Altic

He showed up late last night.

/hi ʃoʊd ʌp leɪt læst naɪt/

System Overview

Fast Facts

Writing System Type: modified abugida

Reading/Writing Direction: left-to-right, top-to-bottom

Word Spacing: none

Featural Script: partially

Altic is a modified abugida used to represent native Germanic-origin words. It utilizes secondary vowel notation, an implied vowel, and special notation for representing intrasyllabic consonant clusters. The special notation allows any English syllable to be written in one phonemic character, akin to hangul. The reading order is left-to-right and top-to-bottom, with individual character components read clockwise. Altic is semi-featural and has two such characteristics: the voicing dot, usually indicating the voicing of a consonantal character, and the palatalization mark, which indicates the retraction of the tongue in the pronunciation of a consonantal character. The characters are split into three categories: main consonants, conjunct consonants, and vowels.

Vowels

Characters are written above and below the null consonant to show all possible positions. Underneath the images are the corresponding IPA (General American) pronunciations.

A vowel above a main consonant indicates a CV syllable structure, while a vowel below indicates VC. The character for /ʊ,ə/ is only written in VC configurations, and is the implied vowel if none is written. It can also represent unstressed vowels, such as /ɪ/, in multi-syllabic words, as well as any vowel appearing in a name of the Christian god in liturgical contexts.

Main Consonants

Underneath the images are the corresponding character names and IPA pronunciations.

The null character makes no sound and exists to represent vowel-only consonants. The voicing and palatalization marks in Altic consonants are sometimes irregular, in the en-em and yom-win pairs particularly. The deviations there came from an archaic labial mark, represented by a hollow circle in the center of the character. Over time, the mark was written as a dot in em and merged with the sides of win.

Conjunct Consonants

Characters are written to the right and left of the null consonant to show all possible positions. Underneath the images are the corresponding character names and IPA pronunciations. The names of these characters are derived from their main counterparts with the Middle English diminutive suffix -et amended to them.

In the case of stacking conjuncts, such as a syllable with a /kst/ coda, the secondary conjunct (almost always salet, taylet, or their voiced variations) is often joined to the outer side of the first one. Taylet can never go where an unvoiced conjunct's voicing mark would be placed, however.

Usage

Below are various examples of words rendered in Altic. Main consonants are rendered in black, conjuncts in blue, and vowels in red. Underneath each image is the word written in English orthography and its IPA pronunciation.

ponder

/pɑn.dər/

Note: Dividing multisyllabic words should be done with the Greedy Onset Rule: the beginning of a syllable must have as many consonants as it can within the bounds of English's syllable structure rules.

weirder

/ˈwɪr.dər/

Note: In words with multiple morphemes, syllables should be separated by morpheme, NOT by the Greedy Onset Rule: in this case, <weirder> is divided as weird-er, and not weir-der.

fix

/fɪks/

Note: Aket and salet are joined here instead of taking up more space on ef separately.

strength

/strɛŋkθ/

Note: Anglet and thornet are joined here, as well as raylet and /ɛ/.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse