Difference between revisions of "Document:Novic Orthography"

Revision as of 21:59, 20 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. Novmir also uses different punctuation in some cases as well. This document is intended to give the reader a basic familiarity with the Novic writing system.

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 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 section on converting from Latin to Cyrillic. This chart is not necessarily exhaustive, and exceptions may exist.

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 Ѳ, Ҥ, or Ш, which are never doubled (e.g. <bash> → <баш>, not <башш>). 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.

Converting from Latin to Cyrillic

The following chart is intended to provide a convenient reference for turning English written in the Latin alphabet into Cyrillic. Any rules with multiple Latin letters only apply when the letters represent a single sound, with the exceptions of those beginning with the letter Y in some cases. In the context column gives the conditions under which a certain Latin to Cyrillic conversion is appropriate. Letters in slashes represent a certain pronunciation of the Latin letters. An underscore represent the letters in some context. A capital C in these cases represents a consonant, a V represents a vowel or the start of a word, L long vowel and S a short vowel. The null sign <Ø> indicates that a letter is not pronounced or should be replaced by nothing in Cyrillic. Any empty entry indicates all or all other contexts. This chart does not necessarily capture all subtleties of the differences between the Latin and Cyrillic systems, and exceptions exist. Relatively recent foreign loanwords and words whose spelling does not reflect historical pronunciations but arbitrary conventions pose problems in particular.

Contractions

Contractions in the Novic system are not written as part of the preceding word using an apostrophe. Instead they are written as a single letter separated by a space from the preceding word (e.g. <it's> → <ит з>, not *<ит'з>). The important exception is <n't>, which is considered as an inflection and written as part of the preceding word without an apostrophe (e.g. <isn't> → <изнт>, not *<изн'т> or *<из нт>). The contraction <'s> is always written as <з>, even if it is pronounced as /s/.

Grammatical function words

Punctuation

The differences between Novic and typical English punctuation are very minor. The period, comma, question mark and exclamation point are all used as they normally are. Novic writing supplements this set of marks with the interrobang (<‽>). Unlike in normal English writing, the interrobang is standard in Novic and is used instead of <?!> or <!?> (e.g. <What?!> → <Һўат‽>), both of which are unacceptable in Novic. The other important difference is that in place of quotation marks, single or double, guillemets (<«> and <»>)are used instead (e.g. <"Hello"> → <«Һеллå»>). Guillemets should face away from the quoted text, never in towards it.

Compound words

In conventional English orthography, terms derived from multiple words are often written as separate words, even if they in fact function as a single one (e.g. <high school>). In Novic orthography such terms are typically written using single, compound words (e.g. <high school> → <һнхсхол>). While the two word phrase <һих схол> might also be used in Novic writing, it would refer to a school which is actually high in some sense, rather than an institute for secondary education.