Difference between revisions of "Document:Novic Orthography"

Revision as of 23:18, 9 October 2010

While Novmir uses the English language, it writes it using a system based on the Cyrillic rather than the Latin alphabet. Such writing can be seen in places such as official government documents and the royal coat of arms. Like the Latin English alphabet, this spelling system is based on the pronunciation of the earlier rather than modern English language. As such the values of some letters differ significantly from their usual values in the Cyrillic alphabet. However, this also means that more words can be converted from Latin to Cyrillic one-to-one. This document is intended to give the reader a basic familiarity with the alphabet and how to use it.

Letters

The Novmir alphabet contains thirty-four individual letters. Most of these represent a single consonant or vowel sound, but some represent a Y-sound followed by a vowel. Like the Latin English alphabet, some letters may have different pronunciations in different contexts. What these contexts are and how they affect pronunciation are discussed in greater detail in the following sections.

The Novmir alphabet is given in its entire in the following chart. The names of letters are given using phonetic spelling according to general English spelling conventions. The Latin column gives the letter's Latin equivalents. If a Latin equivalent contains more than one letter, the Cyrillic letter only replaces them when they are pronounced as a single sound. Instances of equivalence which depend on context are given in this document's footnotes and discussed in greater detail under the section on converting from Latin to Cyrillic. This chart is not intended to be comprehensive, and exceptions to the rules listed here may exist.

Digraphs

In some cases a pair of letters represent a single sound. All of these digraphs have an equivalent in the Latin system of spelling. However, not all Latin digraphs have a Cyrillic equivalent and are written using a single letter instead. These letters and what digraphs they replace are discussed in the previous section. Which Cyrillic digraph is appropriate is in some cases dependent on context. This complication is addressed in the document's footnotes and the section on converting from Latin to Cyrillic. This chart is not necessarily exhaustive, and exceptions may exist.

Converting from Latin to Cyrillic

Long and Short Vowels

Just as in the Latin system of writing, most vowels have both a long and short pronunciation, the choice between the two of which is indicated by surrounding letters. The Cyrillic system uses only single and double consonants to indicate whether a vowel is long or short, as the Latin system does word internally. Silent E's are not used, and should always be dropped when converting to Cyrillic (e.g. "bane" → бан). Conversely, any single consonant following a short vowel should be doubled if it is not (e.g. "ban" → банн), unless it is followed by another consonant which is not a suffix (e.g. "bend" → бенд, not *беннд) or the consonant itself is Ҥ, Ч or Ш, which are never doubled (e.g. "batch" → бач, not *бачч). The long and short values of some vowels are different from what they are in the Latin system. These differences are addressed in the following section.

Vowels

The letter A is consistently replaced by А in Cyrillic and has the same values as it does in the Latin alphabet.

The digraph <ea> is replaced by Ӕ, both when pronounced /ee/ (e.g. "sea" → сӕ) and /eh/ (e.g. "head" → һӕд). When the sequence <ea> represents two different syllables it should replaced by the appropriate individual letters instead of Ӕ (e.g. "create"→ креат, not *крӕт).

When the letter E appears word initially or follows a vowel it should be written with Э (e.g. "egg" → эгг). If the E occurs after a consonant, it is replaced with Е (e.g. "tell" → телл).

There are several different ways in which the letter O may be replaced. If short and pronounced /ah/, it simply becomes its Cyrillic equivalent О (e.g. "bond" → бонд). If, however, the short O is pronounced as /uh/ before an N or V, it should be changed to У instead (e.g. "shove" → шувв, not *шовв). When long, O is replaced by Å (e.g. "bone" → бåн, not *бон).

The digraph <oa> becomes Å (e.g. "road" → рåд).

The sequence <oo> is replaced by a long О (e.g. "boon" → бон).

Notes