Tahano Hikamu

Introduction

Tahano Hikamu (thno hikmu) is a fictional script inspired in general by those of South-East Asia, and various people have consequently suggested a similarity to the likes of Thai, but also to J. R. R. Tolkien's Tengwar script, probably due to the use of diacritics to indicate vowels. However, in difference to Tengwar, Tahano Hikamu is not featural, so the shape of a character does not reflect the position of the tongue needed to make the sound it represents. Tahano Hikamu was born on an evening in 2004 when I was scribbling shapes of letters once again. It has been steadily varied and improved since then, but has been mostly stable for the past four or five years.

Note that in order to see all characters in this file correctly, you need to use a browser that supports @font-face and the Tagāti Book G TTF files need to be located in the same directory as this file; alternatively, you need to have the TTF files provided by this font package installed wherever your operating system normally keeps fonts. Furthermore, you need a browser that supports SIL Graphite (to date only Mozilla Firefox from version 11 on), which may need to be activated first – SIL International provides a description for how to do that in Mozilla Firefox.

Consonants

As mentioned before, this script works similar to the ones found in India and elsewhere in South-East Asia – it is a syllabic alphabet, or abugida. This means that consonants serve as bases or matrices for vowels, which in turn are written as diacritics. In difference to the scripts of Semitic languages, writing out vowels is obligatory here, except for the vowel a, which is never written when it follows a consonant immediately, as it is inherent to every consonant letter. Letters do not have special names, but they are plainly called pa, ba, ta, da etc. This script is always written from left to right in lines from top to bottom. The following chart gives an overview of all basic consonant letters, with pronunciations in IPA:

p	t	k	b	d	g
pa	ta	ka	ba	da	ga
m	n	N	v	s	h
ma	na	ŋa	va	sa	ha
r	l	y	ʔ
ra	la	ja	Ø (ʔa)

The place holder, or ranyan, is used when there is no consonant base that a vowel can be written on, which is, for example, the case for word-initial vowels. It has no sound value of its own in Ayeri. In languages with a phonemic glottal stop, it may also serve as a letter for that (sound value /ʔa/). Note that if another na follows a na, the first of them is slightly reduced and ligated with the second one:

n‌n → nn

nana ligature

To suit the needs of other languages that are also habitually written with this script, additional characters have been invented:

f	w	z	S	Z	C
fa	wa	za	ʃa	ʒa	ça
X	G	T	q	x
xa	ɣa	t͡sa	k͡wa, k͡va	ksa

The pronunciations given here are the most common ones, but individual languages may change things in order to adapt the script to their needs.

Vowels

It has already been mentioned above that vowels are written as diacritics. These can appear on top of or below a consonant and alter the pronunciation of the syllable. Every consonant has two vowel slots. The first one is above the consonant, the second one is below it. Since vowels are always understood to belong to the preceding consonant, the inherent /a/ is replaced by the vowel that is written above the consonant:

p → pe

pa → pe

The top diacritics for vowels are as follows:

*i	*e	*a	*o	*u	*au	*ə
i	e	(a)	o	u	au	ə

Of course, as an /a/ is inherent to all consonant letters, the a top-diacritic itself basically only occurs with ranyan at the beginning of words: A.

Two consecutive vowels do not occur much in English, but this may well be the case in other languages. For this purpose, another slot for a vowel is added below the consonant character, as mentioned above:

p → pe → pe_a

pa → pe → pea

The first slot of the consonant pa in the example above is already used for e, however, there is still an /a/ at the end of the syllable, which – if it was not indicated below the consonant – would be swallowed by the e. This works the same way with all other vowels as well. Vowels are written like this when placed underneath a consonant:

*_i	*_e	*_a	*_o	*_u	*_au	*_ə
i	e	a	o	u	au	ə

Note that very often, consonants with ascenders, such as ka, da, ça (k d C) will have vowels written under them also in the case of a monovocalic syllable, since crossing the ascender with a vowel is considered unesthetic, although necessary on occasion. The empty top-slot is indicated by a dot then:

k → ke → ke_a

ka → ke → kea

Diacritics

Tahano Hikamu has a plethora of additional diacritics which serve the purpose of marking the alteration of vowels or consonants. The following ones are written under consonants:

