Gylic alphabet
The Gylic alphabet is a Latin-script alphabet used to write the Gylic languages and to transliterate foreign languages spoken in Gylias. The standard version of the alphabet has 30 letters, including the diacritics Ð, Ď, Ḑ, Ş, Þ, and Ţ. Two additional diacritics occur in specific Gylic languages: Æ in Tanan, and Ŋ in Ŋej.
Alphabet
The basic alphabet consists of 30 letters: 6 vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y) and 24 consonants. The letters q and w are not used in the alphabet. Acute accents are used to mark the stressed vowel in diphthongs.
| Letter | Name | IPA | Diacritics |
|---|---|---|---|
| A, a | a | [a] | á |
| B, b | be | [b] | |
| C, c | ce | [tʃ] | |
| D, d | de | [d] | |
| Ð, ð | ðe | [ð] | |
| Ď, ď | ďe | [d͡ʒ] | |
| Ḑ, ḑ | ḑe | [d͡z] | |
| E, e | e | [e] | é |
| F, f | fe | [f] [ɸ] |
|
| G, g | ge | [g] | |
| H, h | he | [h] | |
| I, i | i | [i] | í |
| J, j | je | [ʒ] | |
| K, K | ke | [k] | |
| L, l | le | [l] | |
| M, m | me | [m] | |
| N, n | ne | [n] | |
| O, o | o | [o] | ó |
| P, p | pe | [p] | |
| R, r | re | [r] | |
| S, s | se | [s] | |
| Ş, ş | şe | [ʃ] | |
| T, t | te | [t] | |
| Þ, þ | þe | [θ] | |
| Ţ, ţ | ţe | [ts] | |
| U, u | u | [u] | ú |
| V, v | ve | [v] | |
| X, x | xe | [x] | |
| Y, y | y | [ɨ] | ý |
| Z, z | ze | [z] |
Additional letters
| Letter | Name | IPA | Occurs in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Æ, æ | æ | [æ] | Tanan |
| Ŋ, ŋ | ŋe | [ŋ] | Ŋej |
| Ə, ə | ə | [ə] | Transliterated Breconese and other languages with common mid central vowels |
Orthographic principles
Gylic orthography is highly phonemic: each letter stands for a sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter. The use of diacritic consonants is intended to avoid digraphs, and the alphabet as a whole is organised to avoid redundant letters.
The order of the letters is based on the Latin alphabet, with diacritics following the consonants they are applied to. As a result, x, used to represent the voiceless velar fricative, occurs near the end of the alphabet, rather than after the h, which its pronunciation is closer to.
In their respective alphabets, æ and ŋ follow a and n.
History
The Gylic languages have been written with adapted foreign alphabets since the Liúşai League, including the Hellene alphabet, Latin alphabet, runes, and others. The Latin alphabet became more widespread during the post-ancient era, and was adopted as a common alphabet during the Gylian ascendancy, aided by the significant contribution of Anca Déuréy.
Alscia first established an official body to regulate and standardise Gylic languages, as part of the province's modernisation drive. Additional decentralised attempts at language reform and planning took place in the Free Territories.
The modern Gylic alphabet was created by the Gylian languages reform of 1958-1959. The Languages Board established a special 10-member commission to adapt the Latin alphabet into a standardised Gylic script, which could also be used to facilitate Gylic study of foreign languages. The commission's decisions included:
- Borrowing the letters eth and thorn from Nordic languages to represent the voiced alveolar fricative and voiceless alveolar fricative, respectively.
- Adding diacritics to the letters d, s, and t to replace previous digraphs dj, dz, sh, and ts. The choice of cedilla as a diacritic came from its existing use in French and Lusitan. The choice of háček for ď came from its use in Azura and Montemayor.
- Assigning sounds to certain letters based on the International Phonetic Alphabet to avoid redundancy: x representing the voiceless velar fricative, and y the close central unrounded vowel.
- Assigning c and g regular pronunciations [tʃ] and [g]. This was motivated by a desire to avoid the distinctions between hard and soft C and hard and soft G (as in Italian), and served to eliminate a redundancy by having c and k have different pronunciations.
- Elimination of digraphs and doubled letters as much as possible.
Due to the divergence between the standardised Gylic alphabet and other Latin alphabets, Miranian ruby characters were popularly adapted as a reading aid and gloss. It is quite common for Gylic language media and schoolbooks to place small Gylic alphabet annotations above loanwords and foreign language text as pronunciation guides.
Use of such annotations is especially important for letters whose Gylic pronunciations differ from convention — x is annotated using ks, for example. Some of these annotations draw on knowledge of other languages spoken in Gylias, such as Germanic umlauts to represent the sounds [øː] and [yː], or Kōshiki macrons to represent long vowels.