Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Writing System

Headline text

	a	i	u	e	o	coda
ʔ	ア	イ	ウ	エ	オ	style="ー
K	カ	キ	ク	ケ	コ	ㇰ
S	サ	シ	ス	セ	ソ	ㇲ
T	タ	チ	ツ	テ	ト	ッ
N	ナ	ニ	ヌ	ネ	ノ	ㇴ
H	ハ	ヒ	フ	ヘ	ホ	ㇷ
M	マ	ミ	ム	メ	モ	ㇺ
Y	ヤ		ユ		ヨ	ィ
R	ラ	リ	ル	レ	ロ	ヽ
W	ワ	ヰ	于	ヱ	ヲ	ゥ
G	ガ	ギ	グ	ゲ	ゴ	N/A
Z	ザ	ジ	ズ	ゼ	ゾ	N/A
D	ダ	ヂ	ヅ	デ	ド	N/A
B	バ	ビ	ブ	ベ	ボ	N/A
P	パ	ピ	プ	ペ	ポ	N/A
Ŋ	カ゚	キ゚	ク゚	ケ゚	コ゚	ン
TS	サ゚	シ゚	ス゚	セ゚	ソ゚	N/A

Hiroyuki Fujisaka (藤坂 弘幸) and his Palauan workers are the only people ever to have seen actual Proto-Austronesian Hebrew (PAH) writing. As best as can be determined, it was some kind of Akkadian/Sumerian or Ugaritic cuneiform, with rudimentary vowel-pointing of some kind. Since he died in 1944, however, only Fujisaka's notes remain of this language (オーストロネシアヘブライ祖語), extensive though they may be. Most linguistic documentation since that time has been using the Latin alphabet, but the special adaptation of katakana is preserved here for historical and documentary purposes.

Gemination	ッ̣
Diphthong-ending /e/	ェ
Diphthong-ending /o/	ォ

The table to the right shows all the syllabograms Fujisaka-san assigned to PAH sounds. He explained that his system should taken as more consistent and uniform than modern Japanese (e.g., シ is /tu/ not /tsu/, フ is /hu/ not /fu/, etc.) The “plain” vowels begin with glottal-stops (instead of no onset), because PAH syllables must begin with a consonant. Fujisaka-san seems to have correctly recalled the obsolete /wi wu we yi ye/. Unlike his colleagues working on Taiwanese Kana and Ainu, he successfully used only monographs (gojūon/(五十音), avoided any digraphs (yōon/拗音) in his kana adaptation. Beyond the basic "50", there are four sets of characters using the dakuten/濁点 ("voiced") and three sets using the handakuten/半濁点 ("muddied"). Two other full-sized katakana characters are used: ン for syllable-coda /ŋ/ (not the variable nasal of Japanese), and ー (chōonpu/長音符) for the lengthening of the preceding vowel. ヽ and ヾ are used for unvoiced and voiced reduplication of the previous syllable. There is no process in PAH to change voicing during reduplication, but Fujisaka followed the Japanese pattern of using the daktuen on the iteration mark whenever needed.

There are also 12 small signs, all of which are subscripted, miniaturized versions of normal syllabograms. All but one indicate a coda consonant. ッ̣ - a small /tu/ with dot below - indicates gemination of the following consonant. The "50" make coda consonants by the Cu version of themselves except

• 'R' which cannot be geminated or in the coda,
• the glottal-stop which cannot be geminated, but its vowel can be lengthened
• 'Y' - which becomes an /i/ when in the coda, even when geminated
• 'W' - which becomes an /u/ when in the coda, even when geminated

'H' can be in the coda but cannot be geminated. The "voiced" and "muddied" consonants - except for 'Ŋ' - cannot be in the coda, though they may be geminated.