Kipin/Orthography

Kipin Orthography

Kipin is mainly written in the Latin alphabet, which was brought to the islands by Portuguese and English traders. It mainly follows the model of Portuguese orthography, but shows English influence in the use of k rather than c or qu to represent /k/ and the use of w rather than u/v to represent /w/. The use of gn to represent /ŋ/ appears to be a particular local innovation - Portuguese at the time represented this sound by a tilde over the preceeding vowel, and in English it was an allophone of /n/ before a following velar, so while this worked for syllable-final /ŋ/s (which are formed by assimilation), there was no suitable option for syllable initial /ŋ/ The following chart shows how graphemes correspond to phonemes.

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	a
aa	aː
b	b
c	t͡ʃ
d	d
dj	d͡ʒ
e	e
ee	eː
ei	ej
f	ɸ
g	g
gn	ŋ
gnn	ŋŋ
i	i
j	ʒ
k	k
l	l
lh	ʎ
lw	ɫ
m	m
n	Usually n
	ɲ before lh or nh
	ŋ before g, k or lw
nh	ɲ
o	o
p	p
r	r
s	s initially or after a consonant
	z between vowels
ss	s between vowels
t	t
u	u
w	w
x	ʃ
y	j
z	z (occurs after consonants)

Pre-contact scripts

The earliest examples of writing on the island are fragmentary inscriptions in an undeciphered logographic script, tentatively believed to be related to Linear A. Kikun was written in a syllabary, apparently derived from this logographic script, with 45 glyphs representing CV syllables and 3 subscripts representing coda consonants. As sound changes altered the phonology, diacritics were added to the syllabary to represent new sounds and combinations of sounds. By the time traders from the outside world made contact with the island, it was quite a mess. The Latin script was adopted quickly by most of the islanders, since it was easier to use. As the islanders adopted Christianity, the use of the Latin script was also encouraged by the Church, who regarded the old syllabary as pagan. However, the old syllabary retained its prestige amongst the nobility, and it is still used to write laws.

By coincidence, k represents the glyph for /ki/ in the old syllabary, which may have influenced its use in the Latin orthography.