Also w for szcz makes no sense. Use r for "ja" while you're at it :)
Propbably an attempt to use a letter similar to <Щ, щ> graphically.
> Why "x" instead of "z" in cz/sz/rz etc. sounds?
I think it is something picked up from Esperanto. Traditional way to replace Esperanto-specific letters, when not supported, was to change it to a letter followed by an “h”, but there is also a more widely used method using “x” instead.
Yes but then let's use R for "ja" :) This language seems like someone coming from cyrylic wanted to use latin letters, it's not good for Slavic languages that already used latin letters.
Ditto for я and ю.
Considering we're talking about constructed languages, whether "it's supposed to read `sh`" or "it's supposed to read `sht`" is defined by the author of the language.
On top of that, even coming to a conclusion on what it's supposed to read like means extrapolating it from present-day languages or from the now-dead languages. In a lot of cases, different languages will just have different readings. I.e. consider these words:
Group 1 - BG reads sht, RU reads shch
BG щипя - RU щипаю BG щастие - RU счастье BG ущърб - RU ущерб BG щит - RU щит BG вещ - RU вещь
Group 2 - BG reads sht, RU reads sht
BG нещо - RU нечто (Russian reads as "cht" here, but close enough) BG що - RU что (Russian reads "shto", at least in modern reading)
Group 3 - loaned words mostly try to mimic original
BG щора - RU штора BG поща - RU почта BG щанга - RU штанга
Plus there's the weird separate word [BG "sht" щателен - RU "tshch" тщательный].
Barring the loaned words from mostly Germanic origin, it looks like one language just sticks to "sht", while the other prefers "shch" and considers the "t" redundant. The interesting exception is the "що - что" pair, which is seems to preserve the T sound.
Speaking as a Russian, I think that "shch" is close enough for an international conlang. It's not a sound that's particularly easy to learn or explain.
- ch (č) instead of cx
- sh (š) instead of sx
- zh (ž) instead of zx
- shch instead of wx
- kh instead of 'x' or 'ch' (kharkiv)
- j instead of gx or dž or dzh. It's already well established how to pronounce 'jamaica' worldwide
- y instead of the slavic j. There is no need for i and y to represent the same vowel
- ye instead of ě
- ty instead of ť
- dy instead of ď
- ny instead of ň
- rzh instead of řI believe that most of them will pronounce Jamaica in their own way and different from the others. Thus there is no established rule about how to pronounce Jamaica.
Therefore, I believe that the only acceptable rule for the sound of "J" is the rule that is the oldest, i.e. to use "I" strictly for the vowel and "J" for its consonant form.
For the voiced form of "č", the best would be to use g with caron, for symmetry, even if currently few fonts include this character.
In my opinion "Y" should not be used for any sound of a Slavic language. It should better be reserved for its original sound, which is missing from the Slavic languages.
As for "X" it exists in some Slavic alphabets, for example in Slovak (but apparently only in loan words). In Polish it theoretically doesn't, but actually does (loan words use x when the word is new, and with time it's replaced with ks).
Slavic languages are generally tongue twisters for non-Slavic speakers, what with consonant clusters like "mst" or "vzd".
As for s+z - interesting, in Polish there's no s+z pronounced separately. "Szadi" would be "z zadu" and you do a pause between the z letters. And if we have "from $PLACE" where place starts with S we change "z" to "ze" for exactly this reason. So "Z Rosji" and "Z Zimbabwe" but "Ze Szwecji".
"x" at least has the advantage that it's foreign to almost everyone, and thus forces you to look up what the hell it's supposed to mean! But in general, I think that diacritics work much better for readability of Latin-based Slavic alphabets, with Czech being a decent starting point ("ch" aside).
As for the consonant clusters, they are easy to pronounce to Slavs, because we're used to them. Ask a native English speaker sometime what they think about a combo like "vzt" :)
(The reason why we ended up with these unusual consonant clusters is because of the loss of yers. For example, "pomst" and "мстить" are derived from proto-Slavic "*mьstь", where "ь" was originally short "e". This is also why vowels show up in the middle of those consonant clusters sometimes when words change such that the syllable that used to have a yer in it becomes stressed - as in Russian "месть".)