Writing System

The majority of text written in Lilitika uses a script called Títina, meaning "letters." Like any writing system in use for over a millennium, Títina had several phases of development, with relatively little intelligibility between the earliest and latest forms. It also had a pre- and post- history, being descended from an even more complex system in use by the Ksreskézai and continuing to see currency on Illera, Wanisin, and Thet to write the daughter languages of Lilitika.

Classical Títina

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Oksí Títina

The initial design for the characters of Títina was part of the Oksí Lilitika standard of 5 lilpo. Its unique two-track minuscule design presented quite a few challenges to both reading and writing; though a ductus was eventually established, the environment of a letter could cause its stroke direction to reverse. Like Íomanazinení, the script soon became relegated to writing titles and official documents, while individual communities on each ship in the fleet developed their own competing variations. The final, standardized state (introduced c. 400 lilpo) is as above.

When alternative ways to represent the same sound exist in Oksí Títina, words generally adopt a preference for one form over the other in a given position, usually putting the largest letters toward the middle of the word. Generally, the alternate forms (such as the second form of "a") are invoked to break up a pattern caused by repetitions of the more common forms.

See this dictionary category for the names of the letters themselves, and this one for the punctuation marks.

A full pronunciation chart for the orthography can be found at Traditional Phonology and Orthography.

Traditional Phonology and Orthography

Allophony and Dialectical History

The phonology in Lilitika changed slowly, much like the semantics of the language, over the thousand years during which the Lilitai drifted in space.

<r> varies between [ɹ] and [ɻ] freely in most contexts. [ɻ] is regarded as more euphonic and preferred in poetic recital. It may take on [r] in the vicinity of many dental consonants, such as the word sarasí, or [ɽ] near many laterals (/l/) and in common words with idtu-like meanings, e.g. illeru.

<dt> is preferentially pronounced [ɾ], but may sound more [r]-like when contrasting <d> (e.g. in didtu)

Alveolar coronals (especially <t>, <s>, <z>, <d>) should be pronounced dentally in Sarasí and earlier dialects, including late Sarasí.

<ô> unrounds from [ɒ] to [ɑ] in Illeran and late Sarasí, and stays that way.

<ê> is [ə] in Oksí and early Íomanazinení, then rounds to [ø] until the early Illeran period (both in the fleet and on Illera), then becomes [y]. In Ketalán and later dialects, [ø] becomes preferred with [y] being perceived as an 'archaic twang' by Thessians.

<kh> and <gh> are always pronounced as [x] and [ɣ] in Íomanazinení, even Neo-Íomanazinení. In Zeyetaní, <kh> becomes [k] at the starts of words and [h] in all other positions; similarly, <gh> becomes [g] and [j]. These were fixed lexically, and for a time the letters for <kh> and <gh> were neglected. During the settlement of Illera, [χ] and [ʁ] emerged, and new coinages began using them.

Ketalán and the Thessian dialects introduce palatalization of coronals. Starting with Ketalán, <t> was often read as [c]. Doisseian incorporated a drift of <s> to [ɹ̝̊], and Dísséan permitted [ɟ] for <d>.

In most dialects, <e> at the end of words and when stressed was realized as [ei] or [e] rather than [ε]. Critically, this is not true in Illeran, which treats <e> as a completely independent vowel, although the distinction is inaudible in diphthongs.

Letter	Sotaní	Ío	Zey.	Sar.	Late Sar.	Ill.	Ket.	Dois.	Dís.
t	t̪	t̪	t̪	t̪	t	t	c	c	c
d	d̪	d̪	d̪	d̪	d	d	d	d	ɟ
s	s̪	s̪	s̪	s̪	s	s	s	ɹ̝̊	ɹ̝̊
z	z̪	z̪	z̪	z̪	z	z	z	z	z
û	ɯ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ	ɔ
ô	ɒ	ɒ	ɒ/ɑ	ɒ/ɑ	ɑ	ɑ	ɑ	ɑ	ɑ
ê	ə	ə	ø	y	y	y	ø/y	ø	ø
kh	x/χ	x	k/h	k/h	k/h	χ	χ	χ	χ
gh	ɣ	ɣ	g/j	g/j	g/j	ʁ	ʁ	ʁ	ʁ
final e	e	e	e	e	e	ɛ	e	e	e

Vowel Modifiers

The vowel modifiers, h, i, n/m/ñ, and r/ʳ, aspirate, ioticize, nasalize and rhoticize vowels, respectively.

n is fully redundant to the writing system's expressiveness, but may still be favoured explicitly as part of the proper spelling of a word. Note that n does not indicate /n/, but only nasalisation; this is dependent on the environment and may alternatively be realized as /m/ or /ŋ/. More precise representations such as ñ or m (not to be confused with n and m) may be used if this is unclear. Any vowels with tildes can be interpreted as nazalisation, e.g. sãpo. n rarely appears unless adjacent to a plosive, so the correct interpretation is generally obvious.

r has mild phonological use: it ensures an /ɹ/ or r-coloured reading, and discourages an /ɻ/ reading.

