copyright © 2005-2006 Dennis Paul Himes
The contents of this page are preliminary. They won't become canonical until the first version of the Tale of Tifa Walbatnuwa Siina is up. - DPH
Seezzitonian has twenty consonants, eight vowels, and four diphthongs. The native alphabet has a symbol for each of these, as well as some for common consonant clusters. The Roman transliteration of Seezzitonian has two variations. They both use digraphs for the diphthongs, and either a single letter or a modified letter for each of the consonants and vowels. The method for modification is the difference between the two variations of Romanization. In one a Roman letter is doubled. In the other, that letter is written which a macron over it. This site uses the first method.
Here is the Romanized version of Seezzitonian with the pronunciations in CXSampa. This table also includes the consonant clusters which have their own letters in the Seezzitonian alphabet.
| x | /S/ | |
| j | /Z/ | |
| s | /s/ | |
| z | /z/ | |
| t | /t/ | |
| d | /d/ | |
| n | /n/ | |
| ss | /T/ | |
| zz | /D/ | |
| tt | /t_d/ | |
| dd | /d_d/ | |
| nn | /n_d/ | |
| f | /p\/ | |
| v | /B/ | |
| p | /p/ | |
| b | /b/ | |
| m | /m/ | |
| l | /l/ | |
| y | /j/ | |
| w | /w/ | |
| u | /u/ | |
| o | /o/ | |
| a | /A/ | |
| aa | /&/ | |
| e | /E/ | |
| ee | /e/ | |
| i | /I/ | |
| ii | /i/ | |
| oi | /oI/ | |
| ai | /aI/ | |
| au | /aU/ | |
| eu | /eU/ | |
| st | /st/ | |
| stt | /st_d/ | |
| sstt | /Tt_d/ | |
| fp | /fp/ | |
u, o, aa, ee, ii are strong vowels.
a, e, i are weak vowels.
To "strengthen" a vowel means to map a→aa, e→ee, i→ii, all others unchanged.
To "weaken" a vowel means to map aa→a, ee→e, ii→i, all others unchanged.
Seezzitonian words are stressed on the first syllable which has a strong vowel or a diphthong. If there are none it's stressed on the first syllable.
Seezzitonian is written from the bottom up. Lines generally proceed from left to right. There is a letter for each consonant, vowel, and diphthong, as well as a few for consonant clusters. The letters for clusters are only used when the cluster begins a syllable.
There are two forms for Seezzitonian letters. These can be thought of as font families. One, which is older, consists of straight line segments, and is considered more formal. This one would be used for official documents and inscribing monuments. It was developed in Ancient times, and originally had many variations. The official version, shown here, was developed by the Seepomo Academy during the early Empire, The other, which is curvilinear, arose during the early Imperial period, and again the variations were reconciled by the Seepomo Academy.
There were only two punctuation marks common during the Imperial period, although several others have arisen since then. One was the word separator, which is simply a horizontal line. The other was the sentence separator. The most basic sentence separator is a small square or circle, but any small figure which wouldn't be confused with a letter was used. Sometimes authors had their own symbols. Official imperial documents usually used the occluding moon symbol. Sometimes a symbol was created just for a specific work. When printing presses were invented in the Post-imperial period each press would have its own symbol. Note that these are word and sentence separators, and not word and sentence enders, the sentence separator would not be used after the last sentence in the text and the word separator would not be used after the last word in a sentence, or (depending on the writer's style) after the last word in a line.
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