Terzemian

Introduction

Terzemian is a PIE conlang spoken in the area immediately to the west of the Caspian Sea, that is, the Eastern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

History

Proto-Terzemian shares all the features that are common between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic, though Old Terzemian is strictly neither Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic.

Writing

Terzemian is written in a variety of scripts.

The oldest is known as Terzemian Mnemonic Signs, which is a defective syllabary that distinguishes 12 consonants (around half the number present in Old Terzemian), but all 4 vowels that were phonemic at the time. Mnemonic signs use a bi-quinary numeral system, with separate digits for 0 through 4, and a "plus 5" diacritic. This method can be used to count from 0 to 99 on two hands, with the number of fingers extended being 0 to 4, and the extension of the thumb standing for the "plus 5" marker.

After Mnemonic Signs, the Arabic script was adopted and adapted.

During the Soviet era, Cyrillic was required.

A Yanalif reform movement existed briefly, before the modern-day Latin alphabet was designed. For roughly 20 years starting in the late 1980s, there was also "Internet Terzemian", which is a romanization typeable on a standard US keyboard, and representable in 7-bit X3.4-1968 (aka US-ASCII or Plain ASCII).

Script Tables

IPA

Consonants

	Labial	Interdental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b		t d		k g	ʔ
Nasals	m		n		ŋ
Affricates			ts	tʃ
Fricatives	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ	x ɣ	h
Liquids	w		ɹ l	j
Trill			r

Strong Vowels

	Fr Un	Fr Rd	Bk Un	J Bk Un	Bk Rd	J Bk Rd
Close	i	y	ɯ	ʲɯ	u	ʲu
Non-Close	e	ø	ɑ	ʲɑ	ɒ	ʲɒ

Weak Vowels

	Front	Back
Non Nasal	ə	ɞ
Nasal	ə̃	ɞ̃

Latin

Consonants

	Labial	Interdental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b		t d		k g	q
Nasals	m		n		ň
Affricates			c	č
Fricatives	f v	ş z̧	s z	š ž	x ǧ	h
Liquids	w		r l	j
Trill			ř

Strong Vowels

	Fr Un	Fr Rd	Bk Un	J Bk Un	Bk Rd	J Bk Rd
Close	i	ü	y	jy	u	ju
Non-Close	e	ö	a	ja	о	jo

Weak Vowels

	Front	Back
Non Nasal	ǐ	ŭ
Nasal	ę	ą

Cyrillic

Consonants

	Labial	Interdental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops	п б		т д		к г	ъ
Nasals	м		н		ң
Affricates			ц	ч
Fricatives	ф в	ҫ ҙ	с з	ш ж	х ғ	һ
Liquids	ў		р л	й
Trill			ʀ

Strong Vowels

	Fr Un	Fr Rd	Bk Un	J Bk Un	Bk Rd	J Bk Rd
Close	и	ү	ы	ӥ	у	ю
Non-Close	е	ө	а	я	о	ё

Weak Vowels

	Front	Back
Non Nasal	ь	ә
Nasal	ę	ą