Fairyland/Main  >  E | H | PV | S

The Phonetic Alphabet Of The Middle Sea

Image here, first presented here [ minuscule form (*) (*) ] [ full table ]

🎶 + ( 🎶 or 🎶 ) [ Editor: The Archivist Örpherischt ] [ Article #: 1.969.- A1A ]

THE

Linguistics Society

presents

The Phonetic Alphabet of the Fae Folk of the Middle Sea Realms.

... ( An Examination of the Phonetic Alphabet of the Inner Sea ) ...

This document is the result of a detailed study of the notes of a wizened old man who was lost to Fairyland, and retired there, living to an advanced age, and documenting many things of great interest. The original documents (at his request) were brought back to mortal lands and into the hands of linguists of our realm by one known to us as the Traveller, an illiterate man of the woods who blundered into the Land of Faerie, and succeeded in returning.

These writings are a synthesis and expansion of that subset of the lost sage's notes that deal with the lore of the letters of his hosts, the Ælves of the most populous region of Fairyland, those countries surrounding the great expanse known as the Inner Sea, or Middle Sea. Various anecdotes of the Traveller have provided a wealth of oral history and cultural information that have increased our awareness of the mysterious lives of the Fae, and these details have been integrated into these papers, where relevant.

This Ælphabet, used very widely amongst the literate peoples of the Inner Sea, is a true phonetic alphabet, in that each sign or glyph represents one and only one sound (ie. it does not have letters like 'C' in English that might stand for a 'k'-sound or an 's'-sound).

The ælph writing system makes use of 28 main numbered glyphs, along with a relatively large collection of derivative signs - symbols built on the framework of the basic signs to indicate inflections and augmentations upon a similar sound basis. Different sounds formed in the mouth in very similar ways are represented using glyphs that share the same basic skeletal shape.

The letters are said to be sigils, memorials and vessels of divine ancestors - these being viewed as incarnations of individual sounds within the Great Chõrd of Ûmvélinqängi that would come to be spoken by mortal creatures, and it is these ancestors which gave birth to the numerous tribes of the Elves that dwell about the shores of the Inner Sea of Fairyland. It is related in the songs of the ancient bards that each phonemic ancestor was trained before it's birth in the Lands-we-do-not-see by certain High Umóyar of the Inhlanganešo of the Speakers to aid in bringing about the Flower of Language amongst mortals. And to this day, the fae-folk continue that tradition.

In prime number gematria:

The Manuscript of the Sage

As mentioned above, these documents are based on the recovered notes of the Sage, an aged man of lore who appointed the wandering Traveller the task of returning his manuscripts to the mortal realms, where they might be studied by learned men of letters and by others with interest in the matter of the Faery Kingdom.

His original documents consist of a large collection of loose papers, held together in a rough leather cover sealed with a winding of fine red thread. The writings within tackle a wide variety of subject matter, but this report deals primarily in that subset focused on the Elven speech and writing systems. However, due to the curious centrality of the alphabetic argument throughout all of his notes, regardless of their individual topics of interest, we have made use of material from other segments of the work quite liberally.

This peculiar centrality of the alphabetic concept in the writings of the Sage is a matter of intense current study at the Linguistics Society, and part of this initiative is an attempt to establish if it was a particular obsession of the Sage himself, or something he adopted during his long sojourn amongst the folk of the Inner Sea. An initial reading of his texts is somewhat ambiguous on this issue, and a number of our scholars have proposed that this that was the intent. The writings of the Sage are complex works, erudite and perceptive, but extremely eclectic and wandering. Much of his output consists of plain accounts of locations visited, things witnessed and cultural practices noted, but there are occasions when the writings veer into occultism and elision. Nonetheless it appears to us a matter of great importance: we must answer the question of the particular prominence of the phonetic system of the Elves and what it may imply with regards to the totality of Fairy society, culture, and even biology - for the Sage's works make it clear that this connection is a fundamental one. These investigations are ongoing, and supplemental reports will doubtless be published in time.

Our partners at the Institute are progressing with a simultaneous scientific study of the physical materials themselves: the papers, the inks, and the binding threads, etc. The results of these endeavors will be published through other channels.

The alphabet-focused part of the work is our primary reference for this report, and that portion of the Sage's notes are a very interesting artifact. The writings present themselves as "an Æsoteric Treatise on the Letters of Fáe Nous of the Inner Sea", and upon first inspection, are revealed as manifold lists of symbolic correspondences combined with elements of religious philosophy, numerology, and anthropological notes - very much in the vein of the old works of the alchemists and hermetic kabbalists. There is extensive marginalia, and sections of notes recursively expanded to augment already existing section of notes. Curious and useful occult lore abounds, interwoven with other more scientific reasoning and historical references, a not-insignificant portion of which we have been able to validate against other sources.

