Iltârer Orthography

Note: Viewing this page requires the Iltârer font installed on your system. I hope to make the font available for downloading soon. I apologize for the incovenience.

Orthographic Systems

There are four different types of writing frequently encountered in the study of Iltârer. The earliest of these is an inscriptional system, adapted to carving in stone or metal, the use of which gradually declined through history. This system is not illustrated here.

The remaining systems are closely related, being originally used for ink writing (with brush or pen) on paper, and later adapted to printing. The first of these is known as the long writing (mimersa taranenler "writing of roads"), and corresponds roughly to majuscule scripts for European languages. Words are separated by spaces, with sentences sometimes (but not consistently) delimited by a subscripted carat character.

The short writing (mimersa panenler "writing of lanes") is a minuscule form, but with diacritics placed over the preceding consonant used to indicate vowels. It is never used by itself, but in combination with long writing of initial letters. In short writing, each word begins with a long letter. If the second letter is a vowel, it is written using a long letter as well. Subsequent letters are written in the short manner, except in the event of two consecutive vowels, in which case the second vowel is written as a long letter. In short writing, spaces between words are greatly reduced or eliminated, but spacing is used to delimit clauses and sentences.

For an example of Iltârer writing, see the text of the children's story Goodnight Moon rendered in both long and short writing.

The following table gives the Iltârer alphabet, in traditional order, with both long and short letter forms.

long	short	letter name	transliteration
C	c	ci	c
N	n	ne	n
T	t	ti	t
DT	dt	htâti	ht
L	l	ala	l
R	r	ere	r
M	m	êmê	m
P	p	pa	p
F	f	pha	ph
H	h	ich	ch
S	s	es	s
ZS	zs	athes	th
Q	q	îñî	ñ
E	e	e empa	e
A	a	a empa	a
I	i	i empa	i
U	u	ê empa	ê
O	o	â empa	â
Y	y	î empa	î

The letters for the dental sounds, DT and ZS, were regarded as single letters by the linguists and lexicographers, but in many respects were treated as diagraphs (much as is qu in English). For example, when beginning a word in short writing, the T or S would usually be written in informal form, and could carry a vowel diacritic.

The fourth type of writing was a cursive system, based on short writing and reproducing its conventions for the use of "long" and "short" letters. Most of the cursive letterforms are readily recognized, but the sign for q resembles a crossed t, and the cursive form of the"long" Y is often three strokes arrayed vertically, which is coincidentally the inscriptional form for O.

Numerals

These numerals are used in both long and short writing systems.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	0
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	0

Return to Hendir

Return to Telperion Grove