Erekett-Aramansch Alphabet

All of the same information holds true as the last version...I just wanted to submit a cleaned-up version. Click here for the old one.

These graphics also appear at Omniglot.com.

This is the writing system used by the speakers of Erekett languages in my serial fantasy novel, The Way of the Shadow Blade. As you can see, it is written vertically from top to bottom.

First column: Aramansch letter
Second column: Transliteration in the novel
Third column: German equivalent(s)
Fourth column: Name of the letter

Generally, the spelling is almost perfectly phonetic, making this an easy spelling system to learn.

Next to each letter is how one would pronounce the name of the letter, written in a way I think will be best to give the right idea to English-speakers. This is probably almost as important as the letters themselves...while my Guardians are illiterate due to their blindness (a system like Braille has not been invented in their world), many in the Order have learned to verbally spell out words if necessary. Given the nearly phonetic nature of Aramansch writing, this is a very manageable task.

A few notes: the "long" or "nalad" vowels ("ah", "ih", etc.) are actually considered one and the same letter by the Aramansch; however, in a few cases I've drawn them out to see separately. I should also note that there is no punctuation in Aramansch corresponding to what we know as a comma or semicolon. There are also no capital letters; instead of size, a cartouche-like bracketing with dots is used to indicate a proper noun.

Finally, I have a feeling that some of my German-speaking watchers would be able to construct a much longer sample of "Aramansch" writing to show what a "paragraph" of it would look like. Only a few rules would need to be remembered:

German "w" = Aramansch "v"
German "v" = Aramansch "f"
German "z" = Aramansch "ts"
German "ee" = Aramansch "ej"
German "eu"/"aeu" = Aramansch "oj"

When the German "s" is pronounced like the English "z", the Aramansch "z" should be used. When the "s" is pronounced like an English "s", the Aramansch "s" should be used.

For ANY "sh" sound, the "sch" character is required. That includes where in German you have "st" and "sp".

The Way of the Shadow Blade is (c) to Minstrel Ayreon.