Searchable Index Diachronica

Index Diachronica is a list of sound changes from many, many, many, many different languages. However, it is large, and it doesn't use Unicode, making it hard to search for specific sounds. Therefore, I made a Unicode PDF, and also an HTML version (since I know at least Apple's Preview has trouble searching for certain Unicode characters (like ʷ) even if a document is in Unicode), and also made a search tool.

(There still may be bugs to work out.)

Download the Unicode PDF (10.2) (TeX source file, use with xelatex; view in browser)

Browse the Index (HTML, all in one page, 10.2)

Search for a sound (10.2)

Click a sound below to see all sound changes to and from that sound. (Other mentions of a sound are not included.) For letters with diacritics or modifiers (e.g., kː), click the main letter (k) or the modifier/diacritic (ː), and there will be a link to every variant of that letter; or see the full table. For diphthongs, click a vowel and there will be links to every diphthong involving that vowel.

Some notes about sources and data files

I (chridd) did not write the Index Diachronica itself. The Index Diachronica was originally a PDF made with LaTeX, in a form intended to be read by humans rather than computers. I wrote the code for the search tool, and wrote a program to translate the LaTeX file into HTML and also to a machine-readable format that this search tool can use.

Some information about the origin of the Index can be found at the beginning of the Index. (This was just copied from the original, so I can't guarantee that there aren't out-of-date aspects to it.) Many of the sections also cite sources at the beginning of the section. Some of the links to sources might be broken; I don't have copies of any of the sources or know where other copies might be.

In general, I don't have sources for other languages that aren't included and I don't know about all of the languages that are in the index. You can ask questions about the content of the Index or about languages that aren't listed but maybe should be in the comments, but don't be surprised if I don't have an answer. (If you see a comment asking about such a thing and you know the answer, then feel free to answer it.)

The source code and data files are available in Bitbucket at https://bitbucket.org/chridd/diachronica. The data files are in a non-standard format that I made specifically for this project (and the repository in general is probably not as well-organized as it should be); for more information, go to the Bitbucket page and scroll down to the readme. I also at one point made a CSV file and linked to it in a comment, but it doesn't include the language names and isn't in the Bitbucket repository yet.

See also

• Options: change how this site looks on your computer (including color scheme)
  • Enable high contrast
• My language stuff, including a few other conlanging resources and my own conlangs