*aa	tupasati: long vowel	*J	ringaya: palatalization of consonant
*Y	ya eyra: consonant + /ja/	*H	ulangaya: aspiration of consonant
*M	vināti: homorganic nasal or nasalization	F	kusangisāti: geminated consonant
*F	gondaya: no inherent /a/	*ˀ	raypāya eyra: vowel + /ʔ/ or glottalization

Some of these – namely tupasati (‘long maker’), ya eyra (‘low ya’), ringaya (‘raiser’), and ulangaya (‘breather’) – can also precede the consonant under certain circumstances: This is the case

with consonants without a right downstroke or bowl to attach to:
naa, Naa, vaa, waa, qaa

naː, ŋaː, vaː, waː, kwaː
with consonants following na:
npaa (*n‌paa)

napaː
when there would be two bottom-attaching diacritics:
t → ti → tii → tYii → tYii_e

ta → ti → tiː → t͡ʃiː (*tjiː) → t͡ʃiːe (*tjiːe)

As can be observed in the example of (3) above, diacritic reordering can produce very complex results, as vowels and “small” diacritics like gondaya and vināti can still be put underneath “large” diacritics such as tupasati, ya eyra, etc. — in the t͡ʃiː step of (3), tupasati is drawn before the consonant ta so as to be able to attach the ya eyra under the consonant. Also note that na typically has gondaya, vināti and kusangisāti written over it rather than under it.

These are the diacritics that attach in front of consonants:

ː*	tupasati marin: long vowel	*j	lentankusang: rising diphthong, e.g. /aɪ, eɪ/ ‹j, ej›.
ʲ*	ringaya marin: palatalization of consonant	*_:	tilamaya: systematically changed vowel, e.g. “umlaut” vowels in German: /ø, y/ ‹o_:, u_:›.
ʲ*	ya marin: consonant + /ja/	*R	hiyamaya: retroflex consonant
ʰ*	ulangaya marin: aspiration of consonant

Note that it is correct here that ringaya/ya marin has the same shape. Also note that the diacritics on the right side of the table can only occur in this position, and that when stacking diacritics to the front of consonants, the stacking goes from right to left, beginning with those diacritics modifying the consonant, then those modifying the vowel, with the lentankusang diacritic following (from right to left) tupasati marin:

n → nY → nYaa → nYaaj

na → nja → njaː → njaːɪ

Also note that rule (2) above is overridden if na is followed by a consonant which has a diacritic attached to its front:

npYaa

napjaː

Last but not least, there are diacritics that attach to the top of consonants. The bottom versions of these are preferred if there is a counterpart, however, the reordering to the top is convenient sometimes, e.g. in the special case of na having no space underneath it to attach diacritics.

*_F	gondaya ling: no inherent /a/	*̔	kusangisāti ling: geminated consonant
*_M	vināti ling: homorganic nasal or nasalization	*Q	raypāya: vowel + /ʔ/ or glottalization

Note that it is also possible for gondaya to appear after a consonant at the end of a word: *̒.

Numbers

Tahano Hikamu uses a duodecimal number-place system, so there are separate figures for 10 (A) and 11 (B) as well as from 0 to 9.

0	1	2	3	4	5
0	1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	¹	²
6	7	8	9	A	B

Punctuation

.	?	!, ‼	-	¶
dan (full stop)	damprantan (question)	dambahān (exclamation)	puntān (dash)	adrumaya (line break)
“*”	(*)	[*]	’	·
danarān (quotation)	dankayvo (brackets)	dangaran (name)	dandan (abbreviation)	dansinday (decimal point)

Note that instead of a comma, a wide word space is used. Clauses themselves are usually written as one string, or with only little space between individual words. The puntān, or dash, serves the function of both dashes and colons. The horizontal form of the dambahān, or exclamation mark is preferred at the end of paragraphs, and also for very strong exclamations. The adrumaya indicates a line break within a clause. The dandan is used to indicate abbreviated words or syllables, but it is also used to mark clitics, e.g. as in French:

*sə E → s’E

*ce est → c’est ‘this is’

Abbreviations

nay ‘and’

naynay ‘also, too, furthermore’