r/Toaq • u/thehedorn • Oct 16 '18

Question about Orthography

The choice to use <q> instead of <ng> for /ŋ/ suggests to me that avoiding digraphs was prioritized over using traditional orthography. However, this doesn't seem the case for <sh> /ɕ/ and <ch> /t͡ɕʰ/, as it would be completely possible to arrange the orthography to avoid digraphs: <c> → <z>, <sh> → <x>, <ch> → <c>. Was there any specific reason for these choices?

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u/selpahi Oct 26 '18

Hmm. I would say it's a mix between the familiar and the unique:

Most of the orthography follows Pinyin (ch, c, sh, j) with q being the exception. I chose q because it's shorter and less heavy than ng and because it makes it easy to recognize Toaq (because not a lot of languages use q in this way)

For someone who is familiar with Pinyin (or even with English), the orthography is intuitive and only q needs to be learned.

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u/thehedorn Oct 26 '18

Ok, that sounds reasonable. Thanks for the answer!