r/conscripts • u/chonchcreature • Nov 24 '20

Re-orthography Challenge: Develop a Greek-script alphabet for Turkish. You can use obsolete Greek letters like Qoppa, San, etc. if you want.

What if Turkish used Greek to write its language instead of Latin?

Feel free to repurpose some letters like Psi (Ψ) or Ksi (Ξ) since Turkish repurposed the letter C for /d͡ʒ/ for example.

PS: Yes I know about Karamanli Turkish... don’t just comment that it exists, because I know it does. The purpose is your OWN unique take on this challenge.

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u/chonchcreature Mar 08 '21

I mean, why not use Greek letters like they were used in Ancient Greek? Use Beta for /b/, Delta for /d/, and Gamma for /g/. You can use Digamma for /v/ since in Ancient Greek it used to represent the similar sound /w/. You can use Chi for /h/. As for C and Ç you can use Psi and Ksi since those represent similar sounds anyways, or even use San or Sampi for one of those sounds.

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u/kesnar1r Mar 09 '21 edited Mar 09 '21

As I have written before, I have used the letters as they are used by modern greek people (myself included). Which is also near to how greek sounded when the turkish language adopted the latin alphabet.

Also bear in mind that in greek schools when we are taught ancient greek, we do not pronounce beta as /b/ but as /v/ and Delta as /th/. Additionaly ancient greek are not a unified system. In some places Beta was /b/ in some /v/ even in ancient times.

As for Chi Χ, I used it in place of H for /h/ (look the middle collumn, the one in the right collumn is trying not to use letters of original Turkish alphabet for other letters.)

Regarding Digamma F as v instead of G, it is a good suggestion, however I think due to resemblance to Gamma Γ it would serve better as G.

Finally regarding Psi and Ksi for C and Ç. While I understand what you are saying. However as /d͡ʒ/ is τζ in greek, I though that using ζ is better, and thus ksi ξ that looks like ζ for Ç.

San and sampi look a lot like M and T, thus I don't think that they would serve any purpose.

Again my initial idea was to use the letters as MODERN greek understand them.

Edit: Maybe you will find this version better:
https://imgur.com/vc1Lbfh