The diphthong ei is generally realized as [ei] and replaced with <é> in roots; ui is never (or at least only very rarely) used in Lilitic phonotactically, so only oi and ai are found frequently in the dictionary. Note that <ei> is preserved in particular by forms derived from eneí, though it is still pronounced /ɛne:/.

Tenseness and Vowel Strength

Many vowels in Lilitika habitually change form when incorporated into compounds and are recognized by speakers according to a tense-lax contrast. This is reflected in the standard orthography by the use of acute accents; <í>, <é>, and <ú> are the tense forms of <i>, <e>, and <u>, a pattern no doubt familiar to English speakers. In Illeran, this is supplemented by <ô> (/ɑ/) becoming the lax form of <a> in certain case endings. <ê>, <û>, <o>, and pre-Illeran <ô> and <a> do not participate in this behaviour; the orthographic forms of <ê>, <û>, and <ô> represent reconstructed Oksirapho phonology.

The vowels <o>, <é>, <ê>, <í>, <ú>, and <û> are considered the 'strong' vowels, and take priority in placing word stress. The diphthongs ai, oi, and au ([aʊ]) also behave as strong. <a> and <e> are considered weak, with <i> and <ô> considered "very" weak. When a small number of strong vowels is present in a word, stress falls on the last strong vowel.

Accent

Lilitika uses a combination of length and stress accent; in addition to major stress falling on one syllable per word, it is also common for stressed vowels to be slightly lengthened as well, even if they are defined as having a long quantity already. Similarly, unstressed long vowels may be shortened if they neighbour a stressed long vowel.

Words with no strong vowels, such as sifa (first person pronoun nominative feminine), alanekal (down destination neuter) or viris (deep past to be), usually adopt stress on the first vowel in the final inflectional ending, causing strengthening in the cases of i, ô, and e into í, o, and é respectively: [s̪ɪf·a] -> [ˈs̪iː·fa], [a·la·nɛk·al] -> [a·lan·ˈeiː·kal], [vɪ·rɪs̪] -> ['viː·ris̪]. This pattern is not always followed, and in particular it is avoided when a distinction between the vocative and nominative is important. The function of this is to clarify morpheme boundaries.

Words with two or more strong vowels in a row (e.g. kotopu) usually resort to placing stress as close as possible to the second-last vowel in the word, consistent with middle-clustering of ornately-written consonant forms: kŏtōpĕ́, kŏtōpǎ, ǎlĕ́ōnǎ ([alɛi·ˈona]), Dŏᵢssḗᵢǎ, ĕkhǎlthĕ́ōnĕ́ (possibly with a secondary stress on the ǎ to break things up), and so on.

Contractions

Medial deletion

Lilitika is often spoken with heavy use of contractions, which are preserved when it is recorded for the sake of verse. Intermediate syllables are the most commonly elided for this purpose, although sometimes the shape of a word may suggest deleting only part of it, or part of a run of vowels. Contractions are usually realised as silent, although they are occasionally realized as an unwritten glottal stop or brief pause if doing so does not disrupt a syllable.

Plé'vai 'l poluw'as vis = [lai] pléovai il poluwías vis = they are the days of joy. poluw'as in this case was contracted to fit a metre; the í is deleted because poluwas can only be formed from contracting poluwías and does not otherwise occur in the lexicon. Casual speech might see the word further contracted, to p'luw'as or (more likely) pol'was and eventually pol'as. This convention of middle-syllable reduction is responsible for the heavy contribution of blending to the production of new vocabulary. Grammatically, note that FPIC rules permit a nominative noun provided in a construct to also be the subject of the sentence, so technically "lai" is unnecessary.

Vowel collisions between words

It is normal to prevent hiatus (adjacent vowel sounds) in Lilitika between identical vowels: saní íora will appear as san' íora. If the vowels are of different strengths, it is also common for the weaker vowel to disappear: the possession particle il ("of") in particular is frequently abbreviated to 'l following noun forms ending in vowels. The formal name for this is elision, although that term is also used to describe various other contractions.

Movable H and N

When there is no clear way to balance two vowels, such as the collision of two strong vowels, then the second vowel may be aspirated: "saní olrú" thus becomes "saní holrú." Some Venrafíai insert a nasal consonant instead: "sanín olru." Depending on the author, either insertion may go unwritten and be only detectable when spoken; poetry is more likely to use phonetic spelling. It is not uncommon to see the insertion of a movable consonant simultaneously with elision: "frôska ibedris" = "frôskam 'bedris."

Vowel collisions within a word

Contraction is mandatory between adjacent morphemes, or between roots and inflections: if a noun such as indúnou is declined in the masculine, it becomes "indúno" rather than the unpleasant "indúnoö." The Lilitai almost always omit double vowels in such cases to a single vowel. This can also be represented by an apostrophe, typically deleting the first vowel: indún'o. Such situations are rare, and mostly occur with masculinized mateneí zellikanía (combining cosmic) nouns, such as a moon (akoa) or musical instrument (sinoa). In Ketalán, these nouns ending in -oa were reanalyzed as forming their own declension pattern (matenei zellikanía, "combining cosmic") and are always considered neuter.

