cws
Greetings Guest
home > library > journal > view_article
« Back to Articles ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article » Journal
The Anewoa
4▲ 4 ▼ 0
a short description of the Anewoa
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 3 Dec 2018, 17:44.

[comments]
[Public] ? ?
Menu 1. The Anewoa
[edit] [top]The Anewoa


The Anewoa, or the Great Script, is an abugida-syllabary used to write the  Amakane language. It consists of 59 characters and is descended from the Osveraali alphabet.



The first piece of writing we have in Amakane is dated to about 700 CE. From this, we can deduce that the Atamengians learned to write at about this time. This first piece of writing is in fact in the Anewoa, which makes it over 1000 years old. They learned to write from Atsiq, specifically from the Dachashki people. It is in fact from their language’s alphabet that the Anewoa descends from. The early Atamengians wrote on palm leaves, which made the old Anewoa very circular, as not to tear the leaves. However, once the printing press was invented, the script could become more angular. The original Anewoa consisted of nearly 100 characters (98), yet by the 1800s, the language had changed so much that the historical spelling was quite a nuisance. Because of this, the Society of Anewoa Reform (IEA) was formed. In the 1950s, the IEA modified the Anewoa by stripping many characters and reassigning some, and tried make the spelling regular. It was a rousing success.

The Anewoa is an abugida-syllabary, meaning it functions as a syllabary but some parts of it act as an abugida. Most of the characters evolved as ligatures of the consonants with the vowels, which is why some characters are regular while others are not. The characters for “ro” (C (No conscript set up)) and “nga” (y (No conscript set up)) and “ru” (6 (No conscript set up)) and “ngo” (J (No conscript set up)) are the same (coincidentally, as a result of change; one used to be angular the other more circular, similar to something like “ho” (X (No conscript set up)) in reverse), however, there is no case where these sounds distinguish minimal pairs. However, it is absolutely key to distinguish “ho” (X (No conscript set up)) and “so” (Z (No conscript set up)). The characters look similar but are actually different; many prefer to write the lower part of “so” (Z (No conscript set up)) as a square. The reason it is so important to distinguish them is best exemplified in what are commonly known as the “Sosohoho” words:

Soso, vest
Soho, animal
Hoho, calm
Hoso, wing

(I haven’t developed the old script yet, when I do I will update the article)
✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article
Comments
privacy | FAQs | rules | statistics | graphs | donate | api (indev)
Viewing CWS in: English | Time now is 28-Mar-24 10:18 | Δt: 443.712ms