Lesson 2:

The Alphabet and Transliteration

The D'ni Alphabet

The D'ni alphabet consists of twenty-four characters, eleven of which can be accented by adding a dash.

This gives D’ni a total of thirty-five individual sounds. D'ni characters are always pronounced the same way, and spelling combinations do not affect them. Most of the sounds in D'ni occur in English, except for the k (kh) sound. The D'ni characters, though, do not resemble Roman letters. Some have compared them to Hebrew or Arabic writing systems, although they are written left-to-right as Roman characters are. Because a number of them look alike and can be easily mistaken, it is an important first skill to be able to easily identify and differentiate the various D'ni characters.

Transliteration Systems

One useful tool for helping us understand D'ni characters is transliteration. In order to more easily discuss D'ni sounds in English, we can approximate them with roman letters that produce the same sounds. There are several systems of transliteration in use today that are connected to various D'ni TrueType fonts, but for these lessons, we will use the Old Transliteration System (OTS) and the New Transliteration System (NTS).

OTS uses both single and double letters to approximate D'ni sounds in a manner that can easily be read but sometimes results in ambiguities. The phrase meaning "you're welcome", meUr, is transliterated in OTS as mehoor. It is unclear by simply looking at the transliteration whether to pronounce this as me-hoor (incorrect) or meh-oor (correct).

NTS was invented for European keyboards, and resolves the problem by establishing a one-to-one correspondence between each D'ni character and its transliteration. Since the English alphabet has only twenty-six letters and D'ni thirty-four sounds, NTS uses diacritical marks and non-standard characters to create enough characters. meUr would be written meúr in NTS, which is difficult to type on English language keyboards, but is easily legible. The drawback of NTS is that some of the characters used for transliteration do not look like they sound to a native English speaker. Examples would be š (sh), x (kh), þ (th), and so on.

Site master's note: I don't care for NTS, although not because of any real fault in the system. Rather, to a person raised using English, the characters are non-intuitive and are not at all easy to type with ASCII characters. For the site, I use a system of transliteration which is something of a hybrid. I don't propose it for general use and never will, because it's not easy to type either. It uses macrons to represent long vowel sounds, which are not part of standard HTML. However, once you get used to it, it's easy to read because it does not add unnecessary additional characters the way OTS does. One additional thing to remember, is that ALL vowels in a D'ni word are pronounced separately, and there are no silent vowels or consonants. The only exception to this is the diphthong "oy".

Table of D'ni Characters

Now, read the description of each D'ni character below and study the characters themselves. Pay special attention to the distinguishing features of each, and look at how each character resembles those characters it is commonly mistaken for. You will also find transliterations in both OTS and NTS, followed by a rendering using the International Phonetic Alphabet, a character set used in linguistics to specify phonics. (More info on the IPA can be found here.) The sound of each character is then described with example words in English or other applicable languages.

Be sure that you take enough time to thoroughly learn the D'ni alphabet and its sounds; these truly are the building blocks of the language, and their importance cannot be overstated. Flashcards may be useful. You will also find transliterations of D'ni words in both OTS and NTS for the next couple lessons, to help familiarize you with D'ni characters in context as you continue to learn.

