you can use whatever notation, so long as you say — probably in another column — what the notation being used is. the polite term for 'he made it up' is 'idiotic'
consider the use of featural information, e.g. o + [+dental]_ for ur example
if they're common enough, put in another column called something like CHAINS and give each chain an index — langname+number so that group would be ARAPAHO0 or something
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