| Essay on the Alphabetics and Phonemes of Chelay NOTE: Characters in this Essay use the Font SILManuscriptIPA, and Thus Do Not Appear in this HTML Version. I took many things into account when generating the alphabetic script and phoneme set of this language. I drew most extensively on three sources, Peter Ladefoged’s A Course in Phonetics, Peter Trudgill’s Sociolinguistics, and The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. To a lesser extent I was influenced by Robert Logan’s The Alphabet Effect, Merritt Ruhlen’s The Origin of Language, and David Diringer’s Writing. The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association proved an invaluable resource for transcription purposes, as well as for the best (though still significantly lacking) discussion of the ‘click’ sounds utilized primarily in African languages. For the purposes of the phoneme set described here, as well as for future discussion of syntactical and grammatical structures, we are dealing with what could be termed ‘Standard Chelay’. Variation amongst the islands is great, and the form dealt with here bears the most resemblance to the high-prestige accents spoken in the easternmost islands (Shawnuh, Elren, and Loee); except when otherwise noted, the term Chelay shall be understood to refer to this least-tainted dialect. Chelay is a fully alphabetic language, covering the complete range of sounds used in communication amongst the Chel peoples. Though the Chel people could easily be described as ‘primitive’ by a Western observer, it is important to note that their linguistic development far exceeds that of virtually all tribal societies in our world. Language is used not simply as a vessel for trade, or a tool of religion, it is also the form most great epics and common correspondence takes. While a small group of Western socio-linguistics (Robert Logan among them) would argue that this level of complexity and integration of an alphabetic script into their society would predispose the Chel people to a rigidity of thinking and a firm system of logic (such as the Greeks), we find instead that they bear more resemblance to the Indian subcontinent, instead relying primarily on intuition and a sense of unity with nature to guide their actions in the world. Description of the Chelay Alphabet and Phonemes The Chelay language consists of seven vowels and eighteen consonants, each unique sound represented in the alphabetic script—with a few small changes in quality that are more comparable to the difference between the leading consonants in the English words “horse” and “hill” than the drastic changes in phoneme between the leading consonants in “car” and “cyanide”. The vowel sounds of Chelay are quite similar to those in English, and therefore should not be difficult for an English speaker to grasp—indeed, once the consonants are grasped in their entirety, the subtle differences between English vowels and Chelay vowels will naturally appear, shaped by the surrounding consonants. The consonant set has a number of letters and sounds
that may prove to be of some trouble to English speakers, and so we
shall briefly address them here, before examining each letter in greater
detail: • The first consonant of Chelay [ ???? ], creates
an ‘r’ voiced alveolar trill, similar to that found in the
Spanish word ‘perro’ (dog). The symbol used in IPA (International
Phonetic Association) is simply [ r ]. It may be of interest to note
that there is no voiced alveolar approximant [ • ] in Chelay (such
as the sound beginning the English word ‘race’) Every other consonant and vowel in Chelay roughly corresponds to a sound in English, and we will cover them briefly in terms of the word sounds they correlate to (as well as their appropriate symbolism in IPA). It is worth keeping in mind, however, that there are noticeable differences in quality between the sounds of Chelay and their corollaries in Standard English and Standard American English. Where reasonable, attempts have been made to refer to the appropriate dialect in which the particular sound occurs—but most often a fair approximation will serve. All consonant comparisons, unless otherwise noted, refer to the first letter-sound of the English word. • The first vowel [ ??? ] makes a sound like the
diphthong in the word ‘head’. As is most likely apparent by now, there are no bilabial or labiodentals (such as the ‘b’ sound in ‘brother’, ‘f’ sound in ‘father’, ‘m’ sound in ‘mother’, ‘p’ sound in ‘patter’, or ‘v’ sound in ‘vampire’) in the traditional Chelay dialects. Recently (within the past two-hundred years), certain dialects in the western islands have begun to be colored by the sounds of other languages (most notably the trade language of Eú and Sarar), and so have adopted some rudimentary bilabial and labiodental sounds. For the purposes of our study we need not delve into them, except to say that the symbols adopted for their use appear to be modifications of the mother alphabet, and the sounds seem to be thus far restricted only to foreign words in which they natively occur. Nasal sounds in general are also much less common in
Chelay than in English and most other Western languages. The voiced
alveolar nasal [ ? ] does appear regularly in Chelay, and others do
crop up on occasion. For the most part, however, strong nasalizations
are used to express anger, discontent or frustration—and these
only when it is deemed necessary to force such a point upon a listener—and
therefore even those nasals which do exist tend to be more subtle than
in English. The Chel believe themselves to be the first peoples of
the islands, and their mythology teaches that the alphabet and language
were gifts to them from one of three greater gods, depending on the
myth-cycle. To date, there is simply not enough evidence to determine
whether the spoken language of the Chel predates that of the Kurak or
those of the Sun Lands, or whether the Chel inherited their language
from an exterior source. It appears quite certain, however, that their
alphabet was an independent invention, and if anything, that it influenced
