In one of my languages, there is this sound: ɬ
There are two words that will be used often in the story that have this sound in it and obviously the words will be written using the Latin alphabet but I'm not sure how to spell the sound.
I've tried putting 'shl' in the word which makes the pronunciation obvious but the word doesn't look very good.
Shlera
Koenshla
Maybe I'm just being picky but it's not three letters it's just the one sound. I think this looks better:
ɬera
koenɬa
But no one is going to know how to pronounce that.
Does anyone know a different way to spell that sound or should I just bite the bullet and go with the first two spellings?
Just to note, these are military titles of people so there are characters who will be addressed this way
Who will you be showing this two? Because you can probably get away with just having an index or reference page or something. I'd use the symbol, because if people can learn how to spell and pronounce Tchaikovsky, they can figure out one shl :)
I have a similar vibe with one of my languages, with these three trouble-makers: J, W, and ț
J and ț are easy, anyone can figure those out, if they know Nordic pronunciation and basic phonetics of the TUH.
W, the rarest letter in the language, and is almost a word of it's own, consisting of the sounds EE-V-EE, or EE-V-EH, depending on how lazy the person is w/ pronunciation.
W gives me the most trouble. Because I to NOT want to spell my name as Eeveee, when it's pronounced Eve-ee-eh, or this word as Aveeveehtul. Those just look stupid. I'd much rather have We and Avwhtul, which both look much better.
Hope this helps! I'd say just use your letter, because it looks really cool, and once people learn, it's pretty easy to remember :) Plus, it makes people feel cool to read something with strange symbols (at least, I feel cool xD)
You have a good point. If I was to include the symbol I'd have to also include some sort of key but I suppose it could really add to the immersion
Yep! I never say no to using a key, tbh, I think they add a lot, and they're kinda fun :)
