Anshens, somehow, has an alphabet, but since I don't feel like making a font or whatever, I made a romanization using special characters, then I realized that I couldn't easily write with a computer, so I made a second one without special characters, before finally making a cyrillization, which was much easier and fits much better, seeing as Anshens has an alphabet of ~32 characters, and russian (the alphabet that I'm most familiar with in the cyrillic script) has ~33. Granted, two of the letters in russian don't actually make a sound, and two Anshens letters can't really be expressed without writing two letters (ng and mn), and there's also two letters that make a sound but also don't sometimes but y'know. it's close enough.
| RNSPC | RWSPC | Cyrillization | IPA |
| E, e | E, e | Э, э | [ɛ] |
| A, a | A, a | А, а | [a] |
| I, i | İ, i | И, и | [i] |
| O, o | O, o | О, о | [o], [ɔ] |
| U, u | Ū, ū | Аъ, аъ | [ʌ], [ə] |
| K, k | K, k | К, к | [k] |
| B, b | B, b | Б, б | [b], [p] |
| G, g | G, g | Г, г | [g] |
| D, d | D, d | Д, д | [d̪], [d] |
| L, l | L, l | Л, л | [l̪], [l], [ɬ] |
| M, m | M, m | М, м | [m] |
| N, n | N, n | Н, н | [n̪], [n] |
| Mn, mn | Mn, mn | Мн, мн | [m͡n̪] |
| R, r | R, r | Р, р | [r], [r̥], [ɾ] |
| S, s | S, s | С, с | [s] |
| Z, z | Z, z | З, з | [z] |
| V, v | V, v | В, в | [v] |
| F, f | F, f | Ф, ф | [f] |
| W, w | W, w | У, у | [w] |
| Zh, zh | Ž, ž | Ж, ж | [ʒ] |
| Th, th* | Þ, þ* | Ть, ть* | [θ] |
| Ch, ch | Č, č | Ч, ч | [t͡ʃ] |
| Sh, sh | Š, š | Ш, ш | [ʃ] |
| Ng, ng | Ņ, ņ | Нь, нь | [ŋ] |
| Tv, tv | Tv, tv | Тв, тв | [t͡v] |
| H, h | H, h* | Х, х, Ь, ь | [h], [χ], n/a |
| P, p | P, p | П, п | [p], [b], [p̚] |
| T, t | T, t | Т, т | [t̪], [t] |
| Ih, ih | I, ı | Ы, ы | [ɪ] |
| Y, y | Y, y | Й, й* | [j] |
| ' | ' | ', Ъ, ъ | [ʔ], n/a |
*Some letters have different romanizations when paired with other letters— specifically h and ', due to the pronounciations changing (e. g. oh= [u]), and й due to russian having palatalized vowels that one can write instead. I'll make a separate mini-table for that later.
It is now later:
| RNSPC | RWSPC | Cyrillization | IPA |
| E, e | E, e | Э, э | [ɛ] |
| Eh, eh | Ê, ê | Эь, эь | [e] |
| A, a | A, a | А, а | [a] |
| Ah, ah | Â, â | Аь, аь | [æ] |
| O, o | O, o | О, о | [o], [ɔ] |
| Oh, oh | Ô, ô | Оь, оь | [ɔ͡w]* |
| O', o' | Ŏ, ŏ | Оъ, оъ | [u] |
| G, g | G, g | Г, г | [g] |
| Gh, gh | Ġ, ġ | Г, г | [x], [χ] |
| W, w | W, w | У, у | [w] |
| Wh, wh | Ŵ, ŵ | Уь, уь | [ʍ] |
| Th, th | Þ, þ | Ть, ть | [θ] |
| Dh, dh | Ð, ð | Дь, дь | [ð] |
*This is an approximation, I kinda suck at transcribing vowels, especially when I'm the one saying them
I didn't add a section for the russian soft vowels, because it's just 'ye, ya, yo, yu' get turned into 'е, я, ё, ю' any symbols that would normally come after any of them (esp w/ o) are simply added to the end as if it were the original letter.
The keen-eyed amongst you may've noticed some oddities in both the phonology and the romanizations/cyrillization! Let's talk about that: first off, the phonology! What's odd about it? Well, o, u, b, d, l, n, r, h, p, and t all have multiple phonemic values. This is because phonology is stupid. Just kidding! It's because of fun rules that everyone loves because rules are great and awesome and we all (everyone in the world) love and follow them! Kinda! Regardless, let's break the oddities into chunks, shall we?
