Romanizing bidental fricatives

[Chengjiang]

How would you guys romanize fortis and lenis (voiceless and voiced or something similar) bidental fricatives? I’m interested in both of the following, if they differ:

1) Your preferred romanization with no restrictions
2) A romanization that does not use diacritics, for a language that also has alveolar, palato-alveolar, and (post)velar fricatives

[bradrn]

How would you guys romanize fortis and lenis (voiceless and voiced or something similar) bidental fricatives? I’m interested in both of the following, if they differ:

1) Your preferred romanization with no restrictions
2) A romanization that does not use diacritics, for a language that also has alveolar, palato-alveolar, and (post)velar fricatives

Romanization of bidental fricatives is always tricky for me — there aren’t any options I really like. If I had to choose I would use:

/f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ χ ʀ/
1) ⟨f v θ~þ~ŧ~ṯ~c ð~ḏ~đ s z š ž x~h ɣ~ƣ~g~ġ~ğ⟩
2) ⟨f v θ~þ~th~c ð~dh s z š ž x~h ɣ~ƣ~g⟩

The choice between those options mostly depends on the rest of the phonology (e.g. if I had /ts/ I might not be able to use ⟨c⟩ for /θ/).

Also, do you have a specific phonology you want to romanize? If so you might want to post it to the Romanization Challenge Thread.

[Chengjiang]

bradrn, I’m not talking about interdental “th” fricatives, I’m talking about this type of consonant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceles ... _fricative

[bradrn]

bradrn, I’m not talking about interdental “th” fricatives, I’m talking about this type of consonant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceles ... _fricative

Oh, interesting — I had not heard of that sound before. In that case, the grapheme that comes to mind is ⟨ꜧ⟩, which is what I think I would use. Other possible letters include ⟨ħ ẖ ḫ ꞙ ƒ ẍ⟩ etc. Really, I think you could use pretty much anything for such an obscure phoneme, as long as it sort of makes sense.

[Moose-tache]

Voila.

[elemtilas]

For Queranarran, which actually has this sound, I romanise it {hsh}.

It's also got a bidental clack, which I romanise {dq}.

[bradrn]

Voila.

Why the image? They’re perfectly representable in plain text: ⟨🜦 ∮⟩. (Well, close enough.)

[Moose-tache]

Those... are completely different things. Besides, my plan was to combine theta and phi for the uppercase, eff and thorn for the lower case.

[bradrn]

Those... are completely different things.

But only if you look at the codepoint — otherwise they look nearly identical!

(Also: I was aware of that, that was sort of the point.)

Besides, my plan was to combine theta and phi for the uppercase, eff and thorn for the lower case.

In that case, I’d prefer ⟨ⴲ ꝥ⟩. (And both of those are even real letters!)

[Moose-tache]

OK, I mean this with love, but when was the last time you had your eyes checked?

[bradrn]

OK, I mean this with love, but when was the last time you had your eyes checked?

Um… well… perhaps I should go check them again? But alright, ‘nearly identical’ was perhaps just a little bit of an exaggeration (brought on by enthusiasm for the subject of obscure Unicode characters); maybe ‘vaguely similar’ would have been better…?

[Moose-tache]

You'll always win me over with obscure unicode characters. Maybe there should be a Romanization scheme that uses alchemical symbols exclusively?

[bradrn]

Maybe there should be a Romanization scheme that uses alchemical symbols exclusively?

Please, please don’t distract me like this when I have important work to do…

…but, as it happens, you can make a romanization (alchemicization?) out of alchemical symbols! Not only that, but it’s not even too bad, if I say so myself. Observe:

/p t k/ ⟨🜕 🝨 🝌⟩
/ᵐb d/ ⟨🝫 🜂⟩
/f h̪͆ θ s ð ɣ/ ⟨🝡 🜦 🜔 🝉 🝝 🜻⟩
/w ʋ ʒ/ ⟨🝃 🝣 🜓⟩

/i ʊ e ʌ o æ ɑ/ ⟨🝢 🜰 🝗 🝠 🜘 🜶 🝛⟩

An example:

/æwkʌᵐbi is fʌᵐb/ ⟨🜶🝃🝌🝠🝫🝢 🝢🝉 🝡🝠🝫⟩

(Remind me again how we got here from bidental fricatives? )

[Chengjiang]

Regarding the rest of the inventory: It both keeps changing because I’m indecisive and has a fairly obvious (to me) representation of any other sounds i’ve considered including. Also, enough of it is made of sounds that are marginal to human language (non-hominin primate speakers) that it’s a pain to type out here. (I mostly post from my phone these days, so even regular IPA can get obnoxious.)

[quinterbeck]

How about <ḥ ṛ> (assuming you want a voicing distinction)

[Chengjiang]

(I admit an ulterior motive for this thread: I’m fascinated by the different things bidental fricatives apparently sound like to different people, judging from how I’ve seen people transcribe them in the past.)

[sasasha]

If the language had /f v θ ð/, uses already for all plausible pairs of <s z x j h r w v c y>, AND these babies I would go for <f v ɸ β þ ð>. To me they sound like something halfway between dental and bilabial fricatives, and the Greek letters in context somehow capture this for me.

<f v fh vh th dh> could also work if we were doing digraphs.

I do feel sorry for speakers of such a language who have lost their teeth, though!

[Creyeditor]

I think that per analogy it makes sense to use variants of <h>, <v> or <f>, because (a) bidental and glottal /h/ fricatives do not involve any classic active articulators and (b) labiodental /f, v/ and bidental uses the same passive articulator, namely the teeth. Also, all of them are fricatives of course.

I have to admit that I also like the idea of using <ⴲ> as a kind of doubled theta (BIdental, you get it). Maybe a doubled delta would work for the voiced version?

[bradrn]

I have to admit that I also like the idea of using <ⴲ> as a kind of doubled theta (BIdental, you get it).

Thank you! (Though, as Moose-tache indicated, it was meant as a combination of theta+phi.) I must admit that it was originally intended as a joke, but since posting it I’ve actually come to like it quite a bit.

Maybe a doubled delta would work for the voiced version?

Unicode has everything! In this case, Closed Little Yus would do: ⟨Ꙙ ꙙ⟩

[Creyeditor]

I think <ⴲ> and <Ꙙ> do actually look cool. I also think both of them would fit in a romanization without being classic roman letters.