Wancho

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Symbols

Other

Vowel sounds

Sometimes o is transcribed as ɔː, especially when nasalised.

The sound we represent with a here could also be transcribed as aː, contrasting in length with ə.

Consonant sounds

	labial	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p b pʰ	t d tʰ			k ɡ kʰ	ʔ
affricate		t͡s	t͡ʃ
fricative	f β	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
nasal	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
approximant	ʋ w	l		j
trill/flap		r

The sound shown here as tʰ is sometimes transcribed as θ.

The sound shown here as d͡ʒ is sometimes transcribed as ʒ.

Tone

Wancho is a tonal language but the 2 major dialects, Northern and Southern, use tones in slightly different ways. Upper Wancho has lòw, mid, and hígh tones. Lower Wancho has high⁴⁴, falling⁵², and low¹¹ tones.

Both also have a checked tone, which occurs when the syllable ends with a short vowel followed by a glottal stop.e

Where multiple syllables occur together, tones tend to interact to produce different values for certain syllablesbw2. (Those differences are not described in detail in the examples on this page.)

Structure

The typical syllable in Wancho has the following pattern.

(C (M)) V (V) (C)

Onset

The only true medial consonant appears to occur in the sequence tr̥. Initial consonants followed by a glide are written as diphthongs.

Nucleus

Can include diphthongs with an on-glide or an off-glide.

Coda

Wancho syllables can end with p, t, k, ʔ, m, n, and ŋ.

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

The middle column shows nasalised vowels. The right-hand column, vowels followed by a velar nasal and represented by a dedicated character.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

The following is the set of characters needed to write vowels, as described in this section, grouped by general category.

Post-consonant vowels

The 6 vowel sounds following consonants are written using 6 letters. However, additional letters represent 4 nasalised vowel sounds, and a further 4 vowels followed by ŋ. One more letter represents a diphthong, although other diphthongs are represented by combinations of vowels.

Standalone vowels

Standalone vowels are written using the normal vowel signs with no special additional mechanisms.

𞋀𞋊𞋞

Tones

Tone marking is slightly complicated due to the fact that Upper and Lower Wancho dialects use tones in different ways, and the Wancho orthography has been designed to handle each separately. In addition, the unmarked tone is not the mid tone, and differs depending on the dialect.

Upper Wancho uses the above combining marks to indicate mid and high tones, respectively. The low tone is not marked.

𞋋𞋞

𞋋𞋞𞋮

𞋋𞋞𞋯

Lower Wancho uses the above combining marks to indicate falling and low tones, respectively. The high tone is not marked.

𞋑𞋜

𞋈𞋕𞋜𞋬

𞋑𞋜𞋭

In both dialects, the checked tone is not marked with a combining character, but a glottal stop is written at the end of the syllable.

𞋋𞋞𞋫

𞋈𞋜𞋫

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps XXXX vowel sounds to common graphemes in the XXXX orthography.

The left column shows dependent vowels, and the right column independent vowel letters.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Basic consonants

Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).

Onsets

Wancho uses the above letter to represent the tr̥- onset.

Syllables with onsets following the pattern CjV and CwV seem to be written as diphthongs, using vowel letters.

Finals

Syllable codas involving stops simply use the appropriate consonant letter. (The glottal stop letter, 1E2EB, only occurs in syllable-final position.)

𞋝𞋀𞋔

𞋋𞋞𞋫

Syllables ending with ŋ can be written using a single letter for the vowel and the nasal (see nasalisedV).

𞋄𞋥

𞋅𞋣𞋔𞋣𞋮

Other nasal codas are written using the relevant letter.

𞋂𞋁𞋮𞋉

𞋄𞋁𞋘

Consonant clusters

Consonant clusters are indicated by simple sequences of consonant characters.

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Wancho consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Wancho orthography. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Digits

Wancho uses a set of native digits

Currency

Wancho has its own symbol to represent the rupee.

Context-based shaping & positioning

tbd

Wancho letters don't interact, so no special shaping is needed.

Base characters carry only a single combining mark.

Some small adjustments may be needed for the placement of tone marks relative to the base letter, but these are mostly horizontal, since Wancho letters tend to have the same height. fig_gpos shows adjustments to the horizontal position of the tone mark, depending on the shape of the base character. It also shows kerning of the letters.

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Graphemes

Graphemes in Wancho consist of single letters or letters with a single combining mark.

When applied to Wancho, Unicode grapheme clusters split text into base characters plus any combining marks that follow. Therefore, grapheme clusters can be used to segment Wancho into typographic units.

Phrase, sentence, and section delimiters are described in phrase.

Phrase & section boundaries

See type samples.

Wancho uses ASCII punctuation marks.

Line breaking & hyphenation

Lines are generally broken between words.