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What language(s) and writing system does your nation use?


Drachmaland

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A lot of fellow TWPers, and often newly-founded nations, ask questions regarding their choices for their nation's languages and alphabets (or writing systems in general), so I thought it'd be nice if there is a thread were such discussions can take place — and here it is!

 

Here you can be as voluble or laconic as you please; you can exhibit IPA sounds, scripts, graphemes, letters or keyboard layouts; you can explain how your nation came to use the specific language or writing system you chose — and of course you can post content here or link to your nation's factbook or dispatches.

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My nation is supposed to use a language I'm half-finished with and will never get the time to complete, and uses a mostly-unmodified Latin alphabet.

Edit: Hariko makes me feel inadequate, so here is said alphabet-

A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z.

Vowel sounds are always short, C is replaced by K and S, and X is EKS or KS as appropriate.

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Hariko has two national languages, Harikén and English, which are spoken by the Hari ethnic group, and the white Sealandic minority, respectively.

Harikén uses Hangul and traditional Chinese characters, called ssóngji, in its written form.

English uses the standard Latin alphabet.

Harikene computers come with the national standard keyboard, the Ransugeo-104 layout, which has jamo in Dubeolsik layout, Chinese radicals for Cangjie input, and a modified Dvorak layout for English. The AltGr button toggles between the three input methods if tapped, and has regular AltGr function if held down. To the left of the return button is the “Anyan” key that changes the direction of the script, either top-to-bottom, or left-to-right.

gJiovP4.png

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Drachmaland and its colonies of Akanes & Obolos have two official languages: Drachmalandian Greek and American English.
 
The Akanes dialect is slightly different to the mainstream language, sounding a bit redneckish, with some additional, non-standard sounds and many dropped vowels.
 
Drachmalandian Greek is virtually identical to Modern Greek, the only differences being some additional orthographic conventions (based on current usage) and a modified 28-letter alphabet that does not correspond fully to the one used in Greece and Cyprus. There is the typical Greek accent (word stress mark) in use (with some variations in its rules), but the diaeresis diacritic is used differently than in standard Greek. There are no digraphs or diphthongs.
 

Common letters with Modern Greek, with same pronunciation:

Αα, Γγ, Δδ, Εε, Ζζ, Ηη, Θθ, Κκ, Λλ, Μμ, Νν, Ξξ, Οο, Ππ, Ρρ, Σσς, Ττ, Φφ, Χχ, Ψψ.

 

Common letters with Modern Greek, but with different pronunciation:
Ββ = 'b' as in big, Ιι = German or Spanish 'j', used only immediately after a consonant as a modifier, Υυ = 'oo' as in spoon, Ωω = 'ch' as in chair.

 

Additional letters:

Dd = 'd' as in dart, Gg = 'g' as in gulf, Jj = 'j' as in jam, Vv = 'v' as in victory.

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Well, let's see, eventually Fujai will use a language loosely based on Norwegian or something to that description.  Ideally I would learn Norwegian before embarking on creating said language, but that would require lots of time and effort, so we'll have to play that by ear.
 
Another option is using a more runic language, however, that would mean not being able to type it on a normal keyboard.  Also, as I'm writing this, I think I'll end up creating a runic language for the Trondelem or Krelgen (see my factbook), and incorporate some of that into modern Fujaian.

 

More updates will come in the future.

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Well, Fujai, you can also think about creating variations, as the Norwegian languages has four written forms: Riksmål, Bokmål, Nynorsk, Høgnorsk. Or adapt your nation's ethnological & linguistic history in a way that your language is affected by another language, either Indo-European or not. For the writing system most probably the most important decision from your part would have to be the use of additional letters (aesc, esh, eth, ethel, thorn, wynn, yogh etc) or diacritics (acute accent, grave accent, caron, cedilla, circumflex, dot, hook, umlaut).

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Yeah, I suppose I could just figure out an alphabet for now, but I'd really like to flesh it out into a somewhat working language.  Although now I'm thinking that I don't even need Norwegian for that, I can just create my own words in a vaguely Nordic theme.  Why didn't I think of that before?

Anyway, thanks for the help.  (I still want to learn Norwegian, though.  :P)

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The main languages of Tailsea are English, Japanese, and Tailsean.

 

Tailsean mainly uses the Latin Script


 

Standard Tailsean Alphabet:

A À Â Ä A̋ Ạ̈ Æ B C C̀ C̄ Ċ Ç Ç̆ D D̂ E Ə F F̀ G G̀ Ƣ H χ I Ɩ J J́ K K̀ L L̂ M N N̂ Ŋ O Ö Œ Ɔ Ɵ P P̀ Q R S Ʃ T Þ UÜ Ʊ V W X Y Z Ʒ


Those are some crazy choices, aren't they?

 

Advanced Tailsean Alphabet

A À  Ã̀ Ã́ Ä Ä́ Ä̀ A̋ Ạ̈ Ą Ą̈ Æ Ɑ́ Ɑ̂ B C C̀ C̄ Ċ Ç Ç̆  D D̂ E Ə F F̀ G G̀ Ƣ Ɣ̓ H χ I Ɩ J J́ K K̀ L L̂  M N N̂ Ŋ O Ö Œ Ɔ Ɵ P P̀ Q R S Ʃ T Þ UÜ Ʊ V W X Y Z Ʒ
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Somehow I don't think your language has that many individual sounds.

 

Also, you have þ, but neglect the fact that there are two types of “th” sounds, þ and ð.

 

Ex.

