such a system...he reportedly tried to avoid digraphs in the beginning and then decided that he HAD to use them for the ejectives. Why not kxwerty? Kxwerty has zero digraphs  ;D oeru fj'u lu sunu njdan!
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

Yawne Zize’ite

Probably because he was also spelling for English-speaking actors, and they needed some signal that the ejectives were unusual sounds. If I were trying to spell without digraphs, I'd use b d g for the plain stops (p t k) and p t k for the ejectives (px tx kx), but then the actors would have a harder time catching on. Even c for ts and g for ng didn't catch on, and both are common IRL.

Personally, I prefer having one letter for each sound but unless the language's phoneme set matches Latin's pretty well the results will be unintuitive spelling or diacritics.

Irtaviš Ačankif

Yeah, but why I really don't like the current Na'vi spelling convention is that x and g is only used in digraphs. Digraphs should only be used when they reduce the size of the alphabet, not increase it. For example, in Esperanto texting gx means ĝ etc only because it reduces a whole set of letters (the ones with the circumflex) from the alphabet and in Dutch there are lots of double-vowel digraphs because Dutch has lots of vowels and the sounds can't fit the 26 Latin spaces. On the other hand, tx, px, and kx, and ng introduce two new letters, x and g, needlessly slowing typing while still leaving b, g, d, and q unused. Digraphs should be used only when the 26 non-diacritic spaces are filled up in the alphabet, or in a systematic way (such as for use in diphthongs or affricates).

You can take a look at my Putunghwa Xinpinjin Chinese transliteration system (in the Linguistics board) to get a feel for the type of digraphs I like  :D

Back on topic, I'd just like to use j for ì and x for ä. Other KXWERTY substitutions could be used since in SMS you want to be as short as possible.
Previously Ithisa Kīranem, Uniltìrantokx te Skxawng.

Name from my Sakaš conlang, from Sakasul Ältäbisäl Acarankïp

"First name" is Ačankif, not Eltabiš! In Na'vi, Atsankip.

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

I think I like the 'aa' and 'ii' idea, except they should only be used when ä and ì are not possible.

I am wondering if this is more a CDMA vs GSM thing instead of a Android vs Iphone thing.

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Sìkat

Quote from: Tirea Aean on March 22, 2012, 05:33:32 PM
All we can do here is make some kind of unofficial community consensus as to which we personally will use. I'd like to leave matters of the proportion of a whole writing convention of a language to its creator.

Point well taken.  In the absence of anything official, at least we can document what the community's come up with (maybe sticky this thread?)  Personally, I'm going to stick with aa and ii, although next time I see my brothers I'll experiment with one of their (Android) phones vs. my iPhone ;)

Mech

I am honored that you like my proposal for the double vowels :) my inspiration was Elvish, where accented letters (á etc) represent long vowels, and many people thought that the best way to type a long vowel without special characters was to write it double. That's how Finnish works (which was also the inspiration behind Quenya). I know that ä and ì are not long, but the idea was good anyway :)

Now I am not sure for the necessity to make this official.

Tirea Aean

#36
It won't be official. It will just be handy for SMS texting where two phones are incompatible for reading each others unicode text. and for phones which cannot produce unicode characters such as ä or ì. :) And not to mention, those people out there who use the standard US keyboard (which contains no special characters at all unless you are using the US_international....or kxwerty) ;) ;)

*thinking of stickying this topic...*

'Oma Tirea

Quote from: Tirea Aean on March 30, 2012, 02:23:33 PM
*thinking of stickying this topic...*

Maybe we could move it out of the beginners section first.

Tìpängkxo a eltur tìtxen si :)

[img]http://swokaikran.skxawng.lu/sigbar/nwotd.php?p=2b[/img]

ÌTXTSTXRR!!

Srake serar le'Ìnglìsìa lì'fyayä aylì'ut?  Nari si älofoniru rutxe!!

Tirea Aean


Ftiafpi

Maybe just the advanced forum?