Zlb:Writing system

The city for conlangs

Writing system of Zulbreth is a rune-like alphabet based, formerly, in the Cirth, a constructed alphabet created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The alphabet has met some modifications since its creation on 1997. Its name is not fixed and currently it is named Adapted Runic Alphabet, or ARA. Its author is the same of Zulbreth language, Ingvar Tvatand.

Contents 1 Creation 2 Design 2.1 consonants 3 Purpose

[edit] Creation

Ingvar looked for a runic alphabet for his Germanic conlang.

When the author discovered for first time the Cirth alphabet, he has could notice that it was created with a plained model. He observed that runes p, b, f, v have a similar feature adding or turning the direction of a shape. Tvatand liked this appearance and he wanted to give similar features to his language.

[edit] Design

Principles were the following:

• Zulbreth have not any fixed writing direction.
• Glyphs conserve their orientation independently of their writing direction.
• Each grapheme corresponds to a unique phoneme.
• Basic consonants must have a vertical bar, and only two shapes.
• Basic vowels must have three shapes as possible with same length.

[edit] consonants

In general use, the main letters are divided in five series that correspond to the main places of articulation and into four rows that correspond to the main manners of articulation.

Each series is headed by the basic signs composed of a vertical bar, and a single short bar known as thorn drawn with a 60º angle on the right side. The first three basic signs represent the voiceless stop consonants for that series (/p/ /t̪/ /k/). The fourth series corresponds to the alveolar fricative (/s/) and the fifth is for the africate (/ts͡/), which has a thorn with a 90º angle.

In rows of the general use, there are the following correspondences between letter shapes and manners of articulation:

• Doubling the thorn turns the voiceless consonant into a voiced one.
• Placing the thorn on left side turns it into the corresponding fricative. For the two last series this change alternates with the corresponding postalveolar consonants.
• Puting a thorn in each side creates the corresponding nasal. Respecting the fourth and fifth series, change offers the corresponding thrill and lateral aproximant.
• Doubling these symmetrical thorns permit to obtain vary features like palatal, glotal, trill, etc.

[edit] Purpose

ARA was designed for writing Zulbreth language.

Zulbreth alphabet also was invented as a cryptic alphabet, and Ingvar used it to write French, Spanish or Catalan, but his aim was to can write European languages. He has thought to draw glyphs to transcribe Russian Щ, or combination letters like ai, ei, au, eu, aü for writing German combination in one unique glyph.