The transcription of the Cembran

The transcription of the Cembran

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As far as I know, no organizations have standardised the Cembran spelling; so I show a few rules I used in this site to transcribe the Cembran (partly inspired by the ones used in Aneggi's book and in the Trentine dialects lexical archive.)

To indicate a voiceless S (like in English sand) I use the character ś: for instance fiśa (firm).
To indicate a voiced S (like in English tease) sometimes I use the character ∫: for instance ∫gnec (soft).
The S at the end of a word is always pronounced voiceless: for instance fals (false).
In all the other cases the S has to be pronounced following the same rules of the Italian: for instance testa (head [voiceless]), tesa (taut, sated [voiced]).
Note that the opposition voiceless S/voiced S has a distinctive nature in Cembran: per instance cośin (pillow [voiceless]), cosin (cousin [voiced]).

The C at the end of a word is pronounced "hard" (like in English book): for instance banc (desk).
The group c’ at the end of a word, instead, indicates the palatisation, that is the so-called Italian soft C (like in English coach): for instance brac’ (arm).
The group sc’ inside a word indicates a voiceless S followed by a soft C: for instance risc’iàr (to risk), pronounced riss-ch-àr.
The group sc’ at the end of a word, instead, indicates a palatal S (like in English fish): for instance camosc’ (chamois); sc at the end of a word is pronounced sk: for instance bosc (wood, forest).
The Q has always a hard C sound: for instance quadrel (tile).
In the rare cases of G at the end of a word, this is pronounced "hard" (like in English tag): for instance cig (scream). I don't know any Cembran examples of soft G at the end of a word.

Normally I transcribe without diacritical signs the Z, that can have both a voiceless sound (similar to ts in English cats) and voiced sound (similar to ds in English pads): for instance azión (action, voiceless), zio (uncle, voiced).
When I want to distinguish the two sounds I use the character ź for the voiceless Z (for instance fàźil [easy]) and the character ʒ for the voiced Z (for instance garʒón [lad]).
A Z at the end of a word is always pronounced voiceless: for instance avéz (silver fir).

Often, in order to avoid ambiguities in the pronunciation, I've indicated with grave and acute accents if the tonic Es and the Os are open or closed. For instance: sèi (six [open E]), dése (ten [closed E]), òto (eight [open O]), dói (two [closed O]).
A grave accent in the other vowels is sometimes used to indicate the tonic accent: for instance giàsena (bilberry).

In the transcription I followed the modernising trend of the dialect pronunciation, which is eliminating the "altered" vowels Ö and Ü: I've therefore adopted the simple vowels closed O (ó) and U. For instance fór (outside) instead of för, giugn (June) instead of giügn (in the dialect of Lisignago).

Wherever possible, I've tried to follow an orthography similar to the Italian one: for instance cinq (five, in Italian: cinque) instead of cinc, that would yet have the same pronunciation.

In the cases not indicated above, the pronunciation is the same as in Italian.

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