What is an orthography statement?

An orthography statement is a written report which shows each phoneme of the language being developed with its proposed orthographic symbol and examples of words using that symbol.

Here are the features of a typical orthography statement:

• All the phonemes of the language
• The orthographic symbol chosen for each phoneme
• The orthographic symbol chosen for each consonant (including digraphs and consonant clusters) in an open and a closed syllable
• The orthographic symbol chosen for each vowel in an open and closed syllable
• The orthographic symbol chosen for each suprasegmental
• The orthographic symbol chosen for punctuation
• Rules for word boundaries
• Rules for capitalization
• Examples for each choice
• Rationale for each choice

• Orthography development

• Concept module: orthography statement
• In overview module: Glossary (Literacy): O
• In modular book: Glossary of literacy terms
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 2 July 1998

© 1999 SIL International