An exception to this scheme of synaeresis is when two very weak vowels meet: i + i = í and ô + ô = o, although e + e = e. Similarly, tense vowels overpower their lax counterparts: í + i = í, ô + o = o, e + é = é, u + ú = ú. Dissimilar vowels merge irregularly according to the environment, the availability of a suitable diphthong, or simply speaker preference.

These forms are more common when combining morphemes to create a compound word. When applying a suffix, however, they are usually not found: amé + ekíu = amekíu. Many suffixes start with weakened versions of root vowels (i, e, u) that hint at the original root, but not all (e.g. ireshkí, which derives from an inflected verb.)

As a general rule, suffixes should be applied to the stem (with the final ending removed) rather than the dictionary form of the root, although exceptions may be made in order to preserve e.g. a critical gender marker. Alegharí is one example of a word that defies convention, although it was later replaced with aleghurí.

Diphthongs

The major diphthongs in Lilitika are [ai], [ei], [ɔi], and /aʊ/. These are almost always stressed, and are created by the phoneme combinations <ai>, <ei>, <oi>, and <au>, respectively. The diphthongs <ai>, <ei>, and <oi> may also be created with a long <í>, especially in the termini of adjectives, e.g. noseí is pronounced ['noʊ·'s̪eiː].

Some diphthongs may be avoided in the final syllable for pronunciation or ambiguity reasons, e.g. ithaé becomes <ithaïs> (to avoid conflicting with -ais, the subject feminine plural complement, which is used frequently), and /ithaïr/ (because [aiʳ] is illegal), but the Lilitai have no problems with <ithairis>, because it comes out as [ɪθ·'ai·ɻɪs̪]. The primary trend is that iotacized vowels cannot be r-coloured as well.

Punctuation

Punctuation is mostly straightforward. The Lilitika quotation marks, full-stop/period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, and hyphen behave familiarly, but the imperative mark, punctus, and semicolon may be somewhat alien to the reader.

The imperative mark is used following sentences in one of the imperative moods, just as the question mark follows those in the interrogative mood.

The punctus indicates a pause in speech and has no grammatical meaning (like the mediaeval Latin one), but can take on the meaning of the em dash or comma in English, and may be used as the colon at the beginning of a list of nouns.

The semicolon has narrower use than in European languages, and is actually a 'sentence weld' which is weaker than a period but requires that both sides be full sentences or intentional fragments. It can also serve as a colon when giving a single example (this is what I mean: a sentence prompting for an explanation) or a list of elements which are sentences and not merely noun clauses, naked verbs, or adjectives/adverbs. For example:

"I want you to feed, clothe, and shelter these people."

The syntactic structural of this sentence could be rendered as "I want you (to feed && to clothe && to shelter) these people."

The commas here would also be Lilitic commas, and an interpunct would start the list: "I want you to · feed, clothe, hé shelter these people."

"I want you to feed these people, walk my dog, and go to the store for a bag of milk."

With the same level of detail used above, this sentence's syntax parses as: "I want you ((to feed these people) && (to walk my dog) && (to go to the store for a bag of milk)."

Using Lilitika punctuation, the original sentence's commas become semicolons, and the list would start with a semicolon as well: "I want you to; feed these people; walk my dog; khé go to the store for a bag of milk."

Hyphenation is found only very rarely in vocabulary. Its primary function is to mark recently-coined compound words which may not be familiar to the reader, such as in the (now-fossilized) verb stilla-dzafé.

Stress can be represented on Títina by two dots under the vowel, much like nasalization or iotacization. There are several different conventions for marking accent when Lilitika is transliterated, including Illeran style, Latin style, and Hellenic orthography (described below). Latin style consists of replacing the normal acute diacritics <éúí> with macrons <ēīū> and marking stress with acutes <áéíóúḗī́ū́>. Stressed circumflexes become tildes, representing an acute placed next to the circumflex: <êôû> = <ẽõũ>.

Stylized orthography

For aesthetic reasons, Lilitika is often rendered using a more Latin or English transcription when paired with the Latin alphabet:

Standard orthography	Stylized
k	c
kw	qu
tsh	ch or cc
ks (cluster)	x
ñg	ng
f	ph
ñk	nk
gh	ṛ
dzh	j

In addition, vowels may be reconfigured to give a more natural reading to whomever is doing the transcription; in particular, terminal /e/ is rewritten to "é" or "ë" to emphasize its weight to speakers of languages used to silent terminal vowels. Thus tshekíudzhekwíe, an unusual construction meaning "studier of beliefs" (e.g. an epistemologist, comparative theologian, cultural sophontologist, etc.) may thus be written checkiajequié for the convenience of an English speaker.

These spelling alterations tend to stick to certain words. In particular, loanwords from Glissia tend to retain elements of their ancestral Latin spelling when they are rendered in the Latin alphabet as Lilitic terms. They are not universal, however; in particular, lilitica does not appear outside of Lyrisclensian texts when referring to the language.