Appendix:Tpaalha 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 |