Caine orthography

The Caine orthography (Bemé: Keyn romanisesh) is a phonemic orthography for writing Bemé originally described in Charlie F. Caine's Standard and Regular Romanisation of Poccasin Creole (1962). It is desginated as the official orthography for Bemé in the Poccasin Federation, and is also widely used in other Bemé-speaking regions, such as in Saint Columban. It is based on the Latin alphabet and in its official form uses no diacritics.

Charlie F. Caine, the creator of the Caine orthography, pictured in 1961. Definitely no relation to Charles Foster Kane. No siree.

Background

Like many creole and pidgin languages, Bemé did not have a standardised orthography before Caine. During colonial times, English was used in all official contexts; this law still persists in the British-administered Saint Columban. In the few, informal cases where separate spellings were used for Bemé, these respellings were inconsistent and dependent on speaker; for example, wa could be written as ⟨wa⟩, ⟨what⟩ or ⟨wha⟩. One version of The Lord's Prayer in Bemé before the Caine orthography was written as so:

We Abo ni sky, you name be bless.
You bemeh wone, you wone be done, ni ground bela sky.
Give oh we this day we day-day crumb, and solicing we badsin bla we solicin them e badsining we.
An no taking oh we ni temptashon by taking o we away badbad.
Amen.

As one can see, spelling is not internally consistent; even words with English cognates like an "and" (derived from and) is spelt ⟨and⟩ in one sentence and ⟨an⟩ in another, while temteshan "temptation" (derived from the same English word) is partially written in eye dialect as ⟨temptashon⟩.

The lack of standardised spelling was even more apparent in words that are of indigenous Poccasin origin, such as bela, which is originally from Ketaserang beela "agree"; in the extract alone bela is spelt variably as ⟨bela⟩ and ⟨bla⟩, but in other texts it could be written as ⟨bila⟩, ⟨bala⟩ or ⟨b'la⟩.

Charlie F. Caine

Charles Faulkner Caine was born on May 6, 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri. Caine was of English and Irish descent, and grew up Catholic, attending St. Louis University High School. Though he enrolled at Saint Louis University in 1939, by 1942 the outbreak of the Second World War led to a 21-year-old Caine to pause his studies to enlist, where he worked in US Army intelligence until the end of the war in 1945. He returned to university in 1946 to continue his studies under the G.I. bill and graduated in 1947.

He joined the United States Foreign Service straight after graduating in 1947, initially working as a junior officer in the Pacific, before being promoted to Political Officer in 1952, and later promoted to Senior Political Officer in 1957, eventually leading to his appointment as ambassador to the Poccasin Federation in 1961 by US President and fellow Catholic John F. Kennedy.

Independence

With the establishment of the newly politically independent Poccasin Federation in 1961, prime minister (and later president) Jonathan "Big Jon" Shimondeh wanted to set about with the modernisation and unity of the Federation, a big challenge brought on by the lasting effects of British colonialism. To facilitate this, the Big Jon government began promoting the use of Bemé, then known widely as Poccasin Creole or Cassim Po Creole, a language which had already been used as a lingua franca in most of the archipelago for centuries. This initially culminated in the Creole Language Declaration on May 6th of that year, (coincidentally also Caine's birthday) a government declaration to expand the use of the Bemé language to facilitate intranational communication.

However, even by December of the same year the aforementioned problems of the lack of a standard orthography began to rear its head, as spelling was not consistent among government documentation; by February of 1962, the problem had gotten so bad that Big Jon hastily ordered his government to return to using Standard British English conventions for the time being until, presumably, an official orthography could developed.

Orthography

Consonants Caine orthography IPA Examples English approximation b b bemeh bow ch tʃ chena China d d dan done g g gud good gr gɹ~dʒɹ grinyeh grill or drink h h (initial) hampo ham ʔ (medial) jihad uh-oh j dʒ jamis jeans k k kaneh king kr tɹ̥~kɹ̥~tʃɹ̥ kriyal krill or tree l l kolo lid m m ameh mother n n dampini nice ng ŋ kring swimming ny ɲ snyek canyon p p dampini spin r ɹ ridem rhythm s s sebis service sh ʃ shik shine t t titrink tea w w wan want y j yu you

Vowels Caine orthography IPA Examples English approximation a a jamis trap e e bemeh may eh ɛ bemeh bed i i bi eat o o kolo yawn u u yu hook Diphthongs Caine orthography IPA Examples English approximation ey ei̯ skey may oi oi̯ woiwoi joy ow ou̯ grown bow

The distinction between /kr tr tʃr/, as well as between /gr dʒr/, has been historically neutralised, leading to a varying pronunciation:

• ⟨kr⟩ may be heard as /tɹ̥ kɹ̥ tʃɹ̥/;
• In the most basilectal(Kriyal) varieties, the stop may be simply strongly aspirated, leaving /tʰː kʰː tʃʰː/;
• The realisation may be aspirated retroflex /ʈʰ/, and similarly affricated to /ʈʂ ʈʂʰ/.

The pronunciation of ⟨gr⟩ is less variable; there still exists a distinction between /gr~dʒr/ and /dr/, though /dr/ is extremely rare and only exists in certain words, such as grag "stop (v.)" and drag "drag queen".