This alphabet is a bit shorter than the Anshens one, coming in at a whopping ~27 letters, but despite this, it manages to represent about the same amount of phonemes, if you ignore dental/alveolar carryover. It’s quite a nifty script, though I don’t have the actual letters anywhere, I do have the romanization, as seen here:
RWSPC | RNSPC | IPA |
İ, i | I, i | [i] |
Î, î | Iu, iu | [ɨ] |
I, ı | Ih, ih | [ɪ] |
E, e | E, e | [e], [ɛ] |
G, g | G, g | [ʁ] |
U, u | U, u | [u] |
B, b | B, b | [b] |
Ė, ė | Eh, eh | [ɛ] |
O, o | O, o | [o] |
Ū, ū | U, u | [ʌ] |
A, a | A, a | [a] |
J, j | J, j | [d͡z] |
D, d | D, d | [d] |
L, l | L, l | [l] |
M, m | M, m | [m] |
N, n | N, n | [n] |
Ş, ş | Tsh, tsh | [t͡ʃ] |
R, r | R, r | [ɾ] |
Ś, ś | Ts, ts | [t͡s] |
Ž, ž | Zh, zh | [ʒ] |
Š, š | Sh, sh | [ʃ] |
C, c | C, c | [ɟ] |
S, s | S, s | [s] |
Ð, ð | Dh, dh | [ð] |
K, k | K, k | [c] |
V, v | V, v | [v] |
W, w | W, w | [w] |
As you can see, it’s also much more phonetically consistent than Anshens, having only one imediately obvious oddity: e. E represents /e/ and /ε/, despite there being a letter, ė, that already represents /ε/. This is because /e/ is pronounced as /ε/ when unemphasized before voiceless stops and affricates. Besides this, the only other bit of dirt on this otherwise clear floor of sounds is the double letters. In case if you were wondering where the rest of the phonemes were that allowed it to technically kinda rival Anshens, here they are:
RWSPC | RNSPC | IPA |
Gk, gk | Gk, gk | [χ] |
Kg, kg | Kg, kg | [ç] |
Şş, şş | Tshtsh, tshtsh | [t͡ʒ] |
Ss, ss | Ss, ss | [s̺] |
Śś, śś | Tsts, tsts | [t͡z] |
Bb, bb | Bb, bb | [pʰ] |
Šš, šš | Shsh, shsh | [ʂ] |
Jj, jj | Jj, jj | [d͡ʒ] |
Žž, žž | Zhzh, zhzh | [ʐ] |
Rr, rr | Rr, rr | [r] |
Ll, ll | Ll, ll | [lː] |
Mm, mm | Mm, mm | [mː] |
Nn, nn | Nn, nn | [nː] |
Nk, nk | Nk, nk | [ɲ] |
Nkk, nkk | Nkk, nkk | [ŋ] |
Dd, dd | Dd, dd | [tʰ] |
Ðð, ðð | Dhdh, dhdh | [θ] |
Cc, cc | Cc, cc | [g] |
Vv, vv | Vv, vv | [f] |
Wv, wv | Wv, wv | [β] |
Ww, ww | Ww, ww | [ɸ] |
Kk, kk | Kk, kk | [k] |
Ń, ń | Nh, nh | [◌̃] |
Now I know that some of these look really bad (*cough* /t͡ʒ/ *cough*), but also some of them seem quite reasonable, actually… what’s with that? Well, it’s because of the Doubles Rules! The Doubles Rules are quite simple kind of: two plosives must devoice and aspirate (sometimes, the aspiration is technically accent-dependant), two fricatives must either devoice or move the tongue back, affricates must reverse voice or move the tongue back but the inner plosive doesn’t change, doubled nasals and vowels are either long or, in the case of end vowels, given emphasis. If you look closely, you may notice that I included some non-double digraphs. This is because there’s few of them and their phonemic values still needed representation and I didn’t feel like making another chart frankly.
The order of the alphabet differs much from the Anshens alphabet order— this is because they are different languages. But what is the difference that changes the order? What was wrong with the beauty of the clear vowel/plosive/fricative/affricate/attachment letter order? Well, it wasn’t much representative of the most fun part of Ektari Tai: the class system! Every phoneme (more or less) has a class that means that any given sound is either lower or higher than another! The alphabet is ordered with respect to these classes with the highest class letters being at the beginning (the sooner the letter, the better! as they say), but it should be noted that double letter phonemes also have their own classes that tie into the main alphabet’s, but I didn’t write the alphabet conveniently, I wrote it accurately. Luckily, there’s some fairly simple rules for class that one can apply without the alphabet handy in their mind. If you look closely, there is, in fact, patterns in fricatives that the further back they are in the mouth, the sooner they appear in the alphabet, with an opposite pattern seen in plosives. Vowels also have a phonetic class pattern, with a closed vowel superiority and a front vowel superiority thing going on. This is a little bit confusing if you consider that /a/ is open-front, as that should put it above /u/ as all higher vowels are front after that, but instead /a/ is under all of them; but fear not, there is a stupid reason for this: /a/ sounds like /ɑ/ and if you try to make its sound on lonesome you'll probably accidentally make /ɑ/ happen and classify it as such, especially if you're just starting up civilization and antsy to judge people in ways never previously thought possible.