Appendix:Tpaalha orthography
The Tpaalha language from David J. Peterson and Jessie Peterson's YouTube series LangTime Studio can be written using two abugidas.
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.
Vowels
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:
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 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, now written only below the line, and the back vowels o and u by the descendant of the left-pointing bracket, also now written only below the line.
Consonants and punctuation
The consonants and punctuation marks of Tpaalha are as follows:
Numerals
Tpaalha has a base-6 numeral system, exemplified as follows:
Note: the number 6 in the modern form above is wrong.