Lanikel orthography

Romanization

Gemination

Geminated single-letter consonants are written by doubling their letter. Geminated digraphic clicks and affricates are written by doubling their first letter, and the other geminated digraphic consonants are written by doubling their last letter. Consonant clusters are distinguished from consonant clusters by placing an apostrophe between each consonant until ambiguity is removed (e.g. /θ th/ are ⟨th t'h⟩, and /ʀː ɾʀ ʀɾ/ are ⟨rrr r'rr rr'r⟩).

Vowels

Polyphthongs are mostly written by simply juxtaposing vowel letters together, but in cases with vowels that use digraphs, an overdot is placed on the non-first grapheme(s) of a diphthong to distinguish them (e.g. /ɪ i͡e/ are ⟨ie iė⟩, and /a͡ʌ ɑ͡e a͡o͡e/ are ⟨aȯe aoė aȯė⟩). Since all two- or three-vowel clusters contrast with a polypthong, a diaerisis is placed on the non-first grapheme(s) of such clusters to distinguish them (e.g. /ɪ i.e/ are ⟨ie ië⟩, and /a.ʌ ɑ.e a.o.e/ are ⟨aöe aoë aöë⟩).

For polypthongs, tone (not including low tone because it has unusual romanization) and length are always written on the first vowel grapheme, so every vowel with a tone or length diacritic begins its syllable's nucleus. It is therefore unnecessary to use a diaerisis on such vowels.

Syllabic Consonants

Toneless syllabic consonants are written with an overdot. On digraphs, the underdot is written only on the first letter (e.g. /ŋ̩ ʀ̩/ get written ⟨ṇg ṛr⟩). For the syllabic palatal nasal, the ⟨ñ⟩ is replaced with ⟨nh⟩, upon which the underdot can be placed ⟨ṇh⟩. Syllabic /ð̩/ is written with ⟨d⟩ instead of ⟨dh⟩, and so receives the underdot as ⟨ḍ⟩. Geminated syllabic consonants are only marked for syllabicity/tone on the final letter. The toneless syllabic consonant /j̍/ is instead written ⟨ÿ⟩.

Tones

High tone is marked with an acute accent on vowels without a diacritic. On vowels with a macron (denoting length), the macron is replaced with a circumflex (e.g. /í íː/ are ⟨í î⟩). High tone syllabic consonants /ɱ̩́ ń̩ ɲ̩́ ŋ̩́ ź̩ ʒ̩́ ẃ̩ ĺ̩ j̩́ ɾ̩́ ʀ̩́/ have their underdots replaced with the acute accent ⟨ḿ ń ńh ńg ź źh ẃ ĺ ý ŕ ŕr⟩. High tone /ð̩/ is written with ⟨ð⟩ instead of ⟨d́⟩, and high tone /v̩/ is written with a ⟨ŵ⟩.

Because word-initial high tone words are most common, Iskel romanizes them differently to avoid extensive diacritic use: a high tone on a multisyllabic word is not written if there is only one high tone and it's word initial. Multisyllabic words with no tones are written as if they have a word-initial high tone.

Mid tone is marked with a grave accent on vowels without a diacritic. On vowels with a macron (denoting length), the macron is replaced with a caron (e.g. /ī īː/ are ⟨ì ǐ⟩). Mid tone syllabic consonants are written similar to their toneless forms, but with overdots instead of underdots. The mid tone /v̩̄/, however, is written ⟨ẅ⟩.

Low tone is marked with an exclamation mark preceding the syllable.