The Alphabet of the Ŧuliňgrai Language

History of the alphabet — Character chart — Transliteration — Glossary of linguistic terms

1. History of the alphabet

Origin of the alphabet

The original colonists from the First Universe, the Mižinē, spoke a language (Mižinai) ancestral to Ŧuliňgrai.  To write this language they used a collection of scripts.  Iriel was used for all formal documents, official records, and important occasions.  Iriel, however, was originally the alphabet of a completely different, syllabic language, and required some non-phonetic signs to represent Mižinai.  For ordinary occasions, therefore, a second script was used, called Horiel.  The alphabetic Horiel is an ancestor of the Ŧuliňgrai alphabet.

The dialect of Mižinai spoken by the Eretē, called Eretiňgrai, discarded Iriel and was written entirely in a form of Horiel.  The Ŧuliňgrai alphabet is based on the Eretiňgrai horiel, with added structural rules, additional characters, and a completely original set of numerals.

Additional structural rules:

The Eretiňgrai alphabet had a one-to-one correspondence with the phonemes of its language, and thus represented the sounds of the spoken language well; but that was all it did.

  1. Characters did not indicate whether they were consonants, vowels, or numbers.

    Ŧuliňgrai consonants face to the right; vowels face left; numerals have a crossed ascender.

  2. Similar sounds didn't have similar characters.

    In the Ŧuliňgrai alphabet, similar sounds have similar characters.  Compare the Ŧuliňgrai letters for Đ and D, Ĵ and Ž, β and V, Ń and N, L and R, L and Ĺ, R and Ř, W and J.  In addition, voiced and voiceless consonant pairs are represented by the same character, with the addition of the voiceless sign () following a voiceless consonant or voiceless consonant cluster.  The 12 vowel pairs are represented by the same 6 characters, with a circumflex over the second vowel of each pair.

  3. Beginnings of syllables, and ends of closed syllables, weren't marked in any way whatsoever.

    Ŧuliňgrai letters have two forms.  The first, marked with a straight bar over the letter, is used when the letter occurs at the beginning of a word, or when the letter stands alone, as in art.  The second form, with a flag to the right for a consonant or to the left for a vowel or diphthong, is used for everything else.  The beginning of a syllable also marks the end of the previous syllable in most cases, since most syllables are open.  When a syllable is closed (ends with a consonant), the consonant is followed by a vertical bar indicating no vowel after it.

    (In the original form of this alphabet, each consonant had four forms.  The first form was used when the consonant began the word, the second when the consonant began a syllable but not the word.  A third form was used for the second through nth consonants of a cluster, e.g., the D and R of the cluster ZDR.  A fourth form, resembling the second form flipped to face left, was used when a consonant closed a syllable.)

    (The third form was dropped and consonant clusters are now shown as strings of the second form.  The only remaining vestige of this form is the voiceless sign, which was originally the third form of the consonant H.  The fourth form was dropped in favor of the second form followed by a vertical bar, one of the ways closed syllables were indicated in Horiel.  These changes were adopted in the Second Century in Loraon, and the Fourth Century elsewhere.)

  4. Beginnings and ends of clauses and sentences weren't marked; there were no punctuation characters.

    This is because Horiel wasn't meant to be a stand-alone script, but phonetic transcription for the words in Iriel, which did have punctuation.

    Ŧuliňgrai has two punctuation marks, one that comes before an utterance (phrase, clause, or sentence) and faces right, and one that comes after and faces left.  The first indicates that the utterance is a statement, query, exclamation, or incredulous according to the markings above it.  The second indicates that the pause at the end of the utterance is like a comma, semi-colon, colon, or period by the markings above it.

  5. Alphabetical order was completely arbitrary.

    The alphabetical order of Ŧuliňgrai is the order in which the characters occur in the chart below: the consonants (B, P, Đ, Ŧ, D, T, G, K, etc.), the vowels and diphthongs (A, Â, E, Ê, I, Î, etc.), the punctuation marks, and the numerals (1-7 and 0).  Nor is the order random or traditional within each group.  First we have the consonants which are stops, in order from the front of the mouth (B and P) to the back (Q), with the voiced member of each pair first and the voiceless member second.

    After the stops, but before the fricatives, comes the letter Ĵ/Ĉ.  That's because these sounds are phonetically D + Ž and T + Š.  Hence the proper place of the letter representing their combination is between the two groups.

    Next we have the fricatives β through H, again from the front to the back, voiced before voiceless.  H comes last because it's regarded as an unmodified breath that comes straight from the lungs, which are further back than Q.  Compare the Greeks, who called it "rough breathing" and didn't even make up a letter for it!