One noteworthy discovery amongst the recovered documents were multiple references to mythological figures hitherto known to us only from the partial manuscript entitled "Beginning: Before All Before", a creation myth extracted from the archaeological dig at the buried Ziggurat [Pret. site U.121, 3rd level BG, disc.2012] (*) and first described in a study published a number of years ago. It appears that many of the names of divine agencies in the Beginning document are important cultural figures in the zeitgeist of the Middle Sea region of Fairyland. This is an astounding revelation, and prompts us to rethink many of our theories regarding 'first contacts' with elvenkind in our deep past.

The notes of the Sage have also aided us greatly in our attempts to extrapolate the ancient family origins of the numerous tribes of the elves, and our geneaologists are hard at work on a new series of drafts of the Tree (*) making use of the extensive material dealing with the various cultural groupings of the fae that can be found within the recovered manuscripts of the old loremaster.

So as not to burden the already ponderous text with numerous qualifiers, this report, being a synthesis of knowledge from a multitude of esoteric sources, many of them anecdotal, is nonetheless presented as authoritative, even though the subject matter might be regarded by many of the audience as ultimately speculative and even mythological. It is noted here that we are aware that the Institute's academic rigour is being questioned in certain corners of our organization with regards to the directions our study has taken in recent years, and this saddens us, but we press on, for the most part, and we suspect that our efforts will not be in vain, and that additional enlightening discoveries will flow from this labour.

It must be said that in places we have allowed the voice of the Sage to shine through in the editorial, given that his works are the most profound package of evidence the Society has so far acquired in this sphere of investigation, and thus the reader must not be put out by the occasional reference to an authorial 'I' within the text.

We note also that the overall intentions of the Sage in his compilation of the alphabetic material has been called into question by more than one scholar of the Institute, and one controversy in this respect centers on a group of theories put forward concerning the original numbering for many of the included lists of mundane and esoteric correspondences. Certain contributors have argued that the ingenious self-referential numbering scheme, the sort of items associated with the numbers, and the particular count of items within in each sub-list, constitutes a strange mixture of esoteric archivism with what appears to be referential organization for a favourite fairy pastime: the creation and adjudication of board games for social gatherings, and the generation of thematic teaching materials for children. One reviewer, upon hearing this theory, and after being given an overview of the specific evidence put forth in the original proposal of controversy, asked if perhaps the Institute might have been led on a wild academic goose chase on the basis of a misinterpretation of the collected remains of a complicated ruleset for a bored old man's table game. Here we thus assure the reader that while we do not discount the possibility that certain of the material pertains to what may be a described as a game (be it the Sage's original invention, or one based on a creation of the elves upon which he reports, or truly represents a faithful rendition of an aelven artifact), it is clear to us that, as such, it represents simply another piece of evidence of the central and hallowed nature of the communication system of the fairies within their culture. Indeed, either language itself appears to be their genius loci, or, inversely (and perhaps simultaneously), the elves are to be seen as the genius loci of the very phenomenon of language - these being key theories of the Institute that the Sage's notes appear to validate. To quote a previous report:

> > Now, a primary feature of the Elf or Fairy is that they are capable of advanced communication, be it vocally, through airborne speech, or by a union of minds ('telepathy') or via complicated body language, and so too, of course, the written word. The M'moatia are often said to be the first of the living beings to make an art of speech and language itself. Some would assure us that indeed this is their defining feature. [...]

In summary, this document acts as the current consensus of the Linguistics Society as it pertains to the cumulative semantics of The Phoenix, or Phonetic System of the Inner Sea, and interleaves concepts, interpretations and recovered lore from both the Faery Realms and the Mortal, being that this study has made us aware of a deep interrelation between the Inner Sea and our Outer Lands.

We leave it to the reader to take from it what they will.

The following chapters of this report consist of separate treatments of the vowels and consonants of the fairy alphabet, as well as a section dealing specifically with the design philosophy of the glyphic system as it pertains to augmentation of basic forms. There are also two short chapters examining the cultural applications of the alphabet by the folk that use it.

Beyond that, the remainder of the report is broken into a number of chapters, one for each glyph of the Middle Sea alphabet. Each chapter presents first the various known names for the glyph and it's associated sound, followed by a prose description of the letter forms and the phonation of the sound itself, as well as various cultural and philosophical notions that have accreted themselves to the ancient mnemonic archive of the letters.

These lists of correspondences have been presented in the original order and numbering scheme, though many entries contain expanded notes that go beyond the original manuscript (that is, where corroborating material reinforces certain elements).

Each letter's associated semantic list and it's sub-lists are divided into 28 fields, matching the number of primary glyphs in the alphabet itself. The first field is expanded into a sub-list (usually short, roughly 1 to 10 items) that presents the primary exoteric and esoteric semantics, and the remaining 27 fields contain all number of associations, from the mundane to the philosophical, the religious and the magical.

