Why doesn't somali have the digraph th

[Ahmedahmed5000]

We know somali has the th phoneme in somali, but it's written as d. For example madax is pronounced with that phoneme and should be written as mathax. Why hasn't somali been standardised and reformed.

 

[RiceMuncher]

How about get the Ø in somali and shorten words. Like Maroodi would become Marødi. Ina iyo Ina doesn't have any difference except the sound so why not use apostrophe for one?

 

[Step a side]

How about get the Ø in somali and shorten words. Like Maroodi would become Marødi. Ina iyo Ina doesn't have any difference except the sound so why not use apostrophe for one?

You are right about the long vowels. It makes the Somali language look childish when you see it written

 

[𐒋𐒖𐒆𐒔𐒖𐒕𐒈]

We know somali has the th phoneme in somali, but it's written as d. For example madax is pronounced with that phoneme and should be written as mathax. Why hasn't somali been standardised and reformed.

In old English, letter 'd', which has its origin in letter 'dh' in Sanskrit, which was later represented as 'th' in modern English, where 'th' represents light 'd', or 'dh' in most Indo-European languages. Yet, in Somali, both 'd', and 'dh' do exist, as in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi etc, for example 'madax', with the light 'd', and 'madhax', with the heavy 'dh' are different in meaning.

Where 'th' might have a value in Somali is to represent letter 'tha' in Arabic i.e. instead of saying 'salaasa (talaada) - Tuesday', one would say 'thalaatha'. Same applies to representing letters '
ز ذ ظ ص
', which are not being represented.

How about get the Ø in somali and shorten words. Like Maroodi would become Marødi. Ina iyo Ina doesn't have any difference except the sound so why not use apostrophe for one?

For elongated vowels, i.e, 'aa, or ee' macron sign, as in 'Ā ā' had been suggested, which I trust would suffice.

 

[backgroundISneeded]

Reformed
The Somali language doesn't need any changes. It's already good as it is. It's simple, just like it was designed to be, and it works well. I never had any problems reading or writing Somali. It's much easier than English, by a large margin.

Do we need the th sound?

The Somali language has many different sounds, including vowels and consonants. It is believed that Somali has over 32 vowel sounds, but only 10 are currently represented in the writing system. Similarly, there are 34 consonant sounds, but only 24 have corresponding letters.

The reason for this is that when the Somali language was developed in the 1960s and 70s, it was designed to be simple and easy to use. If every sound had its own letter, it would make reading and writing Somali much more difficult.

Therefore, the current system was created to strike a balance between representing the important sounds and maintaining simplicity. There is no need to add or remove any letters from the current Somali writing system.

 

[Ahmedahmed5000]

Reformed
The Somali language doesn't need any changes. It's already good as it is. It's simple, just like it was designed to be, and it works well. I never had any problems reading or writing Somali. It's much easier than English, by a large margin.

Do we need the th sound?

The Somali language has many different sounds, including vowels and consonants. It is believed that Somali has over 32 vowel sounds, but only 10 are currently represented in the writing system. Similarly, there are 34 consonant sounds, but only 24 have corresponding letters.

The reason for this is that when the Somali language was developed in the 1960s and 70s, it was designed to be simple and easy to use. If every sound had its own letter, it would make reading and writing Somali much more difficult.

Therefore, the current system was created to strike a balance between representing the important sounds and maintaining simplicity. There is no need to add or remove any letters from the current Somali writing system.

Using countless phonemes for the same letter goes against the case for it being a simplified orthography. The only reason Somali didn't addd diacritics was because the machine were based on english or Italian which hardly use it. At least english has been written the same for the last 500 years so that would've prevented reform. But somali wasn't standardised like english, because somalis were never in a centralised state before siad barre, each clan had their own polity.

 

[Dima&Damo]

Can't wait untill ushers in osmanya

 

[Burqad]

We know somali has the th phoneme in somali, but it's written as d. For example madax is pronounced with that phoneme and should be written as mathax. Why hasn't somali been standardised and reformed.

I pronounce it with D correctly.