    The nasals run from the front of the mouth (M) to the back (Ň), followed by the liquids (L, R, Ĺ, and Ř) and the semivowels (W and J).  Then come the true vowels, in order from the center of the mouth (A), farther forward and up (E), up to the top front (I), back along the top (O), and ending at the back of the mouth (U).  Y is the exception; it should be next to I, but is a "late" addition to the language (borrowed from the same First Universe language as the Iriel syllabary).

    The vowel combinations come after the vowels: AI, AO, IU, OI, and ÂI.  These diphthongs are followed by the miscellaneous vocalic (vowel-like) sounds.  EI is not a true diphthong, but a letter for E followed by I — a ligature or digraph for two sounds in sequence.  That makes it as weird as Ē, the only long vowel in Ŧuliňgrai; or Ø, which was represented in Iriel many different ways (ER, IR, UR, YR, and R).  When the backwards-facing consonant forms were dropped (see above), the backwards R was seized as the letter for Ø, removing the last irregularity from the written language.

Additional characters:

The Eretiňgrai alphabet had a one-to-one correspondence with the phonemes of its language.  But the Verē deliberately chose a different phonemic structure for Ŧuliňgrai, which required more characters.

Each Eretiňgrai consonant phoneme consisted of one, two, or three distinct phones, depending on whether it occurred at the beginning of a syllable, between two vowels, or at the end of a syllable.  Furthermore some phones were part of more than one phoneme.  In Ŧuliňgrai each phone is a separate phoneme, each phoneme is the same regardless of its environment, and each phoneme has its own letter.

2. Character chart

Consonants — Vowels and diphthongs —
Punctuation — Numerals

Consonants

Characters 1-23 of the Ŧuliňgrai alphabet represent consonant sounds, some of which will be familiar to English speakers.  These 23 letters represent 44 different phonemes of the spoken language, because 21 of them can be either voiced or voiceless; Q and H are voiceless only.

Each consonant character has two forms, as discussed above in Structural Rules.  These forms are shown in the second and third column of the table below.

The Gloss column shows the symbols chosen to represent the consonants in English writing (such as this web site).  The voiced aspect is shown first (for example, "B"), the voiceless aspect second ("P").  Voiceless aspects of letters that are never voiceless in modern English are indicated by preceding them with a degree sign.  For consistency, and because many English speakers pronounce voiced and voiceless W the same, voiceless W in Ŧuliňgrai is rendered as °W instead of WH.

The last column of the table describes approximately how the consonants are pronounced, by reference to sounds in English and other languages.  When special coding is needed for the transcription, it's shown in brackets in this column.

  Form 1 Form 2 Gloss Pronunciation and usage  [HTML/Unicode]
  (Click on unfamiliar terms for glossary)
  1 B, P Like English, except P can be aspirated or not aspirated.
  2 Đ, Ŧ Dental D and T; Ŧ can be aspirated or not aspirated.  [Đ = Đ đ = đ] [Ŧ = Ŧ ŧ = ŧ]
  3 D, T Like English D and T, except T can be aspirated or not aspirated.
  4 G, K Like English, except K can be aspirated or not aspirated.
  5 Q Glottal stop; no voiced form.  Does not combine (no glottalized consonants).
  6 Ĵ, Ĉ Ĵ = J in Judge [Ĵ = Ĵ  ĵ = ĵ]
Ĉ = Ch in Church [Ĉ = Ĉ  ĉ = ĉ]
  7 β, Φ β = Bilabial V or fricative B, like B between vowels in Spanish, e.g., Caballo.  [β = β ß = ß]
Φ = Bilabial F or fricative P, the voiceless form of β.  [Φ = Φ φ = φ]
  8 V, F Like English V and F
  9 Ď, δ
Ť, θ		 Ď = Th in That [Ď = Ď δ = δ],
Ť = Th in Think [Ť = Ť θ = θ]
10 Z, S Like English Z and S
11 Ž, Š Ž = Z in Azure [Ž = Ž  ž = ž]
Š = Sh in Shout [Š]
12 Ĝ, X Velar fricatives; not found in English.  Ĝ is like G between vowels in Spanish, a G that doesn't completely stop the breath [Ĝ = Ĝ  ĝ = ĝ].  X = Ch in Scottish Loch or German Ach, or Х in Russian Хорошо.
13 H Like English H.  No voiced form.  Does not combine with other consonants.  Never ends syllable.
14 M, °M M = English M, °M = voiceless M.  [° = °]
15 Ń, °Ń Ń = Dental N, °Ń = voiceless dental N
[Ń = Ń  ń = ń]
16 N, °N N = English N, °N = voiceless N
17 Ň, °Ň Ň = Gn in Gnarl, N in Sing; °Ň = voiceless Ň
[Ň = Ň ň = ň]
18 L, °L L = English L, °L = voiceless L
19 R, °R R = English R, °R = voiceless R
20 Ĺ, °Ĺ Ĺ = Forward flap L, °Ĺ = voiceless forward flap L
[Ĺ = &x139;  ĺ = &x13a;]
21 Ř, °Ř Ř = Reverse flap R, °Ř = voiceless reverse flap R
[Ř = Ř ř = ř]
22 W, °W W = English W;
°W = Wh as in whether, when, etc.  Never ends syllable.
23 J, °J J = Y as in Yellow,
°J = voiceless J.  Never ends syllable.