 

the nether

ðe neþer

 

þ makes the th sound where you're blowing through your teeth, and ð makes the th sound where you're making a buzzing noise.

 

That sentence with thorn and eth:

 

Þ makes ðe þ sound where you're blowing þrough your teeþ, and ð makes ðe sound where you're making a buzzing noise.

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Hmm, yes, the total-number-of-letters issue.

 

Truth is that the IPA had (so far) to use 107 letters in order to represent all the phonemes that humans can produce; you can listen to them here: http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/. But typically languages do not use the entire phoneme spectrum available, and the more a language is spoken through the ages, the easier it becomes for it to lose some letters or even phonemes.

 

I can also suppose that some of the Tailsean letters are just base letters with diacritics or prosodic marks, so the total number of letters in the Tailsean alphabet would be lower. So, I'll tell you what: Listen to the various phonemes humans use, select the ones that you feel they're appropriate for your nation's language, and assign letters to them. After that, you can make up your mind regarding diacritics and such: whether they're needed in your language, and which ones to use.

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You guys aren't too happy of my choices?

 

Don't get me wrong, Tailsea, your choices are OK — I actually support your alphabet, in spite of it seeming maybe a tad too extensive to some. ;) Moreover, I believe I also gave you a tool for assigning phonemes to your letters, thus helping you go up some levels regarding how professional your work looks. :)

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Unless your language is tonal, those are way too many sounds for a language. Most of the variations should be focused on vowels, because those are the most flexible. Consonants on the other hand, there are only several types of consonants that exist in human speech, but the variations between them are pretty much aspirated, voiced, and gutteral ones.

But to really spice things up, copy Xhosa and add some clicking consonants. Also, on the Canary Islands, I believe there is a language that is based off of Spanish, but all of the vowels and consonants are whistling noises.

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Zogradia's native language (Ikida) is a tonal language written in Latin, Cyrillic, Hangul, Thai and Jawi (all modified versions of each).

 

Sounds:

Note: Bold=Low tone, Italic=Mid-tone and Underline=High tone

Consonants:

b /b/ บ ب Б ㅂ

ch /t∫/ จ چ Ч ㅊ

d /d/ ด د  Д ㄷ

g /g/ ก ݢ  Г ㄱ

h /h/ ห ه   Х ㅎ

j /dʒ/ ธ ج  Ж ㅈ

k /k/ ค ك К ㅋ

l /l/ ฬ ل Л ㄹ

m /m/ ม م М ㅁ

n /n/ น ن Н ㄴ

ng /η/ ง ڽ НГ ㅇ

p /p/ ผ ڤ П ㅃ

r /r/ ร ر Р ㄹ

s /s/ ษ س С ㅅ

sh /∫/ ส ش Ш ㅆ

t /t/ ฅ ت Т ㄸ

v /v/ ฝ ۏ В ㅗ

w /w/ ว و У ㅗ

y /j/ ย ي Й ㅑ

‘ /?/ ๆ ع Ь ㅢ

 

Vowels:

a /a/  ั  إ А ㅏ

ae /aɪ/ ะ ى АЕ ㅐ

ao /aʊ/ ุ ّ  АУ ㅓ

ā /æ/ า ا АА ㅏ

e /ε/ เ ะ    ء Е ㅔ

é /ei/ เเ ะ   آ ЕИ ㅕ

ī /i/    ิ   ي И ㅣ

ı /Ɯ/   ี   أ Ъ ㅡ

o /o/   ่  ؤ О ㅗ

ö /œ/  เ เะ  ئ Ю ㅚ

u /u/  ู  و У ㅜ

 

Tone Markers: (note: ā, é, ī and ö have fixed tones)

´ Rising tone

` Falling tone

ˇ Mid-high tone

˜ Mid-low tone

 

*These tone marks only work in Latin, I'm still organizing it for the other scripts.

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Which tool would that be?

 

First, listen to all the possible phonemes used by humans now:

 

Truth is that the IPA had (so far) to use 107 letters in order to represent all the phonemes that humans can produce; you can listen to them here: http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/

 

Then look at your alphabet and decide which letter stands for each of aforementioned phonemes you want to have in your language.

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TAS'IKIDA: 'Atonesiátào āāng tas'Ikidátù, āāng lukatá lăsào wu, téwã betà tas'Tai dă.

تأسعيكيدأ: عتؤنيسيأتّ انݢ تأسعيكيدأْتوّ، انݢ لوكاتاْ لاُسأِو و، تآوأ بءتأّ تسعتى دأّ.

 

ENGLISH: Ikida is an Austronesian language, and a direct descendent of Indonesian, with some Thai roots.

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English: Malviet uses two official languages: English and Korean, while French, German, and Japanese are also sometimes used.

Korean is used with Hangul and Hanja(traditional Chinese characters with Korean pronunciations), while Japanese is used with Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji(Chinese characters used in Japan), and English, French, and German with their respective alphabets.

Korean: 말비에트는 영어와 한국어 두가지의 공용어를 사용하며, 프랑스어, 독일어, 일본어도 사용됩니다.

한국어는 한글과 한자와 같이 사용되고, 일본어는 히라가나, 가타가나, 일본어 한자와 쓰이며, 영어, 프랑스어, 그리고 독일어는 각각의 알파벳과 함께 쓰입니다.

Note to self: So many people around here know hangul, and yet your Korean exam scores this semester sucked, mate. You should be ashamed.

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I intend to learn Korean when I have the time, but so far I don't. I still learned Hangul though. I can also read Cyrillic, and obviously Latin. I'm starting to pick up on some hanja.

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