The script of Seuna

Consonants

These are the 17 consonants. The ampersand "@" represents a glottal stop.

These 17 shapes have been more or less copied from Tibetan. This subset of the Tibetan alphabet was chosen as I feel that these symbols are distinct from each other but at the same time similar. They were given completely different phonetic values to what they have in Tibetan.

There is no scheme that gives these symbols common elements corresponding to common articulation methods. However it can be noted that "b", "p" and "m" have a common element. As do "h" and "@". Also "g" and "y" are quite similar and in language g => y is quite a common sound change.

There is also no correspondence between how a sound "feels" and how it is written. If that were the case there would be no angle in the "s" and nasal sounds and "k", "p" and "t" would be extremely angular.

Vowels

The vowel marks are given below. They are written above the consonant that they follow. According to approved articulation, no syllable should begin with a vowel ; there should be a glottal-stop then a vowel. However to drop the glottal-stop seems to be quite common, in which case the first figure given in the consonants list is merely a place-holder to mount the vowel on.

Off-gestures

An off-gesture (or off-flurish) is when a consonant is immediately followed by "y","l" or "w". Off-gestures only occur word initially and are restricted to certain letters (see "initial consonant clusters" in "Seuna word shape"). The off-gesture is indicated by a mark placed just to the top right of the main figure (see below).

On-gestures

An on-gesture (or on-flurish) is when a non-initial-consonant is preceded by "l", "s" or "n". These on-gestures co-occur with most consonants but a very few combinations are disallowed(see "mid consonant clusters" in "Seuna word shape").

The on-gesture is indicated by a mark placed just to the left of the figure that they are combined with(see above).

Combining off-gesture with on-gesture

Most words take the form of two consonant figures. This form of word is called a "couplet".

In a couplet, when the first figure has an off-gesture and the second figure has an on-gesture, the off-gesture mark is pushed under the on-gesture mark.

Diphthongs

The diphthongs are written as shown below.

The diphthong au is represented by a symbol which is a sort of a combination of the a mark and the u mark. This is the one diphthong that doesn't have a following cross.

Reduced "couplets"

In the Seuna writing system certain couplets are "reduced". That is they are always written without any vowel signs.

Now in Seuna there are 2130 possible couplets. (It would be 2220 but there is a prohibition against having a lateral off-gesture and a lateral on-gesture in the same word)

For example the word for "book" is caito, which you would expect to be written

However this word is is the commonest couplet with the letters "CT" so it is shorn of its vowels. It is always simply written as

All the other couplets with the letters "CT" carry their vowels as normal. For example ceta meaning "petal" is written

For example "to walk" = dono. This happens to be the word choosen from all the two syllable words with initial event D and secondary event N.

bundo = building, bunda = to build

Vowels and initial-consonant-tail-gestures and secondary-consonant-head-gestures will be represented as lower case letters.

tolnu = to grind => TolNu

dono = to walk => DN and not (DoNo)

Index

1. Introduction to Seuna
2. Seuna : Chapter 1
3. Seuna word shape
4. The script of Seuna
5. Seuna sentence structure
6. Seuna pronouns
7. Seuna nouns
8. Seuna verbs (1)
9. Seuna adjectives
10. Seuna demonstratives
11. Seuna verbs (2)
12. Asking a question in Seuna
13. Seuna relative clauses
14. Seuna verbs (3)
15. Methods for deriving words in Seuna
16. List of all Seuna derivational affixes
17. Numbers in Seuna
18. Naming people in Seuna
19. The Seuna calendar
20. Seuna units