this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
18 points (95.0% liked)
Neography and Writing systems
202 readers
1 users here now
Home for conscripts constructed writing systems and existing writing systems
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm always curious on people's ideas on how to reduce the number of letters that are needed for spelling in english (48~ phonemes which is massive for an alphabet). Personally I find that it makes sense to spell zh (like the g in beige or the s in pleasure) with Ž as it's so uncommon it's not really worth the extra letter.
Two letter phonemes are always possible.
For example, Lithuanian has 32 letters in its alphabet, and has no x, q, or w, but has ą, ę, į, ų, ū, č, š and your aforementioned ž.
It also has two phonemes that require two letters:
ch to differentiate it from h, to separate hide (h sound) from whores (ch sound)
dž to pronounce Jack and John as Džekas and Džonas, because j is pronounced as the y in yarp.
it also as ie, au, ei and similar two vowel combos that slowly go from one sound to another.
True that's also useful, Two letters has worked fine for a lot of stuff in English (th, sh, ch) I guess zh isn't a stretch at all for us. I'm kinda worried about vowels though since we have so many, maybe an addition like Cyrillic's ь makes sense so non is non but known is noьn or something
You could either combine vowels to make new sounds or use something with diacritics like å, ä, ė or whatever is used the most.