Language components
The Alphabet
Consonants
Vowels
Phonological Constraints
Special Characters
Consonants
Vowels
Phonological Constraints
Special Characters
Lexicon
Language Components
The Alphabet
Kk Gg Þþ ǀǀ Nn Ŋŋ Mm Pp Bb Mm Rr Jj Ww Ʋʋ Vv ʑʒ Ff Ll ʂʃ Zz Sſ Hh Ōō Ūū Aa Œœ Ee Ii Öö Üü
Consonants
Consonants are formed by obstructing and/or shaping the flow of air from the lungs using your throat, tongue, teeth, and lips. As a first approximation, consonants vary in these dimensions:
Place of articulation, where the obstruction or shaping occurs:
- labial: using the lips (w), or a combination of lips and teeth (f)
- dental: using tongue with the teeth (th)
- alveolar: keeping the tongue behind the teeth (s, t)
- palato-alveolar: keeping the tongue further back from the teeth (sh, r)
- palatal: touching back of your tongue to the top of the palate (Russian ch)
- velar: back of the mouth (k, ng)
- uvular: way back in the mouth (Arabic q, French r)
- glottal: in the throat (h, glottal stop).
- stops (stopping the airflow entirely: p t k)
- fricatives (impeding it enough to cause audible friction: f s sh kh)
- approximants (barely impeding it: r l w y).
- affricate (a stop plus a fricative, which must occur at the same place of articulation: t + sh = ch, d + zh = j.
Nasalization, whether air travels through the nose as well as the mouth. For instance, m, n, and ng are stops like b, d, g, but only the oral airflow is stopped.
Aspiration, whether stops are released lightly, or with a noticeable puff of air.
Palatalization, whether the tongue is raised toward the top of the mouth while pronouncing the consonant.
| labial | lab-den | dental | alveolar | pal-alv | glottal | |
| stop | p, b | ǀ[1] | k, g | |||
| fricative | õ, ū[2] | f, v | þ[3] | ſ[4], z | ʃ[5], ʒ[6] | h |
| approximant | w | ʋ[7] | r, l | j[8] | ||
| nasal | m | n | ŋ[9] |
1 This represents a "tsk" sound - like a very quick, short, shallow 't'. It is written in pronunciation guides as "t!".
2 These are explained below, in the Vowels section.
3 Þ/þ make a hard "th" sound, as in 'think' or 'thorn'. There is no soft "th" sound like 'the' or 'that' in the language.
4 S/ſ makes a hard "s" sound, as in 'soft' or 'sound'. There is no soft "s" sound like 'rose' or 'blows' in the language.
5 ʂ/ʃ makes a "sh" sound, as in 'shoot' or 'shave'.
6 ʑ/ʒ makes a "zh" sound, as heard in 'vision' or 'treasure'.
7 Ʋ/ʋ makes a "vw" sound. There is no equivalent sound in English, but it is similar to the Irish sound in 'an bhuil'. This is generally phoenetically written as "un vwil". I can't find the IPA transliteration of the sound.
8 J/j makes a "y" sound, as found in 'young' or 'you'.
9 Ŋ/ŋ makes an "ng" sound, as at the end of 'thing' or 'slang'.
Vowels
The most important aspects of vowels are how open the mouth is (height), and where the sound is produced within the mouth (frontness).
Height: The usual scale is high [i, u], middle [e, o], and low [a]. There may be two middle steps, usually called closed [ay, oh] and open [eh, aw].
Frontness: How close the tongue is to the front of the mouth. Vowels can be classified into front (i, e), central (a), or back (o, u).
Roundedness: Whether the lips are rounded (u, o) or not (i, e).
Length: Vowels may contrast by length.
Nasalization: Like consonants, vowels can be nasalized.
Vowels include: a (as in 'father'), œ (as in 'feet'), e (as in 'fret'), i (as in 'flit'), ö (as in 'float'), ü (as in 'flute').
The language also includes the sounds õ and ũ, which are simply a puff of air with the sound of the indicated vowel carried with it (like a voiced blow).
Phonological constraints
Typically, words are constrained to the shapes that follow [õ|ũ|ǀ](C)V[C|V(C)]
A palato-alveolar stop cannot follow an aspirated fricative (ex. 'sh' cannot precede 'k'). No more than two vowels or consonants in a row.
Special characters
Many of the characters in the Fae alphabet are not found in the Latin alphabet, and as such need to be generated with a compose key or entered using Unicode or Alt-code entries. HTML code is the same as the Alt-code, and is entered as &#[Alt-code];. Check your OS's documentation for instructions on key entry with Unicode or Alt-codes, or setting and using a Compose Key if you so choose.
| Þ | þ | Ŋ | ŋ | Ʋ | ʋ | ʑ | ʒ | ʂ | ʃ | ſ | Ō | ō | Ū | ū | Œ | œ | Ö | ö | Ü | ü | |
| Compose | TH | th | NG | ng | o- | u- | OE | oe | O" | o" | U" | u" | |||||||||
| Unicode | 00DE | 00FE | 014A | 014B | 01B2 | 028B | 0291 | 0292 | 0282 | 0283 | 017F | 014C | 014D | 016A | 016B | 0152 | 0153 | 00D6 | 00F6 | 00DC | 00FC |
| Alt-code | 222 | 254 | 330 | 331 | 434 | 651 | 657 | 658 | 642 | 643 | 383 | 332 | 333 | 362 | 363 | 338 | 339 | 214 | 246 | 220 | 252 |
I actually have already started building the language (have been for about two years now), I was just asking if I could use like the lesson format you had used at the top of this thread, just as a way to display it.