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

Latin

Aa Ąą Bb Cc Čč Dd Ee Ęę Ff Gg Ǧǧ Hh Ii Ĭĭ Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Ňň Oo Öö Pp Rr Řř Ss Šš Şş Tt Uu Üü Ŭŭ Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Žž Z̧z̧

IPA

ɑ ɑ̃ b ts tʃ d e ẽ f ɡ ɣ h i əʲ j k l m n ŋ ɒ ø p ɾ ɹ s ʃ θ t u y əʷ v w x ɯ z ʒ ð