Northian orthography

Northian orthography is the writing system used to represent the Northian language.

The two primary orthographical systems in use today are plene and breve writing. Plene writing is based on (but does not completely preserve) Epic and Medieval Northian phonology prior to the process of phonological contraction that occurred between 800 and 1300 and severely altered the language, while breve writing more or less reflects the spoken language of the writer. Plene writing is standardly used in government, higher education, and most forms edited writing intended for adult and native consumption, while breve writing is more often used with children, language learners, and where greater phonetic precision is desired, like movie scripts or quotations. It should be noted that both plene and breve writing represent one and the same language, only in different graphical representations.

History

Until 3rd century, Northian was not systematically written down in any significant quantity; before this time, there are names and quotations embedded into texts in other languages that are ostensibly in Northian, but these rarely show much systematic orthography. Under Acrean administration, contracts, proclamations, and such documents in Northian began to appear in the 3rd century, while literary works, often transduced from oral tradition, were set to paper in the 4th. This was a Rune-based orthography initially and was replaced by equivalents in Venetian script in the 6th century onwards. It is assumed, absent evidence to the contrary, that writing was phonological—all words written as they sound with no attempt to regularize on etymological basis.

Plene writing

Around the 5th or 6th century, two the length distinction in unaccented vowels faltered, and by about 650 or so the contrast disappeared.

Starting in the 14th century, some Northian writers began noticing that the language hitherto written phonetically no longer matched that written four or five centuries ago, and criticisms were issued regarding the shortcomings of this evolved language.