Kharulian Orthography

Kharulian is written with a morphophonemic alphabet derived from the Muipidan script. It originally followed the Muipidan script in being written either left-to-right or right-to-left, with the characters mirrored depending on the writing direction, but later settled on left-to-right.

The alphabet has 25 letters:

Letter	Name	Romanized Name	Meaning	Default Pronunciation
d	dun	ryun	large moon	/ɹ̠ʲ/
f	fay	fakh	star	/ɸ/
z	ze	she	day	/ʃ/
u	uh	ul	water	/u/
g	gi	nyi	white	/ɲ/
s	sa	sa	person	/s/
j	jin	ghyin	woman	/ʝ/
q	qir	chir	fruit	/tʃ/
o	o	o	eye	/o/
t	tap	tsap	leg	/t/
v	vur	vur	horse	/β/
w	we	ghwe	goat	/ɣ/
c	civ	kyiv	snake	/c/
k	ko	ko	wheat	/k/
a	am	am	leaf	/a/
l	lat	lyat	seed	/lʲ/
x	xu	khu	salt	/x/
m	mas	mas	house	/m/
i	i	i	to be at	/i/
y	y	khya	to make	/ç/
n	n	na	to go	/n/
h	h	la	to give	/ɫ/
e	e	e	to eat	/e/
p	p	fa	to speak	/p/
r	r	ra	to want	/r/

As mentioned, the alphabet is morphophonemic, so letters aren’t always pronounced the same way. For the most part, word stems have a fixed spelling that doesn’t change as affixes are added, even though it’s common in Kharulian for affixes to alter the pronunciation of the stem. Word affixes, meanwhile, are more phonetic, but the reader has to keep the phonological processes in mind.

Kharulian is underspelled — some information isn’t written, even if it would distinguish pairs of words. In particular, voicing and palatalization are often not distinguished: the letter p might represent /p/ or /b/ or /pʲ/ or /bʲ/, with no indication of which is meant other than each variant being more common in different environments. Some unstressed vowel sounds (especially /a/) are also omitted from the written form of a word, schwas are never written, and long and short vowels aren’t distinguished.

There’s considerable variation between writers in how words are spelled, and many writers aren’t even consistent within their own work. I use the recommended spellings from the -2nd century book Khiázlak Liopri Inuírlaraa Iskip (“Correct Writing for Academy Students”), which was used as a writing reference for the academies in the Chezlagos area.