Xaîni Writing Systems

At the time of the Unification and the codification of xathmel, a number of well developed writing systems existed on Xaîn. In the Archipelagoes, an ideographic writing system known in Tsundranese as baita olu (long hand) or simply fanyang (writing) had long been in use; originally developed to write Tsundranese it was used (with modifications required by differences in grammar) to write other Archipelagic languages, and after being brought to Akíma Lian by traders it became the basis of the Akimali feren dalan ideograms, although again, changes were necessary to accomodate the Akímali grammar with its elaborate case system.

Fanyang	Feren Dalan

Initially, it seems to have been assumed that xathmel would be written in feren dalan. However, the Xaldashi had a tradition of alphabetic or syllabic scripts, such as the sand!ap characters used to write Q!ung, or the Tawi syllabary used by the cities of the East. The effort involved in learning a complex ideographic system, and one not ideally suited to xathmel, seems to have rapidly persuaded A'elian to consider an alphabetic script, despite the Xaîni love of complexity. In addition, it may have been deemed insensitive to force what was now seen as essentially an Akímali writing system onto the Xaldashi and others.

Tawi and sand!ap were rejected as the basis for the new writing, the first because of the requirement to use multiple colours in its inscription, the latter because it was difficult to write, and the letter shapes were very similar, often leading to errors in transcription and problems in reading. However, during the course of the war, A'elian had had an opportunity to visit the prehistoric sites at Anjar, which include inscriptions in an unknown tongue.

The simple shapes of these characters, essentially based on circles and lines, were to form the basis of the writing system known as pedhulka.

Pedhulka as initially constructed contained 28 consonants and 12 vowel sounds. Of these, a number were rapidly dropped during the linguistic and alphabetic reforms of the early A'elianic mandate, resulting, by the time of the shushinate of Ioret Miri, in the alphabet of 25 consonants plus vowel carrier, and ten vowel markers, which has persisted to the present day.

The pedhulka is an incomplete alphabet, in that like such scripts as Hebrew or Arabic it does not have independent letters to indicate vowels; vowel signs are written as diacritic marks over the preceding consonant, or, if there is no immediately preceding consonant, a sign known as the vowel carrier. It is written from left to right, and in normal usage most vowel marks are omitted (a style known as melkantha) with only the minimum necessary for comprehension actually added. Judging which vowels to include is considered something of an art. Valtanu writing (with all vowels included) is normally reserved for formal or ceremonial writing of great importance, and pyaorani (with no vowels) for situations where ambiguity may be desrable, or speed of writing or compression of the script is of the essence. Numerous styles of the pedhulka have been in use throughout Xaîni history, some of which are barely recognisable when compared to the originals. Elaborate and baroque variations of the basic letter shapes reached a peak in the late Mai mandate, and in reaction to this a movement for reform appeared, which argued that a return to the simple and elegant shapes of the early letters was desirable. The end result of this was the alphabetic style called kurbamari (returning to the roots), which has persisted largely unchanged since that period, in part because of its eminent suitability for mechanical text processing

ATrueType (Windows) version of kurbamari is available here

The Archipelagese peoples, who customarily wrote from top to bottom of the page when employing fanyang characters, rapidly developed a variant of the pedhulka, to enable them to continue to write in this style. Unlike the standard pedhulka, this script, which is called nei xaressa (of the ships) has true characters for the vowels, and may thus be considered a complete alphabetic script. It has since become popular throughout the world Xaîn for its calligraphic possibilities. It can be written starting at either the left or the right hand corner of the page, and by convention a piece of nei xaressa writing therefore begins with adu, the rune of the open mouth, and ends with zer, the rune of the closed mouth, to indicate the start and finish of the text. These symbols may, however, be omitted in short inscriptions, such as that on the left of this page, which reads 'keld im ar, im xtero kelisset ek' - keld under sun and under the swift moons, a conventional greeting. A further example is this first section of Ishudnaringjol Xetiki's famous exile mendo: