60 Chapter 2 Phonology
(79) 1973 orthography 2008 orthography^35
dungeng dhungèng ‘story’
gula ghulâ ‘sugar’
memba mèmbhâ ‘eyebrow’
bejjat bhejjhât ‘broken’
melleyagi mellèaghi ‘buy for’
kabadha'an kabâd.âân ‘existence’
ngedhingngagi ngèd.ingngaghi ‘listen’
The newly adopted orthography clearly is better suited to the representa-
tion of the Madurese language. The decision to use the 1973 orthography in this
work is based largely on practical concerns. First, the initial draft of this work
was completed well before the December 2008 Congress, using the then offi-
cially sanctioned spelling system.^36 Conversion to the new standard runs the
risk of introducing a significant number of new errors into the this text. Addi-
tionally, while one can be reasonably hopeful that the orthography adopted by
the Congress will indeed be generally adopted, whether or not this turns out to
be the case is unknown at this time. Until the ‘dust settles’, future work will
make use of both orthographies.
(^35) Examples for the 2008 orthography are taken from the 2007 dictionary compiled by
the Tim Pakem Maddhu Pamekasan.
(^36) I adopted the 1973 standard in 2000 at the request of my language consultants in Ma-
dura, who were uncomfortable with the orthography I had been using, which used the
same graphemes for consonants as the new standard (except glottal stop, represented
with q as in the Dutch system, e.g. Davies 1999).