Fa'lysh

General information
For the most part, this page will be written in Romanized words (ie "a b c" not "ا ب س") for obvious reasons (because the author would like it to be easier to write). The IPA pronunciation/spelling of each word, however, may not be given, due to the sheer number of times the author would have to copy and paste.

In the immortalized words of Katniss Everdeen, "Thank you for your consideration."

Phonotactics
Since the written phonotactics differ from the spoken phonotactics, I will put both here.

(C=consonant V=vowel)

written= (C)(C)(V)(C)

spoken= (C)(C)V(V)(C)(C)

There are many combinations.

Implied Letters
Not all of the vowels that are in the vowel phonology are listed in the alphabet, and that is for a reason. Sometimes, (perhaps most of the time) the vowels are implied using certain diacritics.

For example, if you were to write a word (ie shadiuz') you'd place a small diacritic, called fadh"kh (plural fadh"kh"i), above the sh (ش) like so شَ. Fadh"kh"i look like َ, and they denote a short /a/ sound. To denote the /i/ sound after the letter d (د), we place a kazr"kh (plural kazr"kh"i) below it. Kazr"kh"i look just like fadh"kh"i, but are placed below the letter they come after. In the afore mentioned word (shadiuz'), the kazr"kh would be placed below the d (د), and therefore look like this: دِ.

So, in essence, only the long vowels are written and the short vowels are sometimes written as small diacritics so as to be written swiftly and easily.

shadiuz' would therefore be pronounced as /ʃadiu̯zˤ/, and spelled



There is another vowel written aometimes as a diacritic, and that vowel is u (و). Written as a diacritic, this letter is called a d'aim"kh, and is written above the preceding consonant. The d'aim"kh diacritic looks like this: ُ  (like a small awareness ribbon).

For instance: in the word jusard' the u is short, so it may be written as



Strange Diacritics
Some diacritics are not vowels, and some of those do not even have a phonemic value at all. An example of a diacritic with no phonemic value is a zukhun (plural zukhun"i). A zukhun may look like a small circle above a letter. The zukhun denotes that there is no vowel after the consonant that the zukhun is modifying.

Take into account the word xalban. There is no vowel between the l and the b, so to write this in the native Fa'lysh script, you would write



Another example of a strange diacritic would be the jadd" (plural jadd"i). The only thing that they do is double the consonantal value (instead of writing two of the same letter, just write a jadd" over the consonant to be doubled)

That is to say that if you were to write the same exact name of the diacritic you are using in the name of the diacritic (does that make sense?) jadd", then you would write





This example is nice because it also demonstrates the combination of two different diacritics, and how they could still be used in conjunction.

Diacritics
There are a couple diacritics (not including the fadh"kh"i, kazr"kh"i, zukhun"i, and jad"i), and they are used to change the pronunciation of some letters. These diacritics, in Fa'lysh, are called xhamz"i (singular xhamz"h). They look like a u with the top kicked over on its side to the right: ء

Whenever it is on the bottom of the letter a (ا), it changes the /aː/ sound to an /æ/ sound. When on the top, the /aː/ sound changes to the diphthong(s) /ai̯/ or /aj/

Like so:



However, when a xhamz"h is written on the letter u (و), it turns the /u/ sound into an /ɒ/ sound.

Like so: