Appendix:Ravkan orthography

Ravkan Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography, Dialogue

The Ravkan language from the Netflix series Shadow and Bone is written using an alphabet created by David J. Peterson.

Orthography

The script used to write Ravkan is an alphabet. As such, it features full characters for both consonants and vowels. It was designed based on the original prompt of "Fantasy Cyrillic", which gives some context to the overall style of the script. Like the Latin or Cyrillic scripts, there are lowercase and uppercase versions of each character, with most only differing in size, the general shape being the same for both.

The Ravkan alphabet has letters for palatalized consonants and for diphthongs. They all derive from ligatures of a vowel or consonant letter and a following i.

Modern Ravkan's spelling does not perfectly match its pronunciation because some voicing assimilations conditioned by affixes are not reflected in the spelling (for instance, zhelpka is spelt zhelbka (zhelbka) because it derives from zhelba) and because some of Old Ravkan's sounds merged with others or were lost (for example, da is spelt dagh with a silent gh, while gor is spelt ghor with a gh pronounced /g/ like a g). Furthermore, it does not indicate stressed syllables.

Letters

The Ravkan letters for consonant and vowel sounds are shown in the table below:

Ravkan		Romanization	IPA	Notes
Uppercase	Lowercase
A	a	a	a, ə	Stands for [ə] in post-tonic syllables.
Aa	ai	ai	ai
B	b	b	b
By	by	by	bʲ
Ch	ch	ch	tʃ
D	d	d	d
Dy	dy	dy	dʲ
Dz	dz	dz	dz
Dzy	dzy	dzy	dzʲ
E	e	e	e
Ei	ei	ei	ei	The lowercase form is nearly identical to and should not be confused with the lowercase form of ty.
F	f	f	f
Fy	fy	fy	fʲ
G	g	g	g
Gh	gh	gh	g, w, silent	Used to stand for /ɣ/, the pronunciation now depends on the environment.
Ghy	ghy	ghy	(unattested)	Used to stand for /ɣʲ/.
Gy	gy	gy	gʲ
I	i	i	i, ɨ	Stands for [ɨ] in post-tonic syllables.
J	j	j	dʒ
K	k	k	k
Ky	ky	ky	kʲ
L	l	l	l
Ly	ly	ly	lʲ
M	m	m	m
My	my	my	mʲ
N	n	n	n
Ny	ny	ny	nʲ
O	o	o	o
Oi	oi	oi	oi
P	p	p	p
Py	py	py	pʲ
R	r	r	ɾ
Ry	ry	ry	ɾʲ
S	s	s	s
Sh	sh	sh	ʃ
Sy	sy	sy	sʲ
T	t	t	t
Ts	ts	ts	ts
Tsy	tsy	tsy	tsʲ
Ty	ty	ty	tʲ	The lowercase form is nearly identical to and should not be confused with the lowercase form of ei.
U	u	u	u
V	v	v	v
Vy	vy	vy	vʲ
W	w	w	w
Y	y	y	j
Z	z	z	z
Zh	zh	zh	ʒ
Zy	zy	zy	zʲ

Numerals

The Ravkan numeral system is base-10. It is shown in the table below:

Ravkan	Roman
0	0
1	1
2	2
3	3
4	4
5	5
6	6
7	7
8	8
9	9
10	10

Punctuation

The Ravkan writing system includes some punctuation marks, which are shown in the table below:

Ravkan	Roman
,	,
.	.
;	;
!	!
?	?
( )	" "
$	Vlachka (Ravkan currency) sign