# Last edited on 2012-02-02 04:28:26 by stolfilocal

GENERAL

  My orthography (catagraphy?) ignores completely etymology, morphology, 
  semantics and tradition; choices are made by phonetic criteria alone.

  In what follows text in double quotes "..." is in the standard orthography.
  text in brokets <...> is in my new one, and text in square brackets [...]
  is auxiliary phonetic notation.  

PHONETIC MODEL

  * The phonetic orthography here is based on what I believe is a "typical"
  Brazilian pronunciation of the São Paulo region.  This /assumed phonetic model/
  has the following phonemes:
  
    Consonants: [ B C D F G J L LH M N NH P R RR S T V X Z ]
    
    Vowels: [ Á Ã  Ê É  I  Ô Ó Õ  U ]
    
  * The nasal phonemes [Ã] and [Õ] occur in final diphtongs [ÃI] [ÃU] [ÕI], possibly
  followed by [S], and may or may not be stressed.  In these positions
  they are phonetically distinct from [Á], [Ó] and [Ô]: "mães"/"mais", "mão"/"mau",
  "pois"/"pões", "lençóis"/"lenções". The [U] and [I] in these diphtongs are always nasal too.
  
  * In addition, before [N] or [M] a stressed [Ã] always appears to the exclusion
  of a stressed [Á].  The sounds [Ê], [I], [Ô], [U] also 
  may become become nasalized before [N] or [M];  but the effect is not clear,
  and there seem to be no phonetic significance to these alternations.
  
  * Spelling should be adapted to other pronunciations; for example some speakers
  say [X] instead of final [S] and should normally change the final letter
  <s> into <x> in writing too. (Any variation that is 
  accepable in speaking should be acceptable in writing...)
  
  * Some dialects may distingush phonemes that here are considered the same.
  For example certain dialects have a "raspy r" sound besides [R] and [RR],
  which may need a separate letter, say <rh>.

PUNCTUATION CHANGES

  * Words that are hyphenated in the standard orthography remain hyphenated.
  
  * Each element of a compound word (including oblique pronouns and the each of the two 
  pieces of the verb in mesoclisis) is considered a separate word.
  
  * A few additional words are hyphenated in the new orthography, to
  make stress marking more logical. In particular the "-mente" suffix of
  adverbs is hyphenated, so that the secondary stress in the stem can be
  marked without additional rules or accents.

  * Internally we use "^" for the point of abbreviation, to distinguish it from the 
  sentence period.
  
  * Internally we use "~" for hyphen to distinguish from other uses of "-"

CONSONANTS

  * The consonant letters of the proposed orthography are 
  
    < b c d f g j l lh m n nh p r rr s t v x z >
    
  * Each consonant stands for a distinct consonant sound 
  of the assumed phonetic model, and vice-versa.

  * The sound of each of the consonants < b d f j l lh m n nh p r rr t v z > is its
  most common sound in the oficial orthography.

  * <c> has always the unvoiced velar sound of "k", never the sound of <s>, even before <e i>.

  * <g> has always the voiced velar sound as in "gato" and "gola", never the sound of <j>,
  even before <e i>.  Any <u> after <g> is to be pronounced normally.

  * <l> without a following "h" has always the lateral sound of "lago", never the
  <u> sound of "alto" and "anel".

  * <s> has always the soft unvoiced sibilant sound of "sapo", never the sound of <z>.

  * <x> has always the noisy sibilant sound of "cheio", never the other standard sounds
  (<s>, <cs>, <z>).  

  * <n> at end of a word (or just before a hyphen <~>) may have the sound of <m> if the 
  next word begins with <b> or <p>.  Presently, this change is not be recorded in the writing.
  Thus we write <ben pértu> or <sen~bóla> when a more accurate writing should be <bem pértu>
  and <sem~bóla>. 

VOWELS AND DIACRITICS

  As in the standard orthography, diacritics are used (on vowels only)
  to indicate both vowel quality and syllable stress. Fortunately the
  language's phonetics makes it feasible to do that without too many
  accents.

    * The only vowel letters are <a e i o u>. The only accent-vowel
    combinations < á â ã  é ê  í  ó ô õ  ú >. They generally have the same
    sound as in the standard orthography.

    * A vowel sound in [A Ê I Ô U] is written with accent, respectively <á ê í ô ú>,
    when it is stressed and there are two or more vowels
    in the word.  Otherwise it is written withou accent <a e i o u>.
    
    * The vowel sounds [É Ó] are always written <é ó>. Almost always, there 
    is at most one of them in the word, in which case it is the stressed vowel.
    
    * The letter <ã> is used to denote the nasal [Ã] sound; which may appear
    in the diphtongs <ãi> <ãu> at the end of the word, possibly followed by <s>,
    or alone at the end of the word, or before [M] or [N].
    It may be stressed or unstressed.
    
    * The letter <õ> to denote the nasal [Ã] sound; which may appear
    only in the diphtong <õi> at the end of the word, possibly followed by <s>.
    
DISCOVERING THE STRESS

    * If a word has no diacritics, then it has at most a single vowel;
    either that word is unstressed or that vowel is its stressed vowel.

    * If a word has only one diacritic, that is the stressed vowel.

    * Otherwise, if the word has at least one diacritic that is not a tilde, 
    the rightmost of those diacritics marks the stressed vowel.

    * [TBC]

  Doubts:
  
    <iscóla> or <escóla> ?  (ditto for all words that begin with "es")

    <núpsia> or <núpisia> ?
    
    <observár> or <obiservár> ?
    
    <sígnu> or <síginu>
    
    <sós> or <sóis>
    
    <vo-lu> or <vu-lu> ?
    
  Need two diacritics besides tilde:
  
    <retínha>  (verb from <retêr>) vs. <rétínha>  (from <réta>)
  
    <sózínhu>  (withou diacritic the <o> is pronounced <ô> which is wrong)
    
    <balãngãndã>, <tãntã> 
    
    <banãna> - the first <a> is not nasal although it is before <n> 
    
  Shall we accent words with a single vowel too? All of them or only the 
  stressed ones?