Welcome to the
Empire of Earth™*
Membership Application,
Part 17.b, Linguistics,
Subsection 4,
Appendix II v.2161
(revised 2401,
2619, 2993)
Advice for Creating Your Orthography
One of the most overlooked issues that species new to the Empire of Earth™ have to grapple with is their relative lack of standing within the Empire. Contrary to all expectations at the time, humanity solved all of its major issues centuries ago, long before expanding beyond our home planet.
There is no hunger, no illness, no war. We cleaned up our infestation of elongated muskrats and deported them all back to their home world of Beta Dweebulon Zero—which has since been quarantined. We seem to have mastered all of the important sciences—particularly the big three of hexadimensional physics, sesquilexicalism, and cognitive geomancy—and tamed all of the most useful technologies—particularly the fave five of chronohyperdrives, quantum matter synthesizers, invertebrate babel fish, mnemonic wormholes, and antigrav pogo-sticks.
We respect—and, in fact, we guarantee—the rights, safety, and security of all sentient beings within the borders of the Empire. Not to reinforce the stereotype of Human Hubris™, but given our current state of material and technological advancement, your species probably has little to offer other than your cultural products—otherwise we’d be applying to join your empire.
In the spirit of supporting a successful integration of your society into the Empire, while maintaining a distinctive and vibrant culture of your own, we recommend that you make sure your orthography and thus your cultural products are Friendly to English Speakers™ ... just like the rest of us on Earth. Unless, for example, you made contact with Ukrainian Cosmonauts in 2383, French Astrobaguetteers in 2589, piles of detached and undetached rabbit parts from the earliest Mongolian Wormholians in 2730, or similar, and thus already have a strong relationship with a specific Earth culture.
Below is a list of considerations that have been characteristic of the orthographies of species whose cultural products have been successful within the Empire. While most of the advice is about compatibility with English speakers, there are also important nuggets of wisdom about maintaining your long-term cultural distinctiveness within the Empire.
This list is not exhaustive and does not imply any guarantee that your cultural products will be successful within the Empire of Earth™, even if you comply with all given recommendations. Under Galactic Treaty ΩΜΓ–137, Section 928, Paragraph 1969, Clause ŋŋ.iii, this list does not constitute legal advice, cultural colonization, nor parasocial propaganda.
Elements of a Successful
Friendly-to-English-Speakers™
Neoörthography
Above all else, ensure a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and orthographic units. Your native orthography is indeed elegant and beautiful, and its contextual complexities and interesting irregularities surely reflect its rich historical development and traditions. However, Earthicans—especially the English speakers—are lazy. You gotta meet them where they are.
- Relatedly—and in your own defense—take a firm stand that proper names and borrowings must be phonetically transliterated into your writing system. Especially borrowings from English. They are coming. It is unavoidable.
Ideally, your orthography should be written, Latin-based, alphabetic, and Unicode-compatible. You can exercise your right to use only your traditional leaf-shuffling or slime-juggling system, neutrino-modulated encoding, etc., in dealings with the Empire and its government and citizenry. You can even create a novel writing system—but the Gnarssissstikans of Alpha Shtukkuppian Ⅻ did so and their application has been “in limbo” since 2364. Just sayin’.
- Note that traditional orthographic systems that directly and materially infringe on the rights, safety, or security of other sentient beings are not allowed. The Aksmerderridians of Mu R’Derrida 四 formerly transcribed all diplomatic communiqués in the entrails of their least favorite ambassador from the recipient social entity. That sort of thing is
no longer not tolerated by the Empire of Earth™.
- If your species’ primary sensory modality for permanent forms of communication is not compatible with the transmission of electromagnetic waves or other features of a standard Latin-based orthography, the Earthican Accessibility Office will work with you to determine a Unicode-compatible homologous encoding that works for you. Existing encodings include Earthican Unicodian Braille, Verristinquian Odor Encoding, Mastersheffian Flavors, Dōrbelian Tones, Barry O’Metric Pressure Wavelets, Fizzizzizztian Neutrino Modulators, Tong Shunming Phonemic Color Palettes, and many others.
