Rheinische Dokumenta
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The Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland. It was presented to the public 1986 by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland. It offers a uniform common notation of almost every phoneme spoken in the Lower Rhine area, the western and central Rhineland, the Berg region, the Westerwald, Eifel, and Hunsrück mountain regions, plus the areas surrounding the Nahe and Moselle Rivers. It encompasses the dialects of cities such as Aachen, Bingen, Bonn, Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Eschweiler, Essen, Eupen, Gennep, Gummersbach, Heinsberg, Karlsruhe, Kaiserslautern, Kerkrade, Cleves, Koblenz, Limburg, Ludwigshafen, Luxembourg, Maastricht, Mainz, Malmedy, Mönchengladbach, Nijmwegen, Oberhausen, Prüm, Raeren, Saarbrücken, Siegen, Trier, Venlo, St. Vith, Wiesbaden, Wipperfürth, Wuppertal, Xanten, and many more.
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[edit] Letters
The Rheinische Dokumenta uses the letters of todays latin alphabet less c, q, x, y, z, plus the bigraphs ch, ch, ng, and the trigraph sch, and in addition, the three common German Umlauts, and 
Each letter is strictly representing one phoneme. Most letters represent the usual phonemes for which they are used in the German language writing or, slightly less so, in the Dutch language writing, as well. Several letters are ambiguous in these languages, such as voiced consonants which lose their voice when appearing at the end of a word. These ambiguities are avoided writing Rheinische Dokumenta; despite the fact that word stems may change their printed appearance, when declensed or conjugated, always the most phonetically correct letters are being used.
[edit] Accents
Stress, and the tonal accents are usually ignored when writing in Rheinische Dokumenta. There are diacriticals to indicate them, though, but since they are seen to considerably hamper readability, make prints ugly, and are hardly necessary to facilitate understanding, they are seldomly used. Some dialects do not have tonal accents anyway. For the other ones, there are only very few word pairs or triples having identical unaccented Rheinische Dokumenta spellings, but different tonal or stress accents.
Also, other prosody, such as the "melody" of sentence, which carries semantic information in many Rheinisch languages, is not preserved in Rheinische Dokumenta writing.
[edit] Vowels
Vowels come in two variants, short and long. The fact that not so few dialects have 3 or more chronemes for vowels is ignored, as it does not create any ambiguitites to do so, and makes reading easier. Short vowels are represented by single letters, long vowels are represented by the same letters doubled to indicate lengthening.
[edit] Short Monophtongs
There are 14 short vowels, 13 of which are representable in Rheinische Dokumenta:
| Letter | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|
A, a |
English "bud", "but", "butt": | bat |
Ạ, ạ |
English "column": | kạle̩m |
Ä, ä |
English "batch": | bätsch |
Ą̈, ą̈ |
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E, e |
English "bed": | bet |
E̩, e̩ |
English article "a" in casual speech: | e̩ |
I, i |
English "spit": | spit |
O, o |
French "Cologne": | kolǫnje̩ |
Ǫ, ǫ |
English word "off": | ǫf |
Ö, ö |
||
Ǫ̈, ǫ̈ |
||
U, U |
English verb, to "put": | put |
Ü, ü |
French "rue": | rü |
[edit] Long Monophtongs
There are 12 long vowels:
| Letter | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|
Aa, aa |
Kölsch "Aap": | Aap |
Ạạ, ạạ |
British English "Argument": | Ạạgjume̩nt |
Ää, ää |
Kölsch "Wääsh": | Vääsch |
Ą̈ą̈, ą̈ą̈ |
strong Southern Texas accent "Dad": | Dą̈ą̈t |
Ee, ee |
||
Ii, ii |
English "speed": | spiit |
| English "meal": | miil | |
Oo, oo |
French "Eau de Cologne": | oode̩ kolǫnje̩ |
Ǫǫ, ǫǫ |
British English "door": | dǫǫ |
Öö, öö |
||
Ǫ̈ǫ̈, ǫ̈ǫ̈ |
English "stern": | stǫ̈ǫ̈n |
| British English "burger": | bǫ̈ǫ̈ge̩ | |
| English "colonel": | kǫ̈ǫ̈nl, kǫ̈ǫ̈ne̩l | |
Uu, uu |
English "boot": | buut |
Üü, üü |
[edit] Consonants
[edit] Unvoiced Plosives
| Letter | IPA | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|---|
P, p |
[ p ] | English "pitch": | pitsch |
T, t |
[ t ] | English "tell": | täl |
K, k |
[ k ] | New England American English "colt": | kǫlt |
[edit] Voiced Plosives
| Letter | IPA | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|---|
B, b |
[ b ] | English "bee": | bii |
D, d |
[ d ] | English "dull": | dal |
G, g |
[ g ] | English "guts": | gats |
[edit] Nasales
Though some dialects vary the durations of nasal consonants considerably, they are not doubled to indicate extended lengths when written, while vocals are. Though this does never create ambiguities within a language, comparison of languages is less supported. A good argument against doubling is, that often nasal durations are depending on speaker, style of speech, and prosody rather than being a characteristic of a word, or a dialect.
| Letter | IPA | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|---|
M, m |
[ m ] | English "moon": | muun |
N, n |
[ n ] | English "new": | njuu |
Ng, ng, ŋ |
[ ŋ ] | English "long": | lǫng |
[edit] Liquides
Some dialects vary the durations of liquides sometimes. This is hardly a characteristic of a word, but prosodic, it is not noted when writing Rheinische Dokumenta.
| Letter | IPA | Sample Word | Rheinische Dokumenta |
|---|---|---|---|
L, l |
[ l ] | English "law": | lǫǫ |
R, r |
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Ṙ, ṙ |
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Ṛ, ṛ |
