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Word transcription
As most
endangered oral languages, Apatani does not yet have a standardized
orthography, and there is still some debate among the Apatanis on which
script should be used to transcribe it. It was beyond the scope of the
present work to address this issue, or to make a choice between the
various options that have been proposed so far. At the same time, there
exists a widespread, yet informal practice of writing Tanii agun
using Roman script which has been adopted by most educated people in
their printed publications, correspondence or casual conversations on
internet, though the spelling and spacing of words often vary from one
person to another. As the ultimate goal of this project is to promote
the use of the language among the present generation of Apatanis, it seemed obvious to us that we should put effort to remain as close as possible from this
common writing
usage, so that all Apatanis can easily adapt to it. For that reason the reader will find only minor modifications from earlier informal
transcriptions, which were made in order to simplify the spelling and eliminate several
inconsistencies. In our approach we
have tried to be :
* practical, in the
sense that
the same phonetic element is always transcribed in the
same way regardless of pitch and length of the phonem, which is easier
to learn. /ma /is transcribed as ma, may it be actually pronounced as
/maa/, /´ma/, or /´maa/. This not only facilitates reading and writing
but also
dictionary searching.
* consistent,
in the sense that word spacing follows grammatical principles, and
that
a root, a prefix or a suffix is always transcribed in the same way.
* close to the existing
writing practice because the transcription of all vowels and most consonants is left
untouched.
The following set of rules has been adopted for the present edition:
- The transcription of other letters does not change, in particular ɨ
(barred-i) remains represented by a double i. Most sounds are represented by one
letter. Sounds which are represented by two letters are /tɕ/ (written ch), /ɲ/
(ny), /ŋ/ (ng), /x/ (kh) and /ɨ/ (ii).
- z letter is represented as -j throughout the dictionary, as /z/ appears to be only a particular phonological realization of /j/. The reader will find jilan pulye, not zilang pulye.
- For the same reason, letters f, v, c that were used in earlier transcriptions have not been
retained in the Apatani alphabet.
- e letter is always pronounced as /e/, as in English 'penny', never as in English ‘me'. The word for dao/sword is written ilyo, not elyo. Similarly /e/ of ‘penny' is
always represented as e, never as a. The word for 'husked uncooked rice' is embin, not ambing.
- ng occuring at the
end of syllables (final
velar nasal), which is commonly found in informal
written Apatani, is
represented as n only. Since most -if not all- of those
so-called final velar nasals are just nazalisations on the wovels, it
would be inaccurate to mark a final consonant 'g' which is actually
unheard. Thus the word for 'cooked rice' is apin,
not aping; the word for 'friend' is ajin, not ajing.
- /ng/ appearing at the begining of a syllable, when it follows a vowel, is preceded by an apostrophe ('), in order to differentiate from the final velar nasal, e.g. ka'ngu (ka+ngu, 'to discriminate').
- Tones
are unmarked, and therefore final 'h' letters which were sometimes used to mark a high tone or a short wovel have been removed. The reader will find tape, not tapeh.
- Vowels
or consonnant lengths are unmarked, that is, as a rule doubled letters do not occur. The reader will find ama, not aama; chikan,
not chikkan. Double s have been suppressed. Double n occurs only when a syllable ending with a final velar nasal is coupled with a syllable whose first letter is n. For example Mo henne (hen+ne): He/she thought.
- Consonant n often transforms into m before b and p letters, as it does in English, though not as systematically as in English.
- The
use of hyphens (-) within a word or word group is restricted to lexical compounds and pairs having
at least one prefix or one root in common, in order to underline the presence of
a common element. For example, both lanchan-lankho and diigo-tango are separated by hyphens in the dictionary, but not lanchan koman.
- The above rules do not apply
to proper nouns such as place names, clan names, etc., since their
'official' usage is already well established. Therefore we continue to
write Ziro, Bulla, Tajang, Hong, Tasso, Ngilyang, Radhe, etc.
Word boundaries : As many Apatani words are disyllabic, to date in the absence of a standard
orthography
many people are tempted to write down their language by marking a space
between units having two syllables each, in order to make 'words'.
However, this practice has been a source of multiple confusions. For
example, a two-syllable unit which stands as a "word" in one particular
sentence will be split into two independent units in another. It also
often leads to consider as 'words' verbal suffixes which are dependent
units
and have no meaning when taken separately. In the present work we
consider grammatical words only, i.e. real units of meaning.
For example the sentence "he/she has slept" is written mo imineku, not mo imi neku, because neku is a suffix combination inflecting the meaning of the verb root imi ('sleep')
which has no meaning independent of the verb to which it is attached
and cannot stand alone without having a verb attached to it.
Written this
way, certain Apatani words such as particles can be monosyllabic,
whereas others such as sufixed verbs can sometimes be much longer, up
to six or seven syllables. For our Apatani readers this will probably
be the biggest difference that they will notice from the common usage.
Hopefully they should also soon discover that this grammatical approach
of 'words' helps clarify their meaning and enhances global comprehension
of the language.
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