Azen Orthography
▲
4▲ 4 ▼ 0
Various ways of writing Azen.
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 29 Jan 2018, 23:13.
[comments] aznazenorthographywriting
3. Azen Orthography
?
?
?FYI...
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
The standard orthography of Azen uses the Tirina alphabet, although preserving several letters no longer used in the reformed Modern Tirina orthography. It is an etymologically-based orthography, which means the exact pronunciation for all words cannot reliably be determined based on their spelling. (although given a sufficiently large set of spelling rules, most words can be correctly guessed) In particular, long and short vowels are not consistently marked. (although again, they can often be determined from context--a vowel followed by a nasal is almost always long, for example)
Due to etymological changes--and the Modern Tirina spelling reform--many letters represent a radically different range sounds than in Tirina. (e.g. Tirina a /a/ represents /e/ and /we/ in Azen)
Here's a proposed alternate orthography for Azen, also using the Tirina script but reformed based on the modern pronunciations and without using any letters beyond the 19 in the Tirina alphabet.
/Azen phonemes/ <Tirina characters> (/original phonemic values of characters/)
/m n/ < m n> (/m n/)
/p b t d k g/ < p pd t td k kd> (/p pd t td k kd/)
/f z ʃ ʒ x h/ < s sh f fh h hh> (/s sh f fh h hh/)
/l ɾ j w/ < l r y w> (/l r j w/)
As in Tirina, the glottal stop is indicated with a diacritic on the following vowel if it immediately precedes a vowel, or with the standalone end-of-syllable symbol otherwise. (not in the Tirina font I uploaded here, so no example ATM)
Geminated voiced consonants are indicated by doubling the second letter of the digraph, I suppose.
/i i: e e: æ æ: a a: ɒ ɒ: u u:/ < i ii e ee j jj a aa o oo u uu> (/i ii e ee ɪ ɪɪ a aa o oo u uu/)
Baj kepe ēma eljek.
pday kepe eema elyek
The father stabbed the dog.
Mēn zhæle āco wishkjāsi.
meen shjle aaho wifkyaasi
I live in a cave.
Mēnīn erobaku sucicēdīd balsæ.
meeniin eropdaku suhiheetdiitd pdalsj
My hovercraft is full of eels.
The Astarali Romanization is one of two romanization/ranscription schemes for writing Azen with the Latin alphabet. It is a phonemic/phonetic romanization, meaning there is close to a one-to-one correspondence between a phoneme and its romanized counterpart. The romanization was developed by linguist Astarali <lastname>, who initially sought a method for consistently transliterating Azenic names into Lorhan (which uses the Latin alphabet), but realized the system could have broader uses. Today, it is the more common of the two schemes, and is widely used by Latin alphabet users learning Azen (e.g. American humans or Lorhan dalar) and for writing Tuanmali on computers/phones without the Tirina alphabet.
This romanization consistently represents long vowels (with macrons), geminated consonants (by doubling the letter), and glottal stops (with the apostrophe). Because it is a phonetic romanization, vowel hiatus is generally resolved, except for across some morpheme boundaries. (e.g. /be:/ is spelled <bē> rather than <bae>)
The Astarali Romanization is the romanization used on CWS and in most Azen translations. It does NOT map to the standard orthography, and the standard orthography cannot be determined from the Astarali Romanization.
The Standard Transcription is based on the standard (etymological) orthography, and has a one-to-one correspondence of Latin characters to Tirina letters. Of particular note are the vowels; the standard orthography has seven vowel characters that represent five vowels (/æ/ does not have a dedicated letter). The two extras are represented with acute accents: í and é. The accents are sometimes dropped (thus writing them as i and e), although this does make pronunciation more difficult to determine because etymological information is lost.
The Standard Transcription has been promoted as making it easier for Azen learners to make the transition from the Latin to Tirina alphabets (as they precisely correspond), but today has been almost totally superceded by the Astarali Romanization, to the point that some have suggested reforming Azen orthography to match it.
Correspondences
A list of letters and their corresponding Latin letter is below:
| Tirina letter | Latin letter | Possible pronunciations |
|---|---|---|
| a | é | /e we æ/ |
| b | b | /b w ∅/ |
| d | d | /d ∅/ |
| e | e | /e æ/ |
| f | f | /ʃ ʒ/ |
| g | g | /g/ |
| h | h | /h : ʔ/ |
| i | i | /i j/ |
| k | k | /k x/ |
| l | l | /l/ |
| m | m | /m/ |
| n | n | /n/ |
| o | o | /ɒ wɒ/ |
| p | p | p |
| q | i | /i wi/ |
| r | r | /r l ʔ/ |
| s | s | /s z ʃ/ |
| ʃ | ts | /ts dz/ |
| t | t | /t d ts dz/ |
| u | u | /u w/ |
| x | a | /a æ/ |
| y | y | /j/ |
| ' | (doubling letter) | /ʔ/ |
/æ/ can additionally be represented by the digraphs ai (ai), ei (ei), and xy (ay).
Astarali: Baj kepe ēma eljek.
Standard: Bay képe ema eliek.
The father stabbed the dog.
✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article
Comments
