Senet

Ian James
© November 2016 – January 2017

script name

This script is very much a Phonological Cypher, being an easily written, phonetically constructed alphabet like others in that series. Some letters resemble slightly those of Burmese and/or Thai; not such a bad thing.

Consonants

The consonants have clues to the manner of articulation in their shapes, and appear to come in sets. In particular, a dip in their top or base indicates devoicing, a vertical stroke at the left/front indicates a fricative, and an above-and-front stroke indicates /-r/ or retroflex behaviour. The shape for the uncommon devoiced nasal is used for ejectives. The chart here has rows in order of region – labial, dental, palatal, velar-glottal.

Vowels

Vowels shapes attach to the curved back of their consonants, here shown with a pale green /n/. There is an extra dip on top for those with lip-rounding. Many diphthongs have their own distinct shape, the three on the last row (and some other possibilities) are composites. The /a/ can represent schwa, especially in broadening diphthongs. Long vowels, if required, can have an acute accent above (as in Old English).



There are some consonants which, when connected to vowels, show they have strokes strategic to that purpose:

Punctuation

There are four levels/types of pause, representing comma, period, exclamation and question-marker.

Example

This is a transcription of the first line of Shakespeare’s sonnet 18, for comparison with versions of SIGIL etc.


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

ancient Egyptian board-game

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All material on this page © Ian James.