Simplified Alphabet
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The Simplified or Anantonese Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet often used in Kalistan, but rarely elsewhere. It is the chosen alphabet of Anantonese, as well as most other Kalistani languages. It is derived from the common English Alphabet, but is starkly different in that it only has ten letters, as opposed to twenty-six (hense its name). In order to distinguish most sounds, the alphabet uses digraphs, and thus needs fewer than half as many letters. In this way the Simplified Alphabet is also different from any other alphabet in that it represents every phoneme with a pair of letters, and never has a single lone letter.
This entry is undogoing renovation by its creator
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[edit] Letters
The alphabet is unique in distinguishing between "letters" (characters) and "pairs" (digraphs). The former are single written characters, of which there are ten, which can appear in a Primary or Secondary Case. The latter are sets of two letters, the first in primary case, the second in secondary (alternatively called "front" and "back" cases), which together represent individual phonemes. All writing in the Simplified Alphabet is done in these digraphs.
The alphabet has ten letters, which are arranged in various orders to create phonetic pairs. Four of these are vowels, the rest are consonants. It is worth noting, though, that a consonent can appear in the back half of a vowel pair, and vice versa. Most letters are derived from the English alphabet, and represent similar sounds, with exceptions. The ordering of the letters is vaguely derived from English as well.
The following chart lists the ten letters of the Simplified Alphabet in traditional order. Each letter as it appears here represents any sound from a large group. The phoneme groups are approximate, and given through IPA terminology.
| Letter | Letter Name | Pairs as Primary | Represents |
| Δ | Ah | 5 | Open vowels |
| [square] | E | 4 | Mid front vowels |
| I | Ee | 3 | Close front vowels |
| O | Oo | 5 | Back vowels |
| V | Vee | 4 | Labial plosives and fricatives |
| T | Tee | 6 | Plosives |
| L | El | 5 | Various consonents |
| Z | Zee | 4 | Alveolar fricatives |
| N | En | 3 | Nasals |
| P | Ro | 2 | Dental fricatives and approximants |
The difference between primary and secondary cases is simply one of size: the second case is just a smaller version of the same figure that acts as primary case. The cases always appear one after the other.
[edit] Digraphs
Because each letter represents more than one phonetic sound, these are differentiated with secondary letters, which are the lower cases of the primary letters. To represent a sound, the primary letter, which specifies the category of sounds (e.g. V), is immediately followed by a secondary letter to clarify (e.g. N) which sound it is (b sound). Both vowels and consonents can be used as secondary letters, regardless of what type of sound it is representing.
There are 24 consonent digraphs and 17 vowel digraphs, making a total vocabulary of 41 digraphs.
[edit] Capitalization Accents
In the simplified alphabet, proper nouns and the beginnings of sentences are noted, similar to capitalization, except that this is accomplished by placing an accent before the word. Accents are not used to begin a sentence if it it a question or exclamation (see punctuation) These accents are similar enough to letters that they are sometimes considered additional letters.
| Accent | Purpose |
| ¦ | beginning a statement or command |
| ʆ | beginning a first, middle, or informal name |
| ƪ | beginning a surname or title |
| ɻ | beginning a place name |
| ҂ | beginning the name of an object or idea |
[edit] Punctuation
The simplified alphabet uses standard punctuation. The only notable deviation is that questions are exclamations have reverse punctuation marks at the beginning, acting like the statement/command accent used in other sentences.
example of this principal:
- ¡Hey!
[edit] In Practice
[edit] Origin
Literacy was introduced to Ananto by Ikradonian colonists, who brought along the Ikradonian alphabet, a semitic derivitive that was closely related to, but distinct from, the English alphabet. The Simplified letters ah, e, and ree were all present in that form in Ikradonian. With the collapse of Ikradon in the 800's, Ananto became isolated, and began to develop its own handwriting script. Because Ikradonian had lacked lower case letters, so did Old Anantonese, as this script is now known. This independent script caused a conflict when the printing press was introduced from Artania during the reign of emperor Pedro I. While Ananto had kept a handwritten, all-capital Ikradonian script, Artania had developed a complex blackletter typography that used lower case letters. Pedro rejected the idea of converting to the English alphabet, and repressed the printing press entirely. His successors were more willing to spread literacy and integrate the ideas of English, however the scholars charged with creating an English version of Anantonese were completely confused by the English alphabet, and came up with their own interpretation, which proved entirely wrong.
The creators of the alphabet looked at blackletter English and assumed that the various similar-looking letters were in fact the same letter, and that the lower cases were then modifiers to distinguish between sounds these letters represented. To create their lower case, they simply shrank the upper case. Hense they invented an alphabet with a small number of letters, which were arranged into phonetic pairs. This proto-Simplified Alphabet even went so far as to copy the blackletter characters. This was rejected, so a new version was created to more closely resemble Anantonese, using Anantonese letters and their stark, geometric style. This was adopted for all printing presses in Ananto, thus spreading into usage in Vrassan, Odufart, and Suldanorean (and eventually Insular) Vintalli. In the 1800's, Ananto's increasing prestige on the world stage inspired typesetters elsewhere to adopt similar letter forms to the English alphabet, leading to san serif fonts.
[edit] Criticism
Users of the English and related alphabets often criticise the Simplified Alphabet when they come in contact with it. It is often refered to as being ridiculous in appearance and inanely complicated. Many point out that as a corruption of the English alphabet, it does not even serve its intended purpose. In using a shorter number of letters it is harder to understand, confusing to read, and often words often end up twice as long as they would written in a phonetic script.
The alphabet's defenders are quick to point out that the its size allows for one handed keyboards and typewriters, and is more consistant in its representation of phonemes. The alpabet is popular with graphic designers and printers, as well, because it favors a smaller number of simplified letters, making jobs that involve the manipulation of text much simpler. The very geometric and varied shapes of letters makes legibility much simpler in hand writting. In general, the alphabet is praised as being very easy to teach and practice.
