Unfortunately, the meetings in Oaxaca left me less certain, rather than more certain, about what the best practical orthography to use in Zapotec is. I have been using an orthography which is essentially the same as that used in Isthmus and Mitla Zapotec, but the meeting made it fairly clear to me that no one agrees on what to use, especially including speakers of the various kinds of Valley Zapotec.
In my current dictionary database, I've got too many spellings floating around, possibly confusing me. The old one that I used is the top one given, but I've now added an Americanist style phonetic field just to avoid too much confusion.
The citation field was initially composed from the old practical, but deleting tones, vowel length, and breathiness, along the lines used in the Cali chiu simplified orthography for San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec (Munro and Lillehaugen). The other puzzling/difficult question is how to represent the difference between plain vowels and diphthongs in the practical orthography.
Finally, the difference between ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, and dʒ is a plague. <ch> for /tʃ/ is the only simple solution. But every other way of writing these seems to cause reading problems. Currently, I am leaning toward a solution where /ʃ/ is <x>, /ʒ/ is /zh/, and /dʒ/ is <dx>.
I am getting indications from my speaker that she is finding the simplified orthography too simplified in some areas (the diphthong issue being a prominent difficulty in her reading). I still don't know how to solve this issue.
In my current dictionary database, I've got too many spellings floating around, possibly confusing me. The old one that I used is the top one given, but I've now added an Americanist style phonetic field just to avoid too much confusion.
The citation field was initially composed from the old practical, but deleting tones, vowel length, and breathiness, along the lines used in the Cali chiu simplified orthography for San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec (Munro and Lillehaugen). The other puzzling/difficult question is how to represent the difference between plain vowels and diphthongs in the practical orthography.
Finally, the difference between ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, and dʒ is a plague. <ch> for /tʃ/ is the only simple solution. But every other way of writing these seems to cause reading problems. Currently, I am leaning toward a solution where /ʃ/ is <x>, /ʒ/ is /zh/, and /dʒ/ is <dx>.
I am getting indications from my speaker that she is finding the simplified orthography too simplified in some areas (the diphthong issue being a prominent difficulty in her reading). I still don't know how to solve this issue.
5 comments:
Oh yuck. Orthography troubles are the worst...
Chitimacha uses the for /ʃ/ and that's seemed to work really well.
Why not for /dʒ/? Already taken?
Maybe you could use a semivowel grapheme for the diphthongs, and a vowel grapheme for the plain vowels. So for diphthong and for two vowels in sequence (if I've understood the problem correctly).
Best of luck!
Ah, I forgot that angle brackets do funny things to html:
Chitimacha uses the x for /ʃ/ and that's seemed to work really well.
Why not j for /dʒ/? Already taken?
So ay for diphthong and ai for two vowels in sequence (if I've understood the problem correctly).
I think the problem is Spanish , which has another interpretation as /x/ (or maybe /h/). Some other Zapotec orthographies use as their way of indicating a breathy vowel, which is another complication...
Okay, I just had the same brackets problem as you... Let me try again:
I think the problem is Spanish , which has another interpretation of j as /x/ (or maybe /h/). Some other Zapotec orthographies use Vj as their way of indicating a breathy vowel, which is another complication...
Post a Comment