Wanya/Orthography
Wanya can be written in a number of different systems.
Wanya alphabet
Wanya's native script is an alphabet, shown in the image.
The first 3 columns are capital letters, the next three are small letters, and everything else is symbols. Here are the letters row by row, from left to right:
- Б b
- D d
- G g
- W w
- Я ɹ
- Y y
- P p
- T t
- K k
- Δ δ
- L l
- Λ λ
- I i (or Ï ï)
- Ǝ ə (or Ǝ̈ ӛ)
- U u (or Ü ü)
- diphthong I i
- diphthong Ǝ ə
- diphthong U u
- B β
- R r
- Ꝛ ꝛ
- V v
- Z z
- Γ γ
- M m
- N n
- Ŋ ŋ
- F f
- S s
- X x
- E e (or Ë ë)
- A a (or Ä ä)
- O o (or Ö ö)
- diphthong E e
- diphthong A a
- diphthong O o
The symbol that looks like a striked-through sine wave (or the Latin small letter m) is the equals sign (dezdanyo). It is commonly romanized as “=”.
The symbol that looks like the Latin capital letter S is the number sign (gurunyo). It is commonly romanized as “#”.
The symbol that looks like two small parallel vertical lines is the comma (kaskanyo). It is placed at about the same height as a Latin comma, and commonly romanized as “,”.
The symbols that look like an opening and closing square bracket, respectively, are the opening an closing parentheses (kure and mai). They are used for multiple purposes, sometimes even as a shorthand for the words they are named after. They are commonly romanized as “[” and “]”, but in some texts they are transcribed as ‘“’ and ‘”’ when they delimit direct speech, “[” and “]” when they occur in numbers, and “(” and “)” otherwise.
The remaining two symbols, here shown on a circular placeholder character, are placed on letters.
The one that looks like a vertical line is the accent mark (oxikonyo), and is commonly placed on the letter Ǝ or ə (but can, in theory, be placed on any letter). It denotes that the letter is stressed (an ə with oxikonyo is pronounced as [e] instead of [ə]). The oxikonyo is usually romanized as “´”; an Ǝ or ə with oxikonyo is usually romanized as “Ǝ́” or “ə́”.
The one that looks like the Wanya small letter ɹ (or a flipped tilde) is the diæresis (ɹuꝛanyo, colloquially ɹənyo or even ɹətek). It works like a diæresis in the Latin alphabet: you place it on a vowel to indicate that it is never used as the second vowel in a diphthong. It is not usually used in normal writing (since there are separate letters for use in diphthongs); only in dictionaries or for clarification. It is usually romanized as a combining diæresis (e.g. “ÏƎ̈Ü ËÄÖ ïӛü ëäö”), although a diæresis is also used in the romanization if it was (or would be) missing in the Wanya alphabet version.
The image lacks the unit symbols (which have not been invented yet) and the pause sign (nainyo), which is also used as a shorthand for “this space intentionally left blank” or “nothing to see here”. It is commonly romanized as “_”.
Unicode romanization
This is what is used on FrathWiki to transcribe Wanya.
ASCII romanization
This romanization is used instead of the Unicode romanization if some of the characters are unsupported. In order not to be confused with the Unicode romanization, text in it should be surrounded in fake angular brackets (< and >).
Ajan
Wanya can also be written in a variation of the Ajan abjad.
