Banlehu/Banleiu
The Banleiu (meaning 'language letters') alphabet was invented by Matt Youens for use in a fictional story he is writing. The language, 'La Bangu', was originally adapted from Lojban to generate character and place names, but Matt decided it would be an interesting exercise to develop a full writing system for the language too. The script can be modified to write Lojban itself as well.
Being a phonetician, Matt wanted the script to reflect the phonological features of the speech sounds. For example, voiced sounds are open to the right, voiceless sounds to the left; fricatives are distinguished from the corresponding plosives by the addition of a dot; rounded vowels have curved symbols, high vowels point upwards. The h character is grouped with the approximants rather than the other fricatives as, like r and l, it doesn't belong to a voiced/unvoiced pair and has semi-vowel realisations. Other grapheme choices are symbolic: the general shape of the labials represents a pair of lips while the use of a dot for the schwa demonstrates its minor status as a vowel and its tendency to be relatively short.
Notable features
- Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
- Used to write: La Bangu and Lojban.
- Vowels are indicated by diacritics above the preceding consonant.
- There is little punctuation but the beginning and end of a sentence is indicated by two parallel lines (//) while a pause is shown by a single line (/).
- There are no separate numerals in the fictional world but the initial letters of the numbers from zero to nine (n, p, r, ch, v, m, h, z, b, s) are used to represent these digits; normal decimal/hexadecimal numerals can be used when writing Lojban.
Banlehu alphabet
Notes
- ch, j and r have their first value when spoken by the Remna and Prenu people and the second when spoken by the Jydakri.
- m = [ɱ] before f or v.
- n = [ɲ] before ch or j, [ŋ] before k or g.
- h = [ç] after i or e, [x] after o or u; in Lojban this character is always [h] or [θ], depending on speaker preference.
- The five main vowels take their first value in stressed syllables and the second when unstressed (y is usually unstressed); the vowel combinations take their first value when the vowel following h is stressed and the second elsewhere.
- The vowel combinations are only spoken by the Remna and Prenu and are the result of h becoming silent or replaced with a glide between vowels (they are still produced across two syllables except for the unstressed forms of ei, ai, au, oi and ou which are diphthongs); the Jydakri always fully pronounce h between vowels, which take their usual stressed/unstressed values.
- The two additional characters are only used for writing Lojban: [x] is represented by a dotted variant of the h character as it is merged with this sound in the fictional language; the carrier is used with word initial vowels and the second element of diphthongs.
Sample text
Transliteration
La Chevni pu chuhna lo nu lahi Jydakri chu kurji lo ta chensa purdi.
Translation
The god(s) chose the Jydakri to tend their sacred garden.
Other constructed scripts
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