Orthography
From KneeQuickie
Orthography is a system used represent the sounds a language in a specific script. For many conlangs, an orthography is used to represent transliteration from that language's native script into the Latin alphabet. It is considered good form to create a Latin orthography when creating a conlang, if only for convenience. When a Latin orthography is used to transliterate a language from its native script, the orthography is generally referred to as a transliteration scheme.
By convention, illustrations of orthography enclose symbols in angle brackets, < >, to show that they are to be interpreted as orthography (and not, for instance, as IPA symbols). Some prefer braces, { }, for this purpose, as angle brackets around certain letters are liable to execute HTML codes. This can be avoided by entering them as < and >.
Terminology
There are multiple words used to describe orthographical elements within an existing spelling system. This list is not complete.
- grapheme — is the smallest meaningful unit written.
- digraph, trigraph — are units of writing containing two (or three in case of a trigraph) graphemes that are used to express a phoneme.
- diactric — is an addition to a unit of writing, such as a grave, acute, or circumflex accent (` ´ ^).
- defectiveness — is the relative efficiency of an orthography, determined by its efficiency. An inefficient orthography is defective in that it has multiple ways to write a phoneme. An efficient orthography only has one way to write a phoneme, and therefore is not defective.
Constructed languages
For most conlanging purposes, Latin orthographies follow consistent and simple rules for the sake of convenience, whether the author is creating a language that utilizes the Latin alphabet, or the author is creating a transliteration scheme. This often means that the transliteration scheme is extremely efficient. Conlangers often experiment with "native" orthographies within the language's conscript, which may or may not follow similarly consistent rules.
