Orthography issues

[Scott Berthiaume]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: George Aaron Broadwell 
To: Scott Berthiaume 
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Orthography issues


Dear colleagues,

My two cents on the issue --

1.) I doubt a standard orthography is possible across different OM languages.  I even doubt whether it is possible to have a Zapotec orthography that would work for all the Zapotec languages.

2.) If we were starting from ground zero, it might be possible for clever linguists to devise a unified Zapotec orthography.  But we are not -- there are already published works (New Testament translations and literacy material) in the different languages that use different orthographies.

3.) After struggling with orthography wars in other places, I've come to the conclusion that you should almost never change any existing orthography if there are things published in it and people know it.  The disadvantages that go with changing a spelling system generally outweigh any advantages that accrue from having a more linguistically adequate orthography.  

In my experience, trying to change an orthography or create a new orthography in a community where people are already accustomed to a old orthography makes a lot of people angry.  You lose Native readers and writers, and in the worst case, the choice of orthography becomes politicized.

4.) As for doing good linguistics -- I think it's better to add  diacritics to an existing orthography in order to fix phonemic problems.  Native readers and writers are free to ignore them.

5.)  You might sum up my opinion as "If it works, don't fix it."  Even if it works badly.

Best wishes,
Aaron Broadwell

George Aaron Broadwell
Department of Anthropology
Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science
University at Albany, State University of New York
Albany, NY 12222  |  518-442-4711
g.broadwell at albany.edu


On Tue, 21 Jan 2003 10:52:30 -0600, Scott Berthiaume wrote:
>Dear Otomangueanist colleagues,
>
>
>Orthography continues to be a challenge in  Otomanguean.  There are
>two questions that come to mind.
>
>1)  Is it possible to maintain one standard  orthography for
>Otomanguean, say with some modifications like we see in the  Romance
>languages?
>
>2)  What are the common phonological issues  in Otomanguean that
>make a unified orthography difficult?
>
>3)  What sociological factors determine what  orthography a
>community will adopt?
>
>4) What organizations (mother-tongue or other) are  dealing with the
>issue of orthography in Otomanguean?
>
>I asked Beth Merrill to comment on her experience  with Zapotec in
>Oaxaca.  She has been involved in several workshops on the  issue
>and is currently working on a language salvage project (SIL).
>
>Any additional comments are greatly welcome.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From:   Beth_Merrill @sil.org 
>To: Scott Berthiaume 
>Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 11:18  AM
>Subject: zapotec  orthography
>
>
>As usual, the factors driving different  orthographic decisions tend
>to be historical and sociological much more than  linguistic. One of
>the interesting linguistic factors is that many Zapotec  languages
>have a sixth vowel (i.e., as compared to the five vowels of
>Spanish)--however, phonetically, the sixth vowel is all over the map
>in  different Zapotecs; in some variants, it's an  ae (read IPA
>symbol) like in "cat", in some it's a barred i sound (previously
>written in  Chichicapan as an e with dieresis; they've since changed
>to a barred i  character, which many Zapotec orthographies use;
>those that use the dieresis e  usually are symbolizing the ae sound)
>and there are other variations as well;  some variants have lost the
>sixth vowel altogether.
>
>Lenis and fortis poses an interesting proposition;  there's probably
>as many different ways to indicate that as there are people in  the
>room! (Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but only a little.) For example,
>Isthmus Zapotec--one of the most numerous and most literate groups--
>writes the  lenis and fortis palatal fricative exactly the opposite
>of how most of the  Valley groups do (x and xh, and xh and x
>respectively). Others use an underline,  or a geminate character (xx
>and x), and there are also other ways.
>
>The group would like for the same sound to be  written the same in
>all the variants, but because the phonemes aren't the same  in all
>the variants, the issue of what you're contrasting with often drives
>orthographic decisions. For example, in some variants there  is 
>contrast between x (typically used to write the English sh) and sh,
>because the x is retroflexed and slightly backed, and can occur in
>the same  environment and changes the meaning of the word.
>
>Beth Merrill
>
>

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