Ælis/Writing

This page will cover the Ælis alphabet, its writing system and its pronunciation rules.



Alphabet
The Ælis alphabet considers itself to have 15 letters, of which 6 vowels and 9 consonants. One of the vowels is technically a diphthong, but it is treated as a common vowel. Additionally, some letters can be marked with a diacritic, making up for a total of 21 phonemes in the language. The tables below show the entire Ælis alphabet. The middle column shows the Romanisation, which will be used throughout these pages as a guideline for pronunciation. Please note that the characters used for Romanisation do not always coincide with the IPA standard. The rightmost column shows alternative pronunciations of the respective letter, which can be used either due to allomorphy, or when a speaker from a certain native background has difficulties pronouncing the preferred phoneme. Tip: you can use the (pulmonic) consonant and vowel audio charts for reference.

The last 6 consonants of this table are voiceless. By adding a circle-shaped diacritic, these consonants become voiced:

Although these voiced consonants aren't considered parts of the alphabet, they do play an independent role. E.g.: rA [ra] and hA [ha] are completely independent root words with unrelated meanings.

There are two digraphs, but these don't appear in natural Ælis words. They exist for the sole purpose of being able to transcribe foreign names better:

NOTE: This text will enclose  romanisations  in square brackets [], and  IPA transcriptions  in slashes //.

Syllabic writing
The Ælis writing can be considered to be syllabic: each root word is visually distinguishable through the writing style. Ælis uses two cases of letters to do so: the primary and secondary case. The writing style follows this pattern: the first phoneme of every root word is written in the primary case, every other letter of the root word is written in the secondary case. For example, if the first sound of a root word is "m", then the first letter of the word will be the primary case "m", which is m. The other sounds in the syllable will be written in the secondary case:

The root word may also start with a vowel, but the rule remains unchanged, for instance with root words starting with the letter "a", which is a :

Here are a few more, contrasting examples:

The root word approach is an important fundament of Ælis, which is why the writing style matches this. The syllabic writing style with an alternation of the primary and secondary case makes sure a reader puts the correct sounds together. Every one root is at the same time a morpheme and a syllable. Uniquely for Ælis, these three words are therefore synonyms. A "regular" root word usually has two, or sometimes three phonemes/letters. Only certain vowel-consonant combinations are admissible:

Toponyms, given names and borrowed words are not considered regular root words. Therefore, they can have more than three letters. Nonetheless, the same writing rule applies: the first letter uses the primary case, the other letters take the secondary case. Some examples:
 * khIMALAIAK (Himalaya)
 * keSPERANTOK (Esperanto)
 * kqLINONK (Klingon)

Punctuation and the name tag


Although Ælis has a full stop ( . ) and a comma, these are used much less than in languages such as English. In Ælis, a comma could be used to separate different sentences, or in poetry to indicate pauses. A full stop can be used at the end of a paragraph. There is, however, no grammatical obligation to use the comma or full stop at all. An example is the Lord's Prayer text, which only has one full stop at the end.

There is, however, a set of two fairly important punctuation symbols named re. In certain ways comparable to the use of italics or quotation marks in English, the two (mirrored) re symbols enclose any type of proper name or borrowed word in order to mark it as such. It may be literally pronounced. E.g.:


 * eG1lIS [egælis] = peaceful language;
 * eG k 1lIS K [eg re 'ælis] = the language (that is named) Peace. (=Ælis)

By itself, [re] ( rE ) is a root word which means "name":


 * iA1mAhA rE kfREDERIQK


 * ==> My name is Frederic.

The re is necessary to distinguish given names from coincidental meaningful Ælis words (especially in spoken discourse). Compare:

Emphasis and pronunciation
As opposed to most languages in existence, emphasis is of minor importance in Ælis. The only reason for emphasis rules in Ælis is to avoid cases of possible ambiguity. It is recommended to revise the following pronunciation rules after having looked into the grammar, because some of them may seem abstract for now.

1) The diphthong [æ] always has its emphasis on the /ɑ/, never on the /ɛ/.

2) Number concepts always carry the emphasis over the following and the preceding root word.
 * E.g.: lA1tE [laæte] /lɑ'ɑɛtɛ/.

3) The cluster iI [ii] has the emphasis on the second vowel, so that it is pronounced /ji/. It may also become /ʝi/; /ci/; /ɟi/ or /dʒi/ due to allomorphy.
 * E.g.: eIiI [ei'ii] /ɛiji/ - /ɛici/ - /ɛiɟi/ - /ɛidʒi/ (to solve).

4) All written letters should always be audible. This is important to keep this in mind especially in cases where two identical consonants appear adjacently. There are a few possibilities to ensure the audibility of both letters. Example given: iRrW2rA [ir'ræira] (meaning similarly):
 * Through prolongation. This can only work for non-plosives: /ir:ɑɛiɾa/
 * By inserting a glottal stop, schwa or another muted vowel-like sound: /iɾʔɾɑɛiɾɑ/ - /iɾəɾɑɛiɾɑ/ - /iɾɞɾɑɛiɾɑ/ - ...

5) Vowel pairs that begin with [u] carry different emphases according to what they mean and how they are written:

Apart from these rules, the emphasis and intonation in Ælis are completely free . For instance, the cluster iA [ia] can be pronounced either /jɑ/ or /'iɑ/; the cluster aSdA [asda] can be pronounced either /' ɑ sdɑ/ or /ɑs'd ɑ /; etc.

Writing Ælis on the computer
If you're interested in writing Ælis in your own text editor, you can download the ttf font. The keyboard keys have been assigned as follows:
 * Lowercase letters correspond to the primary case;
 * Uppercase letters correspond to the secondary case;
 * Number concept symbols have been assigned to the numbers from 0 to 9;
 * The letter [æ] has been assigned to the w-key. Lowercase 'w' for the primary case  w  and uppercase 'W' for the secondary case  W ;
 * The "re" symbols have been assigned to the k-key. Lowercase 'k' for the opening re  k  and uppercase 'K' for the closing re  K.
 * If both rows of this table show Latin characters in your browser, click here.