Chlouvānem: Difference between revisions

The romanization used for Chlouvānem avoids this problem by giving each phoneme a single character or digraph, but it stays as close as possible to the native script. Aspirated stops and diphthongs are romanized as digraphs and not by single letters; geminate letters, which are represented with a diacritic in the native script, are romanized by writing the consonant twice - in the aspirated stops, only the first letter is written twice, so /ppʰ/ is '''pph''' and not *phph. The following table contains the whole Chlouvānem alphabet as it is romanized, following the native alphabetical order:

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Most Chlouvānem sources, however, classify '''å''' as a ''diphthong'': Classical Era sources nearly accurately describe it as /ao̯/, later monophthongized to /ʌ/ or /ɒ/ and merged with /ɔ/ - in fact, most daughter languages have the same reflex for both '''o''' and '''å'''. A few grammarians think that '''å''' was originally the long version of '''o''', but this hypothesis is disputed as '''å''' does not pattern with the other long vowels (e.g. '''o''' does not lengthen into it because of synchronic lengthening; also it is grouped with diphthongs in the alphabetic order instead of coming just after '''o''', as other long vowels do). Some kind of distinction in the pronunciations of Classical Chlouvānem must have been preserved until early modern times, as both are found in adapting foreign words - usually '''å''' transcribes more open vowels than '''o''' - cf. the two [[Holenagic]] loanwords ''Hålinaika'' (Holenagica) - with '''å''' for [ɔ] - and ''lofyun'' (ṅoifṅ, a vodka-like Holenagic spirit) - with '''o''' for [o].

The Chlouvānem script is almost entirely composed of curved lines as, initially, it was written on leaves with reeds (''fålka'', pl. ''fålkai'') or brushes (''lattah'', pl. ''lattai''). With the invention, in the late 5th millennium, of paper (traditional Chlouvānem paper or ''mirtah'' is handmade by fibres from various types of wooden bushes; traditional papermaking is still important today as formal handwritten documents are usually written on traditional paper), the use of reeds or brushes often became region-dependant; the reeds of the ''ñagala'' plant became the dominant writing tool in most of the plains, as this plant abundantly grows by the river shores; in the Jade Coast, brushes (whose "hair" are actually fibres of wetland plants such as the ''jalihā'') were preferred.<br/>

The traditional ''fålkai'' and ''lattai'' have not disappeared, as both are still found and used - even if only with traditional handmade paper. Both are commonly used for calligraphy as well as in various other uses: for example, [[w:Banzuke|banzuke]] papers for tournaments of most traditional sports are carefully handwritten with reed pens, as are many announcements by local temples (written with either reed pens or brushes); a newer type of brush pen (much like Japanese [[w:Fudepen|fudepen]]s) has proven to be particularly popular even in everyday use (both with traditional and modern industrial paper) in the Jade Coast area - many Great Inquisitors from there, including incumbent Hæliyǣšavi Dhṛṣṭāvāyah ''Lairē'', have been seen writing official document with such kind of pens.