other nearby societies in the way they conceived of language. Chelay seems to have gone through many permutations of a syllabic script over the course of five or six centuries, at many times approaching a fully alphabetic writing system before returning to a syllabary. It is quite likely that sometime during this period the syllabic system was transmitted to the northernmost of the Sun Lands (2316), and from there it spread south. The shift to a fully alphabetic language, complete with vowel characters, occurred sometime during the era of Unification, sometime soon after the first great Nuh-Daw [n?dh?], or Sun-Man, took control of the islands of Chela (2584). The move to an alphabetic script makes great sense when we examine the political and economic shifts that occurred during this first reign. As law became codified throughout the islands, an easy way to transmit the new rules of order became necessary; at the same time, a growing bureaucracy (though never on a par with our Rome or Greece) created a need for detailed records—both for tax purposes, and for the difficult task of tracking rulers of various islands who paid homage to the Nuh-Daw—which the syllabic system proved too burdensome to easily fill. These reasons, combined with a burgeoning trade system, finally pushed Chelay over the edge into a complete alphabetic system. Within the first fifty years, the existing syllabic system was converted to a new script form, retaining much of the old character-style, while changing it to a more easily written and memorized format—a respect for old traditions while moving forward that characterized much of the rule of the Nuh-Daws. By 2642 Chelay as it currently exists was formally established, and the first codex’ were being produced and distributed throughout the islands. Over the past five-hundred years, little has changed in the script of Chelay, though recently (as discussed briefly earlier) more extensive contact with distant islands who possess their own advanced languages and scripts has begun leading to slight changes in speech—and perhaps changes in script will follow within the next hundred years. Numerical System The numeral system of Chelay is simpler than that of the Romans, and more on a par with the ancient Semitic number systems. Chelay works on a base seven system (fitting the 364 day year by matching 7x7x7 and adding one sequence of seven days as a holiday period for each of the three recognized seasonal shifts), with each of the vowels corresponding to a number of the system, in the recognized order. Multiples are created simply by repetition of a symbol (with no ‘places’ such as those utilized in Roman numerals), and as such numbers can get quite lengthy. To compensate for this, and most likely as a practical need for calculating dates for religious ceremonies, the first seven consonants can be used as multipliers, each representing a successive base of seven. The multiplier is placed to the left of the series it multiplies, and a demarcation symbol (a centrally located dot in Chelay, which we shall represent here with an asterisk) is placed between series. While this may seem like an incredibly complex system,
one need only examine the number systems of many Terrestrial civilizations—such
as the Maya—to discover that it is in fact relatively simple! 4 = 4 Like the Mayans of our world, the Chel people conceive of the time-span of the universe in terms of many eons, and so it is not entirely unusual to see [????? ] [??? ] (the seventh consonant and vowel, respectively) representing a date to take place far in the future. As a final point that should be mentioned regarding the Chelay numeric system, must be noted that they have no concept, nor symbol, to denote ‘0’. In our world this achievement belongs (at least in full—some other cultures independently created the concept in a limited context) to the Hindus sometime before 200 B.C. With increased contact with other cultures, however, many of which do possess a numeral symbolizing nothing, it is likely the Chelay will incorporate such a symbol shortly—and with it most likely move towards a ‘place’ based number system. Conclusion The Chelay tongue is rather simple to learn, yet quite dynamic in its abilities to convey different meanings and subtleties through pronunciation. The script conveys quite accurately the sounds which should be spoken (in contrast to many familiar Western languages), and yet fully encompasses the range of sounds generated by the Chel people in their common speech. It is likely that in the future Chelay will incorporate a number of elements of other tongues, particularly the use of bilabial and labiodental sounds, and the use of a place number system. For now, however, we have in the dialects of Chelay spoken in the eastern islands, a nearly crystal clear look into the origin of what appears to be, given current anthropological and archeological evidence, the first written script in the known islands. Affixed to this document can be found a chart laying out the original pictographic (or ideographic) symbol from which the alphabetic symbol descended, an ‘intermediary’ (most often used in the syllabic stage of Chelay) symbol, the contemporary alphabetic symbol codified during the first Nuh-Daw period, and a final column giving an approximate translation of the word-name of the symbol (all names of alphabetic letters in Chelay also representing a specific word in the language), an IPA transcription of the word (as well as an English-slanted ‘common sense’ transcription in parenthesis), and the IPA symbol which correlates to the sound the alphabetic letter represents (as well as an English word which characterizes that sound, in parenthesis). An additional series of Flash aids can be found online at http://www.mylittlesoapbox.com/school/ These are interactive guides to the alphabetic series, which will eventually incorporate sound files as guides to pronunciation. Sources Coulmas, Florian. (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Writing Systems. Blackwell Publishers.
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