Litish 101 is no longer updated, please refer to the High Litish page on the kingdom website!
Litish, or Lithlioii (Lithiume = Lithium, Lioii = Language), is the national language of Lithium. The alphabet for Litish was first created early July 2018, but the language’s proper construction only began on the 5th of April, 2019, by King Dylan. Over the years, Litish has evolved to become what we know today.
In Litish, lines are read from the left to the right. The Litish Script contains an Alphabetical (the A-Script), Numerical (the N-Script), Accented Alphabetical (the Double-A Script) and a Punctuational Script (the P-Script). The Litish Script, particularly the A-Script and the N-Script, have been changed repeatedly. Namely, the five versions are, Old Litish (early July Litish draft as seen above), New Litish, Advanced Litish, Qwerty Litish (created to be a font) and Standard Litish. For the sake of the lessons here, we will use Standard Litish, as it is the most commonly used Script in present time. Below are pictures of Old, New, Advanced and QWERTY Litish.
If you are observant, you might notice that in Old and Advanced Litish there are higher numbers written down. You will learn them in later lessons on Mathematics and Numbers. By far, they have not been converted to Standard Litish yet. Do not fret, for the time will come, learning all five scripts is highly unnecessary. You might also notice that in QWERTY Litish no uniquely Litish punctuation had yet been developed. Only Standard Litish has been blessed with its own punctuation.
QWERTY Litish
First, to start, Litish has 28 alphabets, and 3 accents, namely cédille (Ç), aigu (é), circonflexe (â, ê, î, ô, û) and tréma (ë, ï, ü). The alphabet consists of an English/ Latin Alphabet cypher, plus a unique Litish alphabet. Below is the complete Litish Alphabet, including numbers but excluding punctuation and the Modified R (∧"').
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P
Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 0 SPACING INFINITY (Tk) Ç Á, é, â, ê, î, ô,
û, ë, ï, ü
While this Litish is standardised, many of those symbols do not yet exist on the computer. To solve this problem, we use many different symbols from Korean, Japanese and more to subsitute when typing, created 1st July 2020. Though it is technically the sixth form of Litish, it is more or less the same as Standard Litish, but of purpose more of QWERTY Litish, and so it's regarded as Standard Litish with an interesting font. Here are the alphabets though accented alphabets have not yet been formed for this.
The Litish Alphabet Tk is generally described as clicking the tongue. In the lessons this will be written as /.
Additionally, the use of "' directly behind one or more Rs indicate rolling of the tongue. When teaching, we'll simply write 'rrr'.
In the current Litish, it's mainly just aigu and tréma that are used, but all are taught. Though the accents aren't as prominent in Litish as compared to, like, French (eek), they are still important and ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. Without them, Litish changes completely. Now, we'll move on to letter groupings. (ehhhh don't freak out)
Litish is more crypt-like than alphabet-like, but it also has a Korean Hangul or Mandarin Hanzi-inspired way of writing: Letter groupings. In Litish, you can (or must) group letters in specific forms, squishing up to four letters in the same space as where one letter would normally be. The list of letter groups will constantly grow, so here's an example before we give you a relatively revised edition of the list of letter groupings. As per usual, letter groupings are read left to right, top to bottom.
"ABBA"
Letter Groupings:
Abba, Ai, Ain, Ba, Con, De, Dei, Del, Den, Eh, Em, En, Ent, Er, Ie, Iel, Iell, Iem, Ien, Ier, Je, Le, Nen, Nnen, Och, Oi, Oii, Oin, Ont, Qu, Que, Ra, Sa, Se, Sen, Tel, Ten, Th, Ua, Uai, Uo, Uoi, Xa
diphthongs/ pronunciation
Please note than ain is always pronounced as "ein", never "ayhn".
Apart from this exhaustive list, all repeated alphabets can always be grouped, though with a maximum of four - not that there are many words that hit that number anyways.
Believe it or not, Litish is also a tonal language, like Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese. There are six tones in Litish; three based on phonetic length and the other three based on pitch.
LENGTH TONES
Ag, Ehg, Oohg are the phonetic length tones or the "stretchy stuff". These connote and imply how long the alphabet is stretched out. Generally, ehg isn't used in writing, just like li in the second group, pitch tones, due to the fact that that is the "natural" tone, like in music, flat, natural and sharp. Ag is the shortest tone, and it feels like the letter gets cut off and ends very quickly. Oohg is the longest one.
The symbol in the parentheses shows you how we'll write it in the lessons. For example, Le'go will imply a short "e".
A'ag (')/ A'ehg (-)/ A'oohg (`)
PITCH TONES
What’s known as bi, li and fi, are the pitch tones. Bi is the lowest tone, Li in the middle, and Fi is the highest. It suits the voice of the speaker, and so even if you can’t be a Christine Daae, you can still use these tones - they’re relative and subjective to your vocal range. In written form, they’re sort of these simple curves - another example using the Litish letter A.
A'Bi (_)
A'Li* (NIL)
A'Fi (^)
Though length tones are used wayyy more, these are definitely still necessary. Now, let's like give up on alphabets and go to punctuation.
We'll only cover basic punctuation here: a period, a comma, the exclamation mark and the question mark. No reason to worry.
For a period or a full stop ('.'), it's an arrowhead pointing left, as if charging towards the sentence to block it.
For a comma, it's an arrowhead pointing right, indicating that the sentence still has more left to go, and urging you to carry on reading.
For an exclamation mark, the symbol is an asterisk sign, as if alerting somebody, it flashes out.
For a question mark, a caret is used. It points upwards, towards the brain, indicating thought to answer the question.
We have prepared two activities for memorizing the script that you have learnt in this lesson, a quiz and a platform to practice. Watch out! We have slipped in random trivia questions in the quiz, so don't let all this knowledge fly out of your ear! Note: The Google Form Quiz is still under preparation, but using the Tinycards app (not available on web) there is a quiz function. (search "Standard Litish Script") We have, fortunately, prepared a shorter version, 6 questions solely trivia.
I hope you enjoyed that lesson! Check back once in a while for updates!
If anyone wishes to practice Standard QWERTY Litish, please email kingdomlithium@gmail.com. Thank you.
Embeds:
Tinycards (unavailable since 1 September 2020)
Trivia Quiz