2. Vowels and diphthongs

Characters 24-37 of the alphabet are vowels and vowel combinations.  Note that the consonant signs (above) all face to the right, while vowel signs face to the left.

Each vowel has two forms.  Form 1 is used when the vowel stands alone, or when a vowel begins a word.  Form 2 is used when a vowel follows a consonant or string of consonants.

These 14 characters represent 20 sounds because the vowels each have two aspects.  The second one is distinguished by a circumflex (^) above the vowel, both in the actual Ŧuliňgrai and in the English transcription of Ŧuliňgrai.

Note that all vowels are short, in the Latin or Spanish sense of "short vowel." They are "bitten off short" as in Spanish, not dragged out as in English.  The diphthongs (two pure vowel sounds combined) are exactly twice as long as vowels, but still very short compared with their nearest English equivalents.

There are no other vowel combinations in Ŧuliňgrai besides those shown!  Interjections such as Ea! and Io! are written with two vowels, and are two syllables long, one syllable per vowel.

  Form 1 Form 2 Gloss Description of pronunciation [HTML/Unicode]
24 A, Â A = Spanish A,
 = A in Hat [Â]
25 E, Ê E = Spanish E,
Ê = E in Pet [Ê]
26 I, Î I = Spanish I,
Î = I in Bit [Î]
27 O, Ô O = Spanish O,
Ô = U in Put [Ô]
28 U, Û U = Spanish U,
Û = U in Putt [Û]
29 Y, Ŷ Y = Greek or Latin Y,
Ŷ = German Ö [Ŷ = Ŷ  ŷ = ŷ]
30 AI I in Kite or Spanish Hay
31 AO OU in House
32 IU EW in Pew
33 OI OY in Boy
34 ÂI A in Drag, Stag
35 EI Spanish E followed by Spanish I; English "Long A"
36 Ē Double-length Spanish E, Latin long E
[Ē = Ē  ē = ē]
37 Ø EAR in Early, IR in Birth, UR in Fur [Ø]

3. Punctuation

These next two characters punctuate the Ŧuliňgrai sentence.  Instead of combining the type of expression (statement, question, exclamation) and the length of the pause after each phrase or sentence, Ŧuliňgrai separates the two.  Tone (matter-of-factness, query, exclamation, or incredulity) is expressed at the beginning by the first character, modified as shown.  Juncture is shown at the end of each phrase or sentence using the forms shown for the other punctuation character.

  Form 1 Form 2 Form 3 Form 4 Gloss Description of usage   {Name of PNG file}
38 "." "?" "!" "??!" Indicates mood of following phrase or sentence.  {38a, 38b, 38c, 38d}
39 "," ";" ":" "." Indicates length of pause at end of the phrase or sentence it follows.  {39a, 39b, 39c, 39d}

4. Numerals

The last eight characters of the alphabet represent the digits 1-7 and 0.  Since Ŧuliňgrai uses base-8 (octal) instead of base-10 (decimal) arithmetic, there is no digit 8 or 9.

  Numeral Digit   Numeral Digit
40 1 44 5
41 2 45 6
42 3 46 7
43 4 47 0

3. Transliteration

It was difficult to find a good transcription for Ŧuliňgrai, because it has a lot more sounds than most Terrestrial languages.  I could have used a lot of combinations of letters to represent single phonemes, as English does (CH, TH, GH, KH, HM, NN, RR, etc.), giving a completely false impression of what letters occur in Ŧuliňgrai, and how often they occur.  Or I could have invented a lot of special letters, as Russian did when it adopted the Cyrillic alphabet.

The latter would be the best solution, taking familiar letters and adding diacritical marks to them, so that each sound is represented by a single character.  Unfortunately, in publishing online, I was restricted to the characters known to HTML, even more so then than now.  Thus special characters such as N circumflex and T grave, which I could use when publishing on paper, had to be replaced by strike-through characters and Greek letters like Ξ and Θ.  When I started this site, I struck the best balance I could.

Even so there were problems:

Science (and Publishing) march on.  Newer browsers implement newer versions of Unicode, giving me characters I didn't have before.  And since these are single characters from the same font as the regular letters, they won't break strangely and they won't be different sizes or have different appearances.

In choosing Unicode letters for transcription, I made sure they'll appear without the reader or me needing to select a special encoding or have a special font installed, whether in Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, or even Internet Explorer.  In the ideal transcription (still not possible, alas!) I would've used an acute accent (´) for sounds pronounced farther forward in the mouth, e.g., Ŧ for dental T, in contrast to the alveolar T of ordinary English.  Under the same principal of showing by the diacritical mark how the sound differed from the familiar one, I would've preferred a grave accent (`) for sounds farther back in the mouth, such as the velar N.  Other differences are marked with a circumflex (^), caron ("upside-down circumflex"), or tilde (~), in that order of preference, depending on what was available.

4. Glossary of linguistic terms

Alveolar

A sound made with the tongue at the back of the gum ridge (alveolus).  In English, D and N are alveolar.  See also dental.

Aspiration

A voiceless stop (P, T, and K, for instance) is aspirated if pronounced so forcefully that a distinct puff of air accompanies its utterance.  Many languages never aspirate their voiceless stops.  On the other hand, in Ancient Greek, unaspirated stops (represented by π, τ, and κ) were separate phonemes from aspirated ones (φ, θ, and χ).  Korean is the same, and also has CH and aspirated CH phonemes (CH is phonetically T + SH).  Modern English aspirates voiceless stops at the beginning of a syllable but leaves them unaspirated elsewhere, as different forms of the same phonemes.

Ŧuliňgrai distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated P, Ŧ, T, and K, but does not have separate letters for the aspirated forms.  Aspirated P, Ŧ, T, and K are considered to be unaspirated P, Ŧ, T, or K followed by H, and that's how they're written.  To avoid confusion with English combinations spelled PH, TH, and KH, the aspirated stops are represented as in English with an apostrophe: P', Ŧ', T', and K'.

Bilabial

A sound made with the tongue between or just behind the lips (bi-labial, two lips).  M and B are bilabial.

Dental

A sound made with the tongue against the back of the teeth (dentalis, pertaining to the teeth).  Typically a language's D, T, and N will be either dental or alveolar, but Ŧuliňgrai has both sets.

Flap

A sound where the tip of the tongue flips forcefully once, rather than repeatedly (the latter is called a trill).  Ŧuliňgrai has Ř, where the tongue flips from the front of the mouth to the middle while making an R sound, and Ĺ, where an L sound is accompanied by the tongue flipping forward from back to front.

Fricative

A consonant which doesn't stop the breath completely, but lets some of it slide on by; V, S, TH, and H are some examples in English.

Glottal

A sound produced at or near the glottis, the little bulb that hangs down in the back of the mouth.  Found mostly in English in certain dialects; when John or Paul said he was a "Bea'l", the apostrophe represents a glottal sound in Liverpool (Liverpudlian) English.

Glottalized

A consonant or vowel is said to be glottalized when said at the same time as a glottal stop.  Found in many African and American languages, but rare in Indo-European ones like English, French, Russian, or Greek.

Stop (Plosive)

A sound that brings the breath to a momentary full stop, hence the name.  P, T, K, B, D, and G are all stops used in English.  Also called a plosive.

Velar

A sound produced with the back of the tongue against the soft palate (vela, which also means sail).  G and K are velar stops, and the GN in Gnarl and the N in missing is a velar nasal (unless you pronounce them "narl" and "missin'").

Voiced

A sound made with the vocal cords vibrating.  In English, all vowels are voiced, and many classes of consonants come in both voiced and voiceless varieties.  Old English had more voiceless consonants.

Voiceless (Unvoiced)

Voiceless is the opposite of voiced; the vocal cords are still, and there are usually some secondary differences as well.  When you keep the vocal cords still for an entire sentence, you whisper it.

Copyright © 1999-2007 by Green Sky Press.  All rights reserved.  Backgrounds and images are copyright by their respective authors, who retain all rights.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict This page has been validated against XHTML Strict and viewed under Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer at a screen resolution of 1024 × 768.  If you find any bugs, please contact me at the e-mail address on the home page.