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1: Hello, Here's A Script!
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Welcome, and learning the script
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 27 Jun 2020, 15:48.
[comments] nrjlessonslesson 1
2. Hello! | Guttab!
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Oh you poor unfortunate soul, you do not understand what you have got yourself into...
Norjihani is a language spoken natively by roughly 32 million people, mostly concentrated in the unsurprisingly named country of 
Norjihan (although the Norjihanis say that they live in istaðean/Istaðean). It is also known to at least some extent by many millions more as one of the main liturgical languages of the religion of Gennism/Tanhunga, which as you will discover is a major part of Norjihani life and culture. Norjihani is a language of myriad amusements and is a challenging yet rewarding language to learn. Fun features include:This series of lessons will provide a basic crash course in Norjihani. This first lesson will teach you how to read the Baredan script, which will be used in all of the later reading exercises (although a transliteration will be provided). Later lessons will introduce you to vocabulary and grammar, along with information about Norjihani culture, via a series of situational exercises, focusing on reading and writing (I would do listening exercises but no).
And with that, let us begin the dark descent into the world of Norjihani...
Norjihani's phonology is not all that exciting or majorly different, especially compared to some of its neighbours (looking at you Xhorial).You should be thankful for this however; it won't always be this easy.
Figure 1: Consonants
| Consonants | Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | |||||||
| Plosive | |||||||
| Fricative | |||||||
| Lateral Fricative | |||||||
| Approximant | |||||||
| Trill |
As you can see, the consonants are nice and mostly boring, with the retroflexes being perhaps the only unusual feature. Nothing too hard there though. Nice and easy to learn, or so you'd think. Also, we must not forget the wonderful /tn̥/. Beautiful.
Figure 2: Vowels
| Short | Long |
|---|---|
| /i/ | /ʏ:/ |
| /u/ | /u:/ |
| /ɪ/ | /ø:/ |
| /e/ | /œ:/ |
| /a/ | /ɛ:/ |
| /o/ | /o:/ |
| /y/ |
Rather than arranging the vowels in the normal fashion, above the vowels are arranged into the short/long pairs as used by traditional Norjihani grammars. The short/long pair is represented by the same grapheme, digraph or even trigraph in the Baredan script (see below), except for the fact that /o:/ is the long half of the pair for both /u/ and /o/. /y/ does not have an associated long form.
A good rule of thumb is that long vowels normally appear in stressed syllables, but can also be followed by /r/, /z/, /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/ and rarely /tɬ/ and /ɬ/, generally depending on dialect (all bar /tɬ/ and /ɬ/ are however common).
The Baredan, or Sjuun, script is distantly related to various Ekuosian scripts such as Terminian and Letsic. The modern version of the script was standardised by the Sjuun monk Totsmakiflon in the 1580s, and is used to write all of the major Baredan languages, including Norjihani. It's rather important that you should be able to read it for the purpose of the course, so make sure that you are comfortable with it before you go on to any later lessons.
Figure 3: Vowels
| Baredan | IPA - Short form | IPA - Long form | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|---|
| /a/ | /ɛ:/ | a | |
| /i/ | /ʏ:/ | i | |
| /u/ | /u:/ | y | |
| /ɪ/ | /ø:/ | e | |
| /o/ | /o:/ | o | |
| /e/ | /œ:/ | é | |
| /y/ | y | ||
| /ʏ/ | eu, iu, oi | ||
| /e/ | éo, ea |
The brackets show a direct transliteration where the romanisation doesn't directly match, for aesthetic reasons
Exercise One
Right, just a few questions just to make sure you've got the grasp of this. On the left will be a vowel or vowels in the Baredan script. Input the vowels in the romanisation you believe are correct for the first 3, and IPA for the other 3.
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
Figure 4: Consonants
| Baredan | IPA | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|
| /j/, /v/, /Ø/ * | ð | |
| /p/ | p | |
| /p/ | b | |
| /t/ | t | |
| /t/ | d | |
| /k/ | k | |
| /k/ | g | |
| /f/ | f | |
| /v/ | v | |
| /s/ | s | |
| /z/ | s (z) | |
| /ɬ/, /tɬ/ | l | |
| /r/ | r | |
| /j/ | j | |
| /m/ | m | |
| /n/ | n | |
| /tn̥/ | nn | |
| /ʈ/ | rt | |
| /ɖ/ | rd | |
| /ʂ/ | rs | |
| /ç/ | gj hj kj | |
| /ʃ/ | fj sj sk | |
| /ʒ/ | vj zj zg | |
| /Ø/ | h |
Exercise Two
Some more questions for you all, because I know you all love them so much. In the first three, match up the Baredan to the Romanisation, and in the other three to the IPA
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
| ↺ |
Exercise Three
Time to try it on some real Norjihani words. Consider this your beginning vocabulary. All we want here are the romanised forms of each word.
| ↺ | home (n.) |
| ↺ | girl (n.) |
| ↺ | man (n.) |
| ↺ | have (v.) |
| ↺ | Listosord (capital of Norjihan) |
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