- The vowels of o and u occasionally experience some reduction from [o] and [ʌ] to [ɔ] and [ə] respectively. You might now be wondering to yourself, "Well gosh gee golly Toldy, why oh why aren't letters such as e, a, and i reduced?" Well, that's because their reductions are already written! E ([ɛ]) becomes [ɪ] or [e] and those're already written as ih and eh respectively (we'll get to eh later dw abt it), a ([a]) becomes [ʌ] or [ə] and is written as u, and i ([i]) becomes [ɪ] or [j] and is written as ih or y respectively.
- The bilabial plosives (b and p) are very much complicated for no good reason. They're just weird. Ok so technically it's just because the letters are really just indicators telling the reader to close their mouth, and b is only initial and p is only medial and/or final. So really, they're basically the same letter except for a few happenstance phonological differences (b can't be [p̚] simply because it can't come at the end of a word, and as well can't be [ɓ]
because [ɓ] only appears between any vowel and [j] because that sound has been retconned now just now on 06/3/2025); but overall, they're just like that for no reason.
- The alveolar consonants (except for r) are like that for a much better reason than that of the bilabial plosives: They're dental by default, but become alveolar when the proceeding consonant is an alveolar or postalveolar fricative. You may be thinking to yourself now, "But wait! What about when the proceeding consonant is an alveolar trill or tap or also dental??" Well worry not, for I have answers! Is the proceeding consonant an alveolar trill or tap? Nothing changes and you just have to pronounce a dental and alveolar next to each other! Is the proceeding consonant also a dental consonant? Once again, nothing changes!
- R has two values because it's usually a voiceless alveolar trill, but can become voiced if the pro- or preceeding consonant is voiced (this does not apply to vowels). Also it's occasionally expressed as a tap in loanwords from a different language that I made up called Ektari Tai, in which the tapped r is more common.
- H and gh are fun. Generally, h is pronounced three different ways, and gh is pronounced in two— [h] is initial and can only be written as 'h', [χ] is initial or medial and can be written with 'h' or 'gh', and [x] is medial or final, and can only be written with 'gh'. As you can see, there's some overlap between the pronounciations. This is a problem. You might now be thinking, "Oh but surely, for such a problem there's a simple solution!" Ehhhhh it's hard for my miniscule mind to explain well, so here's an example: The word 'haroodih' (harŏdı, хароъды), meaning 'fine', or 'okay' as an adjective, is pronounced [ˈχaːr̥ud̪ɪ]; except when it's pronounced [haˈr̥udɪ]. What's the difference? The first form is used in a sentence, and the second form is used as a single word; the existence of two slightly different forms of the word makes it a great example for this. Basically, whenever there's emphasis on the proceeding letter, [h] or [x] becomes [χ] (hencewhy there's no final [χ]). You may now also be wondering about the 'n/a'! That is there because there's a second form of 'h' that acts as sound-changing symbol, but I lump it in with 'h' for convenience and historical reasons (it used to just be the same letter and then Things happened).
- [ɬ] and [ɬ̪]??????? Yeagh! How fun? Alas, they only exist in affricates. Why? Well, because [l] and [l̪] become voiceless fricatives [ɬ] and [ɬ̪] when next to voiceless plosives [t] and [k] because changing from a plosive to an approximant often is quite annoying and not as easy as making it a fricative/making the whole thing an affricate (though this isn't the case when the plosive is bilabial, as then the consonants are far enough away from each other that it doesn't matter much), hencewhy there's no common plosive-approximant pairs. This fricativizing is also paired with voice-matching as it's easier to keep the same voice than not. Interestingly though, {kl} isn't [k͡ɬ̪], but [k͡ɬ]. That is because, as one has their tongue back to articulate the velar plosive, it takes more time and energy to move it forwards to articulate a dental consonant, and it's just easier to pronounce it as an alveolar one. A lot of phonological changes happen because they're just an easier way to pronounce the original phone because all animals evolve to become lazy and humans are the best at it.
Now onto the oddities in my attempts to fit an alphabet into the confines of unrelated alphabets!
Why is it, you might be wondering, that there's two sets of two letters that make the expected sound? Why do they need separate units in the letter chart and not combinations that actually make different sounds, like 'tl'? Well you see dear reader, because everything is relative, it just so happens that you are looking at an alphabet from a perspective that doesn't make sense. If you recall, Anshens has its own alphabet, and in this alphabet lies the answer to your burning hypothetical question: it's only one letter in anshens, and frankly I couldn't find a typable latin character that would really fit the letters well. Yup, that's it! That's why it's all 'mn' and 'tv', and why [ŋ] is 'нь' in the cyrillization!
The rest of those oddities in the '-zations' is really just 'ih' and the weird choices of letters for 'ть', 'аъ' 'нь'. In essence, this all can be chalked up to the same as the above— there just wasn't a letter that I felt represented those sounds in a standard american or russian keyboard, and it works fine enough that I don't mind it. Except for 'аъ' but the only other choice would've been 'ю' and that's already taken by itself with y.