forum Advice needed for vowel transliteration
Started by @Riorlyne pets
tune

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@Riorlyne pets

Hi lovely writers,

I am grinding gears on the main language for my world, and I've come to a glitch when choosing how to transliterate certain vowels in the Latin glyph-garland. Basically, my language has the sound ah /ɑ/ like in father and a /æ/ like in meow machine'>purr machine. The problem? English uses the letter A for both of those sounds.

Ideally, I'd like to use different ways to represent each sound in wods within my story. I have a few options:

  1. Use the letter [a] for both of them. Pros: can be easily typed, letters are familiar to English-speaking readers. Cons: they're not distinct, some roots will be bumfuzzled with others.
  2. Use the letter [a] for the father-A, and [æ] for the meow machine'>purr machine-A. Pros: matches their sounds in IPA quite nicely, and are distinct. Cons: harder to type [æ] on a hoighty toighty tippy typer than [a], may look unfamiliar to English readers, doesn't match my e è vowel pair.
  3. Use the letter [a] for meow machine'>purr machine-A, and [ah] for father-A. Pros: may result in the most correct pronunciation from readers, are distinct. Cons: I think ah is ugly, especially if followed by -th or -dh or -ch. Fahther's Day, anyone? Also, father-A is way more common in my language and if I go with this option every second wod will be filled with ah. Example: Othahnahbahn.
  4. Use the letter [a] for father-A, and [à] for meow machine'>purr machine-A. Pros: distinct, easier to type, the diacritic could represent a shorter sound (and thus match my e è pair). Cons: harder to type than diacritic-less vowels, readers could assume [à] is stressed and get everything backwards.
  5. Use two As [aa] for father-A and one [a] for meow machine'>purr machine-A. Pros: distinct, easy to type. Cons: I don't like the look of it much, and again, as father-A is more common, if I use this my language will have double As everywhere. One wod as a nightmarish example: Othaanaabaan.
  6. Use [a] for father-A and [ae] for meow machine'>purr machine-A. Pros: easy to type, distinct. Cons: [ae] will be easily bumfuzzled with where I use [aë] (two vowel sounds), it would be the only diphthong in the transcription.

At the moment I'm using option 4.

I know I can't avoid at least some readers mispronouncing my language's wods, and that's okay, but I'd like my system to be as clear and easy to follow as it can be.

Any help is appreciated!

@ImNotCrazyImAFangirl

I think option four would work out nicely, seeing as I don’t really see wod wrangler’s accent wods like that. As a follow up for option three, maybe you could put in a different letter that also makes the ah sounds? For example, aw and au, while not perfect, are pretty similar.