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yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

My conlang distinguishes between three types of vowel combinations, falling diphthongs, rising diphthongs and vowel clusters. Now to differentiate all of them I resorted to a system of using diacritics.

For rising and falling dipthongs, I only diacritic the more prominent vowel. Ex. kiä (rising), täi (falling). Whilst for vowel clusters I diacritic both like so rïä.

My question is, for the sake of aesthetics, which diacritic should I use to diacritic these vowels with?

I found that diacritics look best in this lang, semivowel and vowel combinations were simply ewww.....so they're out of the question.

comparison

diaresis
kiä
täi
rïä

acutes
kiá
tái
ríá

graves
kià
tài
rìà

circumflexes
kiâ
tâi
rîâ

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Aeetlrcreejl · Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 839 Location: Over yonder

Grave.
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Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject:

I think acutes, since to me they indicate stress and they're on the vowel that has mora.

Do you need to use diacritics for the vowel clusters, or would it make sense if you left them with nothing?

(and I like the system. If I didn't have enough diacritics already, I'd steal it.)

langover94 · Joined: 21 Aug 2007 Posts: 509 Location: USA

I think that acutes are a good start, so that's what I voted for.

However if I were you, I would do something for both the rising and the falling dipthongs. For rising I would use acute, for falling I would use grave.
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eldin raigmore · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:11 pm Post subject:

For falling diphthongs I'd put a grave accent on the first, more prominent vowel.
For rising diphthongs I'd put an acute accent on the second, more prominent vowel.
For vowel clusters I'd put a diaresis on both pure vowels.

This will cover everything unless you ever have a vowel-cluster of which one element is a (or some elements are) diphthong(s). In those cases I'd put the diaresis only on the pure vowel(s) of the cluster.

If you ever have a diphthong-cluster this system should still make it clear what the diphthongs are.

I'd save the circumflexes for the middle, prominent vowel of triphthongs. Here I'm just assuming all of your triphthongs have quick, non-prominent on-glides and off-glides, and the prominent vowel in a tripthong is the middle one.

Even if you ever have a cluster of which one (or more) element(s) is(are) (a) triphthong(s), it should be possible to puzzle out what goes with what in this system; the semivowels won't have any diacritics, the pure vowels will have diareses, the prominent vowels of falling diphthongs will have graves, the prominent vowels of rising diphthongs will have acutes, and the prominent vowels of triphthongs will have circumflexes.

However I would expect you to avoid clusters containing triphthongs, or containing more than one diphthong, on aesthetic grounds; if not, I'd say that:
(1) clusters containing a triphthong can contain only a pure vowel as the other element, and only one.
(2) clusters containing two diphthongs cannot contain any other elements besides those two diphthongs.

That will limit the possible confusions.

yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

But that would entail me using three different diacritics for serving the same purpose, no?

eldin raigmore · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 9:24 pm Post subject:

Aeetlrcreejl · Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 839 Location: Over yonder

/aUi/ is a rare triphthong.

Mohammad Yunus is awesome.
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yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

It's rare but I like it.

Also, vowel clusters are very common, more so than di,tri-phthongs
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yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

isepiki · Joined: 03 Jan 2008 Posts: 37

How do you "put" those diacritics on a post?
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Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:14 am Post subject:

If you mean using them on the forum, you can either copy&paste them from somewhere or you can use a different keyboard layout. I use the US-International.

yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

US-International for me too.
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imploder · Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Brno, Czech Republic

There's unnecessarily many diacritics if you always mark the more prominent vowel. Instead, you could give them a default value and use diacritics only to mark exceptions from that rule. For example <ia> and <ai> would be the rising and the falling diphthong respectively, and <a> would be the vowel cluster (the diacritic on i marking it as a full vowel). Or alternatively you can have the plain letters representing vowel clusters and diaeresis marking the prominent vowel in a diphthong. It's better if you use the letters without diacritics for some of it, as marking all vowels with diacritics is absolutely unnecessary and a text where practically everything has diacritics is difficult to write as well as read.
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Silvanus315 · Joined: 29 Mar 2008 Posts: 13

Diaresis are the best in my opinion, but they look really crowded when you put them on two vowels next to each other, so I'd go with graves.

imploder · Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Brno, Czech Republic