Knoschke orthography

The new Knoschke transcription

The first column shows Knoschke phonemes in IPA transcription.

The second column shows the transcription based on Hungarian orthography which Németh used in his notes and taught to some Knoschke speakers. Variants in parentheses were used by Németh at some time or other. This mode of writing Knoschke is the only one with a claim to be called its standard orthography. It can be approximated in Latin-1 by using circumflex instead of double acute and the tilde dash ~ instead of ogonek.

The third column shows the 'scientific' transcription Németh used in his 1873 Grammatik der Knoschkesprache Transylvaniens and in subsequent scholarly articles. He never used it in field notes.

The fourth column shows the transcription used on the Old Knoschke pages. A dash indicates that the phoneme in question was missing in the old version of the language,

IPA	Orthography (aka New Transcription, Németh 1860-1912)	Grammatik (Németh 1873)	(Old Transcription)
ɔ	a	ḁ, ḁ̈	ò
ɔː	á	ḁ̄, ḁ̈̄	ô
a	ä	a	a
aː	a̋ (â)	ā	á
b	b	b	b
bʲ	by	bʹ	—
ts	cz (c)	c	ts
tsʰ	czh	ch	—
tʂ	cs	č	tš
tʂʰ	csh	čh	—
χ	ch (hh)	χ	x
dz	dz (x)	ʒ	dz
dʐ	dzs (xs)	ǯ	dž
dʑ	dy	ʒ́	dzj
ɛ	e	ä	è
ɛː	é	ǟ	ê
e	ë	e	e
eː	e̋ (ê)	ē	é
f	f	f	f
g	g	g	g
[ɟ]	(gy)	gʹ	—
ʁ	gh	γ	q
h	h	h	h
ɨ	i	y	y
ɨː	í	ȳ	ý
i	ï(y)i	i	i
iː	ı̋ (î)[2], (y)í[3]	ī	í
j	j	j	j
k	k	k	k
[c]	(ky)	kʹ	—
kʰ	kh	kh	kh
[cʰ]	(khy)	kʹh	—
ɫ	l	ł	l
ɬˠ	lh	łh	l
l	ly	lʹ	lj
ɬ	lhy	lʹh	lj
m	m	m	m
m̥	mh	mh	mh
mʲ	my	mʹ	—
m̥ʲ	mhy	mʹh	—
n	n	n	n
n̥	nh	nh	n
ɲ	ny	ń	nj
ɲ̊	nhy	ńh	nj
ŋ	ngh	nγ (ṅ)	nq
ŋ̊	nch	nχ (ṅh)	(nqh)
o	o[1]	o, ö	o
oː	ó[1]	ō, ȫ	ó
p	p	p	p
pʰ	ph	ph	ph
pʲ	py	pʹ	—
pʲʰ	phy	pʹh	—
ɾ	r	r	r
r̥	rh	rh	rh
r	rr	rr	rr
ɻ	ry	ŕ	rj
ʂ	s	š	š
ʂʰ	sh	šh	—
ɕ	sy	ś	sj
ɕʰ	shy	śh	—
s	sz	s	s
sʰ	szh	sh	—
t	t	t	t
tʰ	th	th	—
tɕ	ty	ć	tsj
tɕʰ	thy	ćh	—
u	u[1]	u, ü	u
uː	ú[1]	ū, ǖ	ú
v	v	v	v
(dz)	(x)
(dʐ)	(xs)
z	z	z	z
ʐ	zs	ž	ž
ʑ	zy (zsy)	ź	zj
˜	˛	˛	ñ (µ)

Aspiration and voiceless vowels

Short vowels after aspirated consonants, especially finally and before other voiceless consonants, tend to be pronounced voiceless. Németh had trouble hearing the exact quality of such vowels and often wrote them as ẹ or ə in his notes. He was constrenated when his informants told him that theso vowels never were indistinct or tended to merge in their ears, and it was only after corresponding with a famous German phonetician that he realized both that Knoschke had distinctive aspiration and that the peculiarity of these vowels was that they were voiceless. As his auditory difficulties with these vowels continued he consistently marked them with an underdot (ạẹịọụỵ etc.) both in his notes and in the Grammatik, using ə̣ when he considered himself ignorant of the true quality of the vowel. He noted in the Grammatik that the underdot and schwa only denoted that "the author as a foreigner is uncertain about the exact quality of these vowels. To the native speaker, accustomed to the phenomenon of unvoiced vowels, there exists no uncertainty whatsoever, nor are these vowels distinct sounds [i.e. phonemes] to him, but merely the result of the influence of a preceding breathed consonant. In fact the author must confess his dificulties also with distinguishing breathed from unbreathed consonants, so that this perceived indistinctness of a vowel is often his best clue to the presence of a breathed consonant."

Németh's dufficulties were certainly compounded by the fact that only one of the three dialects of Knoschke (still) possessed distinct aspirated consonants. Speakers of the other dialects tended to pronounce all voiceless consonants as aspirated, except before another obstruent and in VCV sequences. It should however be noted that his main Knoschke informant was a woman speaking the dialect with distinct aspirates (and who probably is the native speaker referred to as 'he' in the passage quoted above!)

Underdots were never part of the orthography of handwritten or printed material written by or for native speakers. Moreover aspirated consonants are no more a part of Knoschke orthography to the extent that the language is still written today, since the 'aspirating' dialect of Pe̋terkhird (which Németh in the Grammatik referred to with the Germanized name Petershain) is now extinct. Scholars of the language however continue to use the aspirating orthography, since that was the orthography which Németh endeavored to use in his notes and Grammatik, as well as, and most importantly, in the New Testament and Psalter, and since an inordinate amount of preserved original texts were written by Pe̋ter Miklós (after his emigration to the USA known as Peter Nichols), who was from Pe̋terkhird and himself spoke the aspirating dialect. Inspired by the avid diarist and ethnographic-linguistic notetaker Németh Pe̋ter Miklós kept a diary and notebook in Knoschke from the age of sixteen until he went blind at the age of eighty-two, at which time he had lived for more than fifty years in America. His respellings of English words and whole English passages in Knoschke orthography give valuable insights not only into the phonology of Knoschke, but also into 19th century US English, since he often noted and made comments on dialectal differences in English which he encountered. It is interesting to note that Miklós used szh and z to denote English /θ/ and /ð/ but wrote English /s/ and /z/ as sy and zy; however he himself wrote that "although this is how I initially perceived these sounds it is not how the English [sic!] pronounce them, so that my spelling is merely an expedient." He also transcribed English /r/ as ry and intervocalic /t/, /d/ as r, and remarked on the presence of rr in Spanish and Spanish-accented English.

Notes

^ [1] After palatal(ized) consonants the back vowels have front rounded allophones [y ø œ], and Németh to begin with wrote cü, cö etc. instead of tyu, työ etc., and failed to distinguish [œ] from [ø], something he continued to have trouble with all along. In the Grammatik he wrote these allophones as ü, ö and ḁ̈, (ćü, pʹü) but noted that they were conditioned variants, so that Knoschke speakers were prone to mispronounce both Hungarian tü and Hungarian tyu as ćü.

^ [2] At the beginning of words.

^ [3] Not at the beginning of words. The combination /ji/ is written ji as */jɨ/ doesn't occur.

^  [4] There is no voiceless counterpart to /rʲ/--[ɻ], with /ʂ/ occurring where it would be expected on etymological grounds.

^ [5] All Knoschke vowels can occur nasalized, but nasalization is phonemic only word-finally as in gí͏̨ /gĩː/ 'wine'. Word internally nasalization of vowels occurs only before fricatives and is there an archiphoneme for /n/ and /ŋ/.