Orthography

Written Paiute is not governed by an authoritative standards body, and as such, the orthography used by local communities and scholars to represent the language varies. I see these standards as falling into three major groups:

• Linguistic orthographies that sacrifice aesthetics in order to faithfully transcribe the sounds recorded in fieldwork. These are common in Paiute grammars produced as doctoral theses, and in the usages examples within entries in the Northern Paiute-Bannock Dictionary.
• Standard (for lack of a better term) orthography represents Paiute in a way that broadly aligns with the majority of languages using the Roman alphabet.
• Wycliffe orthography is designed to be convenient for English speakers, using only ASCII characters and vowel representations that match English orthography following the Great Vowel Shift.

Pyramid Lake has standardized on the Wycliffe system, and the course material represented in this site is provided in Wycliffe. I find a "standard" orthography to be most convenient for my own reading and for referencing the dictionary, so I primarily use such a system on this site, supplementing with Wycliffe where able.

My "standard" orthography diverges slightly from some others for the sake of convenience and typographic aesthetics.

This site	NP-B	NPLP	Wycliffe	IPA	Notes
a	a	a	a	[a]
âi	ai	ai	ae	[e]	Pyramid Lake features an [e] where other dialects have [ai], and its Wycliffe system reflects that with ae. I use a circumflex as a mnemonic to remember to pronounce [e] without diverging from dictionary spelling.
b	b	b	b	[b], [β]
d	d	d	d	[d], [ɾ]
dz	dz	dz	tz	[dz]	The difference between dz and z is a little murky, at least in Pyramid Lake dialect, which represents both as tz in Wycliffe.. I generally follow the NP-B spelling while pronouncing words as heard spoken.
g	g	g	g	[g], [ɣ]
gw	gw	gw	gw	[gʷ], [ɣʷ]
h	h	h	h	[h], [χ]
ʻ	ʔ	'	'	[ʔ]	I use a "modifier letter turned comma" character like the Hawaiian ʻokina because it looks good and the meaning is obvious.
i	i	i	e	[i]
ii	ii	ii	e, ee	[i:]
k	k	k	k	[k], [x]
kw	kw	kw	kw	[kʷ]
m	m	m	m	[m]
mm	mm	mm	mm	[m:]
n	n	n	n	[n:]
ŋ	ng	ng	ng	[ŋ]	Nobody else uses ŋ for Paiute, but it's an easy way out of using a digraph, and a helpful reminder that this is a single phoneme. Lots of people mispronounce Wycliffe ng as [ŋg].
o	o	o	o	[ɔ], [o]
oo	oo	oo	o	[ɔ:], [o:]
p	p	p	p	[p]
s	s	s	s	[s], [ʃ] (following [i])
ss	ss	ss	s	[s:], [ʃ:]
t	t	t	t	[t]
c	ts	ts	ts, tz	[ts]	NP-B example transcriptions have c for [ts], but the entry heading orthography is ts. It's clear and orderly, and has a nearby precedent in Washo, so why not use it?
č	ch	dd	dy	[tʃ]
u	u	u	oo	[u]	In Wycliffe, [uʔu] (at least word-finally) is represented as oo'o.
uu	u	u	oo	[u:]	Difficulty representing [u:] is a weakness of Wycliffe.
ü	ɨ	ü	u	[ɨ]
üü	ɨɨ	üü	u	[ɨ:]	I was tempted to use ı, but it would require retooling capital letters and likely confuse people.
w	w	w	w	[w]
y	y	y	y	[j]
z	z	z	tz	[z]	Tends to sound the same as dz or tz in Pyramid Lake dialect.