Monto script

Ian James
© July 2012

script name

This script (an abugida) follows on from other easily written, phonetically constructed scripts in my Phonological Cypher series. It features vowels which swirl lightly around their consonants. The name comes from Thai /montho:/ “angel”.

Consonants

The left part of each consonant glyph signifies the place of production of its phoneme, with separate forms for voiced and unvoiced in some cases. The right side signifies the manner of production. Here is the full range of consonant glyphs at the ‘dental’ location. There is plosive/default, nasal, fricative, affricate and ejective.

Monto consonant modifiers

Here are all the location bases. For some phoneme bases, not all manners are applicable. For example, /j/, /r/ and /w/ take only the default manner; a plosive manner on the /h/ base will give the glottal plosive; and so on. Note that /s/ and /z/ are defaults, and when given the fricative and affricate manners they make postalveolars /š/, /ž/, /tš/ and /dž/.

Monto consonants

Vowels

The vowel sub-glyphs have a visual focus at the upper-right of their consonant. The three main shapes on top signify close, mid and open vowels, while the addition of a falling curl will make them back vowels. To show rounding, an extra loop is added to the right. A consonant with no vowel-mark will have inherent schwa, and to show that no vowel is sounded, double dots are put at the upper-right. (Here shown with a dummy /d/.)

Monto vowels

For broadening diphthongs, a special wrap-around vowel-mark is added. For narrowing diphthongs, semivowel /j/ or /w/ is written after.

Example

This is the beginning of Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 again (transliteration only), for comparison with versions of SIGIL etc.

Monto example
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
/montho:/ in Thai

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All material on this page © Ian James.
Last modified Aug.4,2012