Appendix:Tpaalha orthography

Tpaalha Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography

The Tpaalha language from David J. Peterson and Jessie Peterson's YouTube series LangTime Studio can be written in two forms of one abugida. It has a somewhat etymological or deep orthography, with spellings mostly reflecting the proto-language where there is a difference to the modern language. The script is to a certain extent featural, meaning that some sounds with shared phonetic features are written with similar shapes. Additionally, the script displays a certain degree of orthographic depth, i.e. it is somewhat historical and reflects an earlier stage of the language (the proto-language).

Orthography

Tpaalha can be written in two separate forms of what is essentially one abugida. There is the ancient, tactile form, which was developed when the opossums had very poor eyesight. This form was carved as grooves into surfaces, which could then be read by feeling them. This later evolved into the modern graphical form, which is written on paper. Both are written from left to right. Each Tpaalha word is written along an horizontal line, which has a beginning on the left resembling a nose, and an end on the right resembling a tail in the ancient form, as seen in the following example (a nonce word for illustrative purposes only):

kn,

/*kənə/

Vowels

In the ancient form, vowel height is indicated by writing the consonant above the line for high vowels and below the line for low vowels. Vowel frontness is indicated with a right-pointing bracket after the consonant, and vowel backness is indicated with a left-pointing bracket. The absence of these brackets indicates a central vowel. The a vowel is outside of this vowel system, and has its own, separate character in both the ancient and the modern form. In the modern form, vowel height is indicated with a diacritic above the line for high vowels, and its absence indicates a low vowel. The front vowels e and i are represented by the descendant of the right-pointing bracket, written only below the line, and the back vowels o and u by the descendant of the left-pointing bracket, also written only below the line. The vowel forms are illustrated with an onset k in the table below:

Proto-Form	Romanization	Ancient Script	Modern Script
*kə	k	k	k
*kɨ	ky	ky	ky
*kɛ	ke	ke	ke
*ki	ki	ki	ki
*kʌ	ko	ko	ko
*kɯ	ku	ku	ku
*ka	ka	ka	ka

Consonants

The consonants of Tpaalha are as follows:

Romanization	Ancient Script	Modern Script
b, by	bby	bby
d, dy	ddy	ddy
f, fy	ffy	ffy
g, gy	ggy	ggy
k, ky	kky	kky
kh, khy	khkhy	khkhy
l, ly	lly	lly
m, my	mmy	mmy
n, ny	nny	nny
p, py	ppy	ppy
r, ry	rry	rry
s, sy	ssy	ssy
sh, sy	shshy	shshy
t, ty	tty	tty
z, zy	zzy	zzy
zh, zy	zhzhy	zhzhy

Punctuation

The punctuation marks of Tpaalha are shown below:

Usage	Ancient Script	Modern Script
Period, comma, end	.	.
Question mark	?	?
Start	/	/
	\	—

Numerals

Tpaalha has a base-6 numeral system, exemplified as follows:

#	Ancient Script	Modern Script
0	0	0
1	1	1
2	2	2
3	3	3
4	4	4
5	5	5
6	6	6
36	100	100
216	1000	1000