Background and Rationale

TG orthography is a (for a conlang with IAL aspirations) fairly complex endeavor that resulted from a clumsy merger of thousands of years of East Asian language diversity.  Those from PIE-derived language backgrounds may find much of this confusing, and may even question the utility or sense of this mélange; we believe that, in the model of Classical Chinese, Literary Arabic, or Ecclesiastical Latin, a stable, unchanging written form that can be understood through space and time is paramount for widespread comprehension.

However, tying a written language to a set of sounds is, if we take the time aspect of our language's comprehensibility into account, ineffective at best.  Modern-day speakers of any language are familiar with the idea of dialects and accents varying widely with various levels of mutual intelligibility, and creoles are usually incomprehensible to native speakers of the mother languages.

The question then becomes: if I am a, say, AAVE speaker, should I write "ask" or "aks"?  Which one will be more widely read and more widely understood, regardless of its diglossic status?  However, written English itself has changed (although preserving plenty of non-phonetic morphemes) over time as it essentially is nothing more than a transcript of spoken sounds.  Obviously, when the vernacular drifts too far from its orthography, the written language itself will change, and with no more speakers of the original language, the sounds (and perhaps meaning) are lost forever.

Ergo, we believe the most prudent choice for a truly international language that can preserve and disseminate information reliably is to use a logographic system using the world's oldest character set still in modern use, 漢字 (ㅎㅓㄴ ㅈㅓ, han ja, "Han character").  It is instantly understandable (meaning, not sounds) to 1~1.3 bn Chinese speakers, 127-130 m Japanese speakers, and a large majority of the 67 m Korean speakers.  (Some fraction of the 20 m Thai speakers may also enjoy this easy comprehension.)  In comparison, Interlingua's claim to fame was that it was readily comprehendable to over 600 million Romance language speakers.

Moreover, not only do these 漢字 users understand basic meanings but they are also comfortable and confident with each character's  connotations, allegories, and usage patterns that thousands of years of pan-Asian literary history have shaped.  This translates to a level of sophistication that is typically only seen in one's native tongue, but applied without any further study immediately to TG; this ease of transferrance of skills is not available to speakers of other language families with high levels of fragmentation among its children, e.g., Romance, Germanic, and Slavic.

文法

(ヲエㄴ ハㅓ, wen fa, "orthography")

As we recognize that localization of the vernacular is inevitable, and that the goal of an IAL is not to erase diversity and create a global monolanguage, TG is highly flexible in its orthography and there are serveral "correct" or "proper" (正, ㅈエヒ, jeng) ways to write TG.

漢字

As evident in the Rationale, 漢字 will always be the preferred and "most correct" way to record TG, and the only acceptable form for archived or international text.  日本 新字體 (ㅎㅣ ㅂㅗㄴ レㄴ ㅈㅓ トㅓㅣ, hi bon shin ja tai, "Japanese simplified characters," 日: 新字体) or 簡體字 (コㅓㄴ トㅓㅣ ㅈㅓ, gan tai ja, "Simplified [Chinese] characters," 中: 簡化字) are strictly forbidden, as the three main source CJK countries have all already agreed on a set of standard "traditional" characters (中/韓/統: 正體字, 日: 旧字体).

We understand that Simplification is a sensitive issue, and even though the vast majority of Chinese speakers use 簡體字, to avoid having to arbitrarily choose a simplified path for our orthography and potentially alienate a large potential audience, TG will always use 正體字 (ㅈエヒ トㅓㅣ ㅈㅓ, jeng tai ja, "standard characters").  It wouldn't be 統一語 (トㅗヒ ㅣㄹ コㅗ, tong il go, "unification language") if we didn't try to find common ground between various countries!

正讀音

At the same time, we recognize that not everyone (especially non-CJK speakers) may be comfortable with logograms, and so we have constructed a "standard" reading (正讀音, ㅈエヒ テㅗカ ㅣㄴ, jeng dok in) that can be written either in our own alphabet (if a Western bias is an issue) or using Roman characters (for familiarity and wider accessibility).

However, significant ambiguities may be introduced by writing TG with an alphabet--we are aware of this problem and we are trying to avoid it as much as possible, but again, it is always safest to write in 漢字.

別讀音

Finally, since 漢字 truly transcends national, ethnic, and linguistic borders, TG can also be "properly" read in a reader's native tongue (別讀音, ㅂエト テㅗカ ㅣㄴ, bet dok in, "non-standard reading").  For example, 漢字 can be written "hanja" or "ㅎㅓㄴㅈㅓ" and read that way using 正讀音; alternatively, it can also be read as "han zi," "한자," "かんじ," or "Hán Tự"  Perhaps one day we can devise reading methods for non-CJK languages as well, maybe similar to this fascinating exercise.

Sample Application

For documents published in an international setting, to an audience without familiarity in 正讀音, one would write the source in 正字 by the first principle.  Then, at least, the meaning would be clear and it would be an acceptable medium for archival purposes.  To increase accessibility, the 字 (ㅈㅓ, ja, "character") can be instantly machine translated to various local languages, as 正讀音 has only one pronunciation (non-unique) for each 字.  中/韓 (チウ/ㅎㅓㄴ, chu/han, "Chinese/Korean") also follows this principle with a few exceptions, but for 日 a system similar to their current 漢文讀法 would be required.  With our modernized TG syntax more similar to modern 日語 (ㅎㅣ コㅗ, hi go, "Japanese language"), this will be a much more trivial task.

This is analogous to publishing the source code of a computer program designed to be cross-platform, relying on individuals and their own machines to compile it into a binary suitable for their individual environments.

Until I learn programming or until TG becomes popular, we will continue to use the convention of writing in 漢字 and introducing new 字 with readings and definitions following in parentheses.

綴字法

(チエ ㅈㅓ ハㅓ, che ja fa, "orthography")

Word order is fairly lax, and meaning is not as dependent on context as in 漢文 (ㅎㅓㄴ ヲエㄴ, han wen, "Classical Chinese writing").  This is enabled by our system of verb conjugations and particles much like you would see in 韓/日, and as such, one can apply the same stylistic conventions to TG and vary word order as long as the proper particle designates its part of speech.  Of course, one can adopt a traditional SVO order like 中, and a SOV order like 韓/日 is just as acceptable.

Spaces are used between words when writing in the alphabet or in Roman characters like 韓.  When writing a single word with multiple characters, it is also acceptable to put one space between the syllables as in "han ja" (ㅎㅓㄴ ㅈㅓ) or "tong il go" (トㅗヒ ㅣㄹ コㅗ), as each character is also a meaningful morpheme on its own.  Otherwise, multi-character words can be written as individual words (hanja, tongilgo) or written in CamelCase (hanJa, TongIlGo).  The former is discouraged as it can be ambiguous, especially for new leaners, but can be used informally when CamelCase requires too much effort.

When writing in 漢字, spaces are optional (to conform to the alphabet standard), as in 漢文 and 中文 (チウ ヲエㄴ, chu wen, "Chinese writing")

Punctuation follows the written English patterns when written in phonographs like modern 韓 orthography, but when written in 正字, Chinese conventions are used.  As such, 漢字 can be written horizontally or vertically.