Blog Post · Fontibet

Fontibet ^

Posted On Friday 6 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Timlan alphabet!

We decided we needed an alphabet for (for instance) spelling out (non-Timlan) words, having single-letter variable names, etc.

So, we made one!

To this end, we have introduced another vowel. It is represented by '. The IPA is ɜ and it is pronounced like the "i" in British English "bird" (I'll add it to fonti.txt shortly). A few dialects of British English and most of American English that are "rhotic" (ie, actually pronounce the "r" in "car", "bird", etc.) must remember not to pronounce the "r" - if you're moving your tongue whilst saying it, or your tongue is in (nearly) the same position it would be to say "r", you're doing it wrong.

As for the order, as usual, we've been logical! Number letters come first, followed by the remaining consonants, then followed by the affricates (consonants with ~), then the normal vowels and finally the special vowels - / and '.

So, the full alphabet is written thus:

b' c' d' f' g' h' j' k' l' m' n' p' r' s' t' v' w' x' y' z' t~s' d~z' t~c' d~j' a e i o q u - / '

Note that when writing out letters, you don't write the ' unless you want to specifically emphasise that the letters should be pronounced individually - just like in English, you write "B" but you pronounce it "bee".

This will come in handy when we finalise the mathematics implementation...