Nessëran

=Writing System=

Alphabet
The Nessëran language uses the Latin alphabet, modified by a few extra letters.

Letters with diacritics
The Nessëran Alphabet employs three diacritic marks. These are the diaeresis (ä and ë), the cedilla (ç,ş and ţ) and the grave accent (ò). These symbols are not regarded as letters with diacritics, instead as individual letters in their own right. They represent sounds quite different from their non-diacritic counterparts.

Ţ versus C
The letters C and Ţ both represent the same sound, the Voiceless Alveolar Fricative, a sound similar to the last sound in cats. There is no rule as to when C and Ţ are used, and one needs to just learn a word containing the sound /ts/ with its spelling. This can sometimes lead to confusion, as for example, the words cent and ţent are both pronounced the same way. The letter Ţ is also used in transliterations from Cyrillic, as the equivalent of the letter Ц, as in the words ţär (tsar) and ţink (zinc), and also from other orthographies, such as ţunamy (tsunami).

Absent Letters
Nessëran does not used the letters /w/ or /x/. This is because the sound /w/ is not found in Nessëran, and is instead realised as /v/. The letter x is not used because the sound /ks/ is represented by the letter combination ks.