International Hesperic Alphabet

The International Hesperic Alphabet (IHA) is a standard for phonemic transcription of Hesperic languages which uses only 7-bit ASCII characters.

Origin (extrafictional)

The IHA was designed by Jörg Rhiemeier in 2019 and is an updated and extended version of his early universal transcription system.

Origin (intrafictional)

THe IHA was agreed upon by scholars studying Hesperic languages in 1988. In order to be usable on the time's computers and bulletin box system networks which did not deal with non-ASCII characters well, it was designed to use ASCII characters only, resorting to digraphs and to the usage of interpunctation characters as postposed diacritics.

The rules

1. The 26 basic letters have their IPA values, except c which has the same value as k. (This is a concession to different traditions. The Albic languages use c exclusively while the Hercynian and Alpianic languages use k; the South Hesperic languages use k before front vowels and c otherwise.)
2. The letter h is also used to form digraphs, with the following values: a) after a stop, the corresponding fricative (e.g., dh = /ð/); b) after a sibilant, postalveolar articulation (e.g., sh = /ʃ/); c) after a sonorant, voicelesslness (e.g., lh = /ɬ/). Furthermore, the digraph ng is used for /ŋ/.
3. The apostrophe (') marks aspiration (after the letter, postaspiration; before the letter, preaspiration).
4. The chevron (^) after a letter marks palatalization.
5. The asterisk (*) after a letter marks labialization.
6. The backquote (`) after a letter shifts the point of articulation backwards: after an alveolar, it marks retroflexion (e.g., s` = /ʂ/); after a velar, it marks uvular articulation (e.g., g` = /ɢ/).
7. The period (.) can be used to break up letter sequences in order to suppress digraphs where needed (e.g., s.h = /sh/ instead of sh = /ʃ/).
8. Long vowels are spelled double.
9. Accent, where distinctive, is marked by a comma (,) before the syllable.

Charts

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	voiceless	colspan="3"| t	t`	k^	k	k`
	voiced	colspan="3" d	d`	g^	g	g`
	aspirated	colspan="3" t'	t`'	k^'	k'	k`'	nbsp;
Fricatives	voiceless	f	th	s	sh	s`	k^h	kh	k`h	h
	voiced	v	dh	z	zh	z`	g^h	gh	g`h
Nasals	voiced	colspan="3"| n	n`	ng^	ng	ng`
	voiceless	colspan="3"| nh	n`h	ng^h	ngh	ng`h	nbsp;
Laterals	voiced	colspan="3"| l	l`	l^
	voiceless	colspan="3"| lh	l`h	l^h
Rhotics	voiced	colspan="3"| r	r`	r^		r;
	voiceless	colspan="3"| rh	r`h	r^h		r;h
Semivowels	voiced	colspan="3"|		j
	voiceless	colspan="3"|		jh