Rishon Rishon

Marshallese Orthography

You may think I have a lot of chutzpah (huspa) to propose an orthography for Marshallese, knowing nothing of the language, but my love of systems, and the aforementioned problem makes it a fun challenge for me.

The following are my orthographic goals, chosen with the idea of creating a socially optimal orthography.

1. It should use the standard English (Latin+) alphabet – the absence of diacritics makes it easy to write using any technology
2. The values of the letters should approximate their pronunciation in well-known languages – leveraging existing knowledge
3. The overall system should be transparent – making it easy to explain and learn

Source: A Brief Introduction to Marshallese Phonology (via Far Outliers).

My orthography for Marshallese:

Consonants: p, t, k, m, n, g, l, r
Semivowels: w, i, y
Vowels: a, e, o, u

Rules: 

1. Consonantal rounding is marked by the letter: w. 
2. Consonantal palatization is marked by the letter: i. 
3. In syllable-initial position the w, i, follows the consonant, in syllable-final position it precedes it.

Consonants and semivowels:

		Labial	Dental	Velar
Stops	Palatalized	pi, ip	ti, it
	Velarized	p	t	k
	Rounded			kw, wk
Nasals	Palatalized	mi, im	ni, in
	Velarized	m	n	g
	Rounded		nw, wn	gw, wg
Liquids	Palatalized	li, il
	Velarized	l  r
	Rounded	lw, wl  rw, wr
Semivowels	Palatalized		i
	Velarized			y
	Rounded	w

Vowels:

high	u
	e
	o
low	a

(I have a suspicion that not all consonants appear in syllable-final position. If so, some of the digraphs in the chart would not be necessary.)

UPDATE: Of course, if an adequate system is already in use, that would most likely trump any, supposedly better, new system. As we say in the software business: standard is better than better.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at August 30, 2004 02:46 PM