Old Veyata - writing system
Writing tradition
- Old Veyata uses the same basic writing tradition as the later Veyatic languages and can be documented in the same Latin working romanization.
- The orthography is less archaic than in Proto-Veyrathi, but not yet as rigidly standardized as in later Veyrathi.
- Council and trade clerks prefer visible trunk boundaries; Everyday texts level things out more often.
Basic principles
- Roots should remain readable, even if function words are already shortened.
- Old long forms and younger short forms can appear side by side, especially in pronouns and in ritualized formulas.
- Prefixes may be written separately or together:
ret tala/rettalasyn zora/synzoravae kova/vaekova- Genitive and possessive clitics are marked with
=in scientific transcription.
Grapheme conventions
| Spelling | phonetic value | Note |
|---|---|---|
a e i o u | Basic vowels | no phonemic length |
y | /j/ | Floating sound in inherited words such as veyra, zeya, ya |
ey | /ey/ or /ej/ | family-typical hereditary diphthong |
ai | /ai/ | productive diphthong |
au | /au/ | especially in older and distal forms |
sh | /sh/ | voiceless postalveolar fricative sound |
zh | /zh/ | voiced postalveolar fricative sound |
th | /th/ | dental fricative sound |
kh | /x/ or rough /kh/ | conservative remainder from older locations |
= | clitic fugue | only in linguistic transcription, not necessarily in everyday copies |
Word image and separation
- Typical syllable form:
(C)(C)V(C). - Compared to Ur-Veyatic the word edges are already lighter, but compared to Veyrathi they are even denser.
- Sentence particles remain independent:
no,sai,hana,kei,ra,ka. - Determiners and free connectors are written separately:
ara thalordun se talanu no veyra
Writing style by register
- Conservative speech tends to insist on full forms such as
nau,nela,nora,seya. - Koine and administrative texts prefer the shorter forms
nu,nel,nor,se. - Legal and contractual language often retains the open, full form of nouns:
kevaraveyrathanavatha- In the later Veyrathi many of these full forms are shortened; in Veythar they often become denser and more rugged.
Writing habits close to emphasis
- Conservative writers orient their spelling more towards the root.
- Koine texts already reflect the later move to the open final syllable.
- Unstressed secondary vowels are not reduced as consistently as in Veytharian.
Difference from Ur-Veyatic and Veyrathi
- Compared to Ur-Veyata, Old Veyata is orthographically less difficult and less characterized by archaic full forms.
- Compared to Veyrathi, Alt-Veyata allows more graphical freedom and shows the intermediate layer of open full forms such as
ara,ora,veyratha. - This makes the font seem like a transitional stage: more readable and regulated, but not yet modern and standardized.