Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen to the unveiling of Narunin's alphabet. *Plays fanfare music and pulls back the curtain*


To avoid any confusion, I will try to explain what is going on. For the consonants, I used the our normal letters and letter combinations (eg.: sh) to describe the sounds of the letters, with one exception. That exception and the vowel sounds (vowels and dipthongs) are all explained in this link. Hopefully you can discern which funny vowel symbols connect with less funny vowel symbols. The last two characters are special. "VS" stands for vowel splitter, which the Narunum use to split any vowels that happen to be together (for example, the Narunum would use a VS between the "i" and the "e" in the name "Rorien"). They do so simply because they think it is more orderly. Besides this, the VS means nothing, sounds like nothing and is generally purposeless. "PC" stands for possesifying character. That, essentially means that if this character is added to the end of a noun, it changes that noun to an adjective. For example, take the word Narunin. If you added the PC to it, (which I currently transliterate as Narunine) it would mean "pertaining to Narunin" and would be pronounced Naruneen (The PC always changes the ending vowel sound to an "ee" sound, except in the case of a word that ends in a double "ee" sound. When that happens, I haven't decided what the PC does.)As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Hmm. It seems that the above is slightly boring. Therefore, I shall tell you the more interesting facts about my alphabet. First, the letters have families, according to Narunine tradition. As you see, the alphabet is divided first into consonants, then vowels, and finally the miscellaneous characters. Each group is a sort of neighborhood. I won't go into great detail, but in the first neighborhood, the consonants, there are two main families and then three orphans. The head of the first family is the H sound, and all the letters that have a tall stem originate from him. I have not quite decided who the head of the second family is, although I'm leaning towards the F sound (which would mean I would have to rearrange the alphabet. Oh, well). The SH sound is the most different, but it was adopted by the S, Z, and TH group (yes, there are groups within the families. ) Sadly, L, R, and K, are orphans. The vowels are really not related at all. There are a few families though, such as the "a:" and the backwards "a" family, and the two next to them (the funny snake looking ones that mirror each other) are also a family.

My favorite part about the letters is that each has a word meaning (the meaning of each word I am still working on) and when a child is born, the prominent family members give the child a letter as a blessing (or curse). Those letters are arranged to make the child's name. This also causes a popularity in certain letters being used in names, and other letters being hardly used at all.

So there you are. Hopefully this unveiling ceremony was fascinating and I encourage you all to ask questions or tell me what you think of it. Thank you! *bows and walks off the stage*

I think it's brilliant. Did you know Hawaiian isn't allowed to have two consonants together? Anyway. I think all of your rules are really neat.

Wow, you read that quickly! And no, I didn't. That's interesting... *ponders possibilities* Well, I think I'll just stick with no vowels allowed next to each other, not both. Thank you.

Veeeeryyyyy iiintereeestiiiing!

Usually I don't delve around in the language room too often because in my experience many of the fantasy languages around here are either complex little beasties crafted by linguistic enthusiasts or something that looks like alphabet soup gone wrong and sounds like someone tried to speak Hebrew and Latin at the same time with a mouth full of marbles. Or both!

That said, I found your language quite intriguing. Granted, I was a little worried when I first saw the alphabet, but your explanations and transliterated examples took care of that. It's neither so complex that it bores me to tears, nor is it too simple for me to take it seriously. I especially like the part about how the word meaning of the letters plays a part in naming children.

Good job!

This was hilarious! *Imagines someone speaking Hebrew and Latin with marbles in his mouth* XD


Thank you very much! That is a real compliment.

I really like the idea of families of letters. It could be interesting for cultural significance and stories... do they ever tell stories about the letters, like they are people?

That's an awesome idea. I love messing with naming conventions, it's an area that is highly personal, while also being highly customizable – not like something based on nature or physiology.... Anyway, what happens when someone has very few relatives – like maybe just one? Does he just get a really short name? And what about foundlings or babies whose families have all died?

(Do the Narunin have spelling conventions, just out of curiosity? Or do they do free style spelling, like some cultures and time periods I've heard of?)

Yep. I'm going to have fun making up those... :3



Good question, thank you for asking! The answer would be, yes, he does get a short name. If a child only has one relative, that relative will be allowed to give more than one, the Narunum aren't that strict, but the name must nonetheless be short. In the case of foundling children, whoever takes them in gives them their letters, but still they do not get very many. Therefore, anyone who hears the child's name would know that the child did not have a real family.



Oh, yes, very strict spelling conventions. No adding fancy letters all over the place here!

Zis is glorious.