Bantu Orthography Manual by Leila Schroeder

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Hence, a simple is recommended when possible, sociolinguistically. Examples from Southern Bantu (Ndau S15): ‘dry beans’ /sʰu sʰururu/ /tʃiwi/ ‘island with reeds’ Alveolar affricates [ts] and [dz] These segments are not uncommon in Bantu C, for example see Babole (Leitch 2003), or in Eastern Bantu. Normally [ts] and [dz] can be written as and consistently within a language. In Francophone countries, with languages where [ts] and [tš] are contrastive, they are commonly written as and , as in French ‘Tchad’ for English ‘Chad’.

When this is “stressed” in a word, only the part is written twice as in rather than . htm Bantu Orthography Manual 30 The formation of geminate consonants (a rare phenomenon) may indicate deletion of a high vowel from between them. Testing of an intelligent but naïve illiterate would be the best way to ascertain people’s perception (see Gudschinsky 1973:132–133 for details). Prenasalization We could choose one nasal symbol, for instance , to symbolize prenasalization everywhere.

The fricative is written , while the plosive is written by doubling it. This decision was made because the fricative b is more common and corresponds to the plosive /b/ in the orthographies of surrounding languages (Moe 2002:2). [b] Options: or [ß] Options: or or Test people for their preferences. , in many Bantu languages, /b/ is a weak consonant. Pre-nasalization strengthens the voiced bilabial: the fricative [ß] and the stop [b] are allophones in this case. In other contexts /b/ may be perceived as subvocalized or a fricative.