Despite the ongoing failure of Galactic Linguisticians to properly define a “word” in a way that makes sense for all native Earth languages—much less the broader class of galactic communication systems used across many additional modalities—for the purposes of your written alphabetic orthography, a “word” is a unit delineated by spaces. Breaking up your language into words of about five to eight letters on average is best. Your traditional method for representing your language is indeed elegant and beautiful, and its polysynthetic, agglutinative, and/or quantum-fusional nature surely reflect its rich historical development and traditions. However, ... you know the rest.
- Do not downplay the importance of spaces in your writing system! Even Earth languages are not immune to this effect. Despite German compounds and English noun phrases only differing primarily—at the proper level of abstract analysis—in their use of spaces, English has been the undisputed dominant language of Earth since the late 20th century, while German went extinct in 2187.
As much as possible, the sounds you assign to Latin letters should approximate their standard English values. An educational example: despite the best efforts of the Q Continuum, Earthicans have not—and English speakers in particular will not—accept ⟨q⟩ as a vowel. While English dominates, loose compatibility with other Earth languages is also beneficial, so avoid ⟨j⟩ if possible; if you must use it, make sure it has only one sound!
If your species’ primary sensory modality for transient forms of communication is not compatible with the transmission of vibrational pressure waves in a surrounding medium, the Office of Galactic Linguisticians—who are generally very competent, despite their failings with respect to the definition of a “word”—will work with you to map features of your communication system to something homologous to onsets, nuclei, codas, etc., if possible to facilitate a sensible mapping to an alphabetic writing system, or help you devise an otherwise reasonable alphabetic encoding of your communication system.
- Under the terms of the 2306 Treaty of Cubicle J4, the Office of Galactic Linguisticians and the Earthican Accessibility Office are required to cease all hostilities and work together on the development of applicants’ orthographies and other linguistic encodings on even-numbered Tuesdays, odd-numbered Thursdays, and imaginary-numbered Pluterdays.
Given the admittedly ridiculously small number of letters in the Latin alphabet, you may need a way to encode additional sounds.
- For relatively important sound distinctions, we reluctantly suggest you use digraphs to encode sounds similar to those encoded by single letters, similar to the way that English encodes /ʃ/ as ⟨sh⟩. A poor example from English itself is ⟨th⟩ for both /θ/ and /ð/—obviously ⟨dh⟩ would have been a better choice for the latter. Motivated English speakers may also be familiar with (or at least can probably learn) Polish-style digraphs using ⟨z⟩. If you need even more variants than that, consult with the Office of Galactic Linguisticians to determine whether additional digraphs or less-commonly used Latin letters such as æ, ƃ, ƈ, ƌ, ǝ, ƒ, ɠ, ƕ, etc. are a better fit for your orthography.
- You may also consider using doubled consonants or vowels for length distinctions. Avoid taking suggestions for affricates from French speakers or German-speaking historical re-enactment groups.
- For less important sound distinctions—that is, those that you can accept that non-native speakers will ignore in both speech and writing—feel free to take advantage of the plethora of diacritics that the Latin alphabet offers—à, á, â, ã, ā, ă, ȧ, ä, ả, å, ǎ, ȁ, ȃ, ą, ạ, ḁ, ẚ, etc., for example—and which are generally invisible to English speakers.
If your cultural products are of a sort that are particularly suited to a specific niche of English speakers, other writing systems may be appropriate. The Phōōnēētiszṇz of Alpha-Beta Æʎɔɸøɴɪɑ Seven successfully used a writing system based on the Intergalactic Phonetic Alphabet to market their optimality-based theories of sound changes to English-speaking linguisticians. (They are considered the height of linguistical comedy.)
Computers are very helpful, so don’t make processing your orthography hard for them, whatever you do. Specific advice is often hard for biological entities to pin down, but any number of instances of µLieutenant Chatham G. P. T. McAndroid of the AI Assistance Corp can be made available to help you sort out any issues.
Note: Species with a history of egregious conlanging will be rejected.
* Disclaimer: this phrase serves as a document opening and/or culturally appropriate greeting only and does not confer or imply any change in status of your application.