*D’ni*	*Distinguishing Features*	*Commonly mistaken for...*	*OTS*	*NTS*	*IPA*	*Sounds like*	HPOTD Site Transliteration
v	two sharp angles at top and bottom	t w a	v	v	v	voice, five	v
b	accented v	I	b	b	b	bad, lab	b
t	angled curve at top, sharp angle at bottom	v w	t	t	t	tea, get	t
s	full curve at top halts midway down, full curve at bottom	m T w	s	s	s	sun, miss	s
S	accented s	m T w	sh	š	S	she, crash	sh
j	flat at top, curved upswing at bottom	i	j	j	dZ	just, large	j
g	accented j	E	g	g	g	give, flag	g
y	simple, short downstroke at left, flat base with angled upswing	h x	y	y	j	yes, yellow	y
k	y base with straight flag	o l	kh	x	x	(German) Bach, doch; (Scottish) Loch	kh
K	accented k	O	k	k	k	keep, truck	k
a	angled curve at top, flat base with angled upswing	t v	ah	a	Œ	arm, father	a
I	accented a	b	I	á	Œi	five, eye	ī
f	full curve at top halts midway down, flat base with angled upswing	z	f	f	f	find, if	f
p	accented f		p	p	p	pet, map	p
i	flat at top, flat base with angled upswing	j	i(h)	i	I	hit, kitten	i
E	accented i	g	ee	í	i	see, heat	ī
e	short downstroke at left, two sharp angles bookending upwards curve	m h	e(h)	e	E	met, bed	e
A	accented e		ai/ay	é	e	say, eight	ā
r	e base with straight flag		r	r	R	run, mar	r
m	angled curve at top, two sharp angles bookending upwards curve	t T	m	m	m	man, lemon	m
T	full curve at top, upwards curve with sharp angle at left, full curve at right	m	th	þ	T	think, both	th
d	flat at top, base bookended by two sharp angles		dh	ð	D	this, mother	dh
D	accented d		d	d	d	dog, lady	d
h	full curve without any angles	y x	h	h	h	how, hello	h
o	h base with straight flag	k u l	o	o	o	go, home	o
O	accented o	U	oy	ó	oi	boy, join	oy
c	h base, flag curves to left	o å	ch	ç	tS	check, church	ch
w	two full curves at top and bottom	v t a	w	w	w	wet, weather	w
u	h base, flag curves to right	o n	u(h)	u	Ã	cup, luck	u
U	accented u	O	oo	ú	u	mood, food	ū
x	small hook at left, flat base with angled upswing	y a	ts	c	ts	acts, bets (German z/c)	ts
l	x base with straight flag	k o n	l	l	l	leg, little	l
å	x base, flag curves to left	c l n	a	æ	Q	bat, black	å
z	full curve at top, base is flanked by sharp angle at left and full curve at right, flat stroke at bottom with angled upswing	f m T	z	z	z	zoo, lazy	z
n	x base, flag curves to right	u	n	n	n	no, ten	n

Three D'ni punctuation marks are also known.

*D’ni*	*Function*	*Keystrokes*
'	Apostrophe.	'
.	Full stop - marks the beginning of a sentence.	.
-	Dash.	-

The ' mark is technically a glottal stop, in which one's breath during pronunciation is cut momentarily by closing the flap over the esophagus. There is no English equivalent, but a slight pause suffices. However, various native D'ni speakers have been heard to use variations. Atrus pronounced it as an "uh" sound, and when he spoke of D'ni, the word sounded like "dunny". The D'ni survivor Esher, on the other hand, pronounced it as a German hard "ch" sound coupled to a glottal stop, so his version of "D'ni" sounded like "Dkh-nee". This led to jokes about him being a "duck-knee" survivor.

D’ni does not use the period (full stop) at the end of a sentence. Instead, the . mark indicates the beginning of a new sentence.

While there is strong suspicion that other punctuation marks existed such as an interrogative symbol like the question mark, no document containing additional punctuation has been discovered. It has been established that there is verbal punctuation, such as the word "ah" which can serve as an exclamation marker, similar to an exclamation point (!). However, "ah" is used to directly emphasize a word or part of speech, and therefor will often appear in mid-sentence.

The Pitfalls of D'ninglish

By far, the most widespread mistakes that get made by new D'ni writers are mistakes of transliteration, especially with proper names. The temptation is to take an English word and simply change the font to D'ni characters. For example, the name Dianne might be incorrectly transliterated as dianne (dhianne). Since D'ni is a phonetic language, however, the proper method of transliteration is to first sound out the English word, then find the appropriate characters for those sounds, not for the English letters themselves. Dianne would thus be broken down into the sounds d ī å n, and properly transliterated DIån.

Lesson 3

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