Latin writing system

Toaq is most commonly written using a modified Latin writing system, with diacritics on the vowels to mark tone.

Alphabet

The alphabet, in native order, is:

m	b	p	f	n	d	t	z	c	s	r	l	nh	j	ch	sh	ꝡ	q	g	k	'	h	a	u	ı	o	e
/m/	/b/	/pʰ/	/f/	/n/	/d/	/tʰ/	/d͡z/	/t͡sʰ/	/s/	/ɾ/	/l/	/ɲ/	/d͡ʑ/	/t͡ɕʰ/	/ɕ/	/w~j/	/ŋ/	/ɡ/	/kʰ/	/ʔ/	/h/	/a/	/u/	/i/	/o/	/ɛ/

In recognition of the fact that Ꝡ may be a lesser-available glyph in fonts and on keyboards, the refgram designates v as an emergency replacement.

In semi-native order, the consonants are ordered in the Latin/Unicode way (b, c, ch, d…) while the vowels are still at the end, in a, u, ı, o, e order.

In non-native or Latin order, the whole alphabet is ordered like the Latin alphabet: a, b, c, ch, d…

The vowel ı is written without its dot to avoid confusion with the tone diacritics listed below (stylistically as well as from a point of readability).

Diacritics

Tone marking

The following diacritics are placed on the first vowel (a, u, ı, o, e) of a word to mark non-default tone on the whole word:

Nr.	On "a"	Diacritic	Unicode	Tone name
1	a	—	—	falling tone
2	á	acute accent	U+0301	rising tone
3	ä	diaeresis	U+0308	falling-glottal tone
4	â	circumflex	U+0302	rising-falling tone

Sparse tone marking style

Before Toaq Delta, a Toaq text could have chosen not to mark the most common tone, . At the time, this practice was dubbed sparse tone marking style.

A verb could never carry , so there would’ve been no confusion as long as the reader knew enough Toaq to tell particles from verbs. Therefore, the practice was acceptable in informal writing but discouraged in educational materials. Its supporters states that is actually tenacious to analayze as an inherent, or “default”, tone for verbs just as much as was for particles.

Toaq Delta removed and the notion of a neutral tone altogether; , although unmarked, is always understood as falling tone. Thus, one could say that with the introduction of the new four-tone system, sparse tone marking has become the standard, with both the phonology and the orthography backing it.

Prefix marking

In addition, the underdot (ạ, U+0323) is used to mark the presence of a prefix, more specifically the last in a run of prefixes if any are present. It may be replaced by the ASCII hyphen (-) in case the underdot isn’t available on your keyboard. While the underdot falls on the first vowel of the prefix raku (so where a tone mark would’ve gone), the hyphen should be placed between the last prefix and the word’s stem. For example, kı- + ne- + shı may be written as kınẹshı or kıne-shı; hao- + chuq = hạochuq or hao-chuq.

Tone–underdot combos

The new Delta orthography poses a slight challenge for fonts trying to render it as there isn’t a uniform set of precomposed tone+underdot characters to choose from and one has to rely on using a combining diacritic. Specifically, ı̣ (ı underdot) comes out janky in some fonts because the ı glyph may be missing an anchoring mark. In fact, out of the 20 possible vowel+diacritic combinations, only 7 have precompositions:


a	ạ	ạ́	ạ̈	ậ
u	ụ	ụ́	ụ̈	ụ̂
ı	ı̣	ị́	ị̈	ị̂
o	ọ	ọ́	ọ̈	ộ
e	ẹ	ẹ́	ẹ̈	ệ

The grapheme clusters in the cells in bold red consist of a precomposed vowel+underdot glyph and a combining tone diacritic. Each cell was normalized with Unicode normalization form C.

It appears that the most consistent as well as font- and input-friendly approach is to precompose the vowel with the tone mark and then add a combining underdot (U+0323):


a	ạ	ạ́	ạ̈	ậ
u	ụ	ụ́	ụ̈	ụ̂
ı	ı̣	ị́	ị̈	ị̂
o	ọ	ọ́	ọ̈	ộ
e	ẹ	ẹ́	ẹ̈	ệ

MediaWiki note: The wiki software has been normalizing all page content since time immemorial, meaning that the above table has had to use HTML entities to get the desired effect (e.g., ị́ for ị́ – don’t do this elsewhere). As far as I’m aware, there’s no way to sidestep this, so expect janky-looking underdots until/unless we patch the font used on this wiki (Commissioner) to include the anchor points.