The list of fields associated with each glyph and it's sound are the following (knowing them upfront will aid your navigation of this document):

As you can see from the above, the Sage seemed to be involved in a comparative study of sorts, connecting his growing body of elven lore with concepts he would have learned before being lost to Fairyland. How much overlap truly exists, and to what degree ancient elven concepts might have intruded upon primordial (and perhaps even more recent) human linguistics development is a central matter of great debate, and the Institute has an entire working group devoted to this issue.

The various sub-lists follow an interesting pattern: those that are numbered usually contain a regular number of items that align with the facet counts of the well-known platonic solids. That is, if there are more than one or two items in a numbered sub-list, then the list usually has either 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 20 items, otherwise they contain a set of 28 items, matching the number of main glyphs in the alphabet itself. There is a fascinating connectivity of thematic relationships set up by these numberings, in terms of the nature of the listed items and the implied indexing of the alphabet itself. We note that this aspect of the writings was first documented by a junior member of our order, and thenceforth, a cohort of our Society is now dedicated to unraveling this particular element of the original manuscript.

Next, the vowels of the Fairy alphabet are briefly discussed.

Vowel overview

Within the Middle Sea alphabet, the only vowels in the main set of 28 letters are ...

Additional discussion of the vowels is found later in this document.

Consonants Overview

There are thus 24 true consonant signs, one (happily) for every hour of the earth day.

These are:

... [ B, K, D, V, G, H, J, Ch, L, M, N, P, Th, R, S, T, Ng, W, F, Z, Dh, Ng, Sh, Nk ] ...

The generally vertical shapes of the glyphs of the consonants (according to the writings of the Sage, and confirmed by the anecdotes of the Traveller), are intended to represent icons of sentient beings, such that words and sentences (that is, spells) have the appearance of 'trooping fairies', creatures walking in a line or standing in a crowd conversing back and forth. The vowels, when used, may represent heavenly messages or gifts of knowledge being displayed, offered, exchanged, or shared between the participants.

.. [ed. consider 'troop', 'trope', 'trough', 'true', 'trip', 'tribe', 'drip', 'drop', 'tarp']

One subset of the glyphs is based on serpentine forms, and another subset on avian/bird forms - and though it is a matter of great subjectivity, all the glyphs have been constructed as an attempt to visually evoke the sounds they signal, as well as (to some degree), to represent aspects of the mouth and tongue positioning in forming the sound.

Another view of the more vertical consonant glyphs is that they might represent designs of various staves (ie. a wand, staff, or scepter) or the decorations of their upper parts, being either the elaborate handle or pommel of a smaller wand (it's body pointing downwards unthreateningly), or instead representing the decorative upper portion of a larger heavier staff or walking-stick (where the lengthy tail is the body that might rest on the ground when it is held loosely - with some of it's full length being perhaps implicit). As these staves or wands, they nonetheless represent icons, sigils or caricatures of the various elven tribes and their ancient ancestors.

It must be told that due to their nature as phonic expressions, the fairies are very particular about naming their offspring, since each name has a direct and notable effect upon the traits that the elf manifests in life - each sound (represented by a glyph) carrying with it certain emotional, physical and aptitude-related implications.

Alphabet as Story, or Journey

The letters of the alphabet of fairyland exist, if nothing else, to record stories. Given the many meanings and interpretations that are associated with them, the ordered sequence of the glyphs act - for the teacher just as much as for the bard, myth-maker and lore-master - as a series of keys, reminders and indeed generators.

The obvious first foray into this dimension is viewing the alphabet as the map of a life story, with the glyphs covering various phases of life, from conception through birth and onwards to death.

The same template may be used, in general, to map a story from beginning to end, or indeed for each chapter of the story, in a fractal, recursive fashion, the elements and movements of the tale at various scales being in some sense defined or directed by the letters as oracular sources.

Certain glyphs imply beginnings and starting points, comfortable dens to escape to - lands familiar and unfamiliar - while others denote challenges along the way, uncalled-for aid from strange quarters, friends and enemies, tools and weapons, and obviously great climaxes and happy endings.

Bear in mind the possibility of dualities, of ends being beginnings, and reversals and thematic echoes and foreshadowings.

The tale The Little Boy of the Mountain (original text) is one example of a tale constructed in such a fashion, making use of the English alphabetic order.

Alphabet as Clock and Calendar

Having 24 consonant signs, the alphabet can work as a ritual clock if we exclude the vowels and number just the consonants from 1 to 24..

'A' (V) can therefore represent the moment of midnight or midday (many elves are entirely nocturnal). If it is midnight, then 'E' is the moment of witching hour (3am), the letter 'i' signals dawn at 6 am while 'O' marks 11am, and if 'W' is treated as 'U', a vowel, then it signals the start of the hour of 7pm, around the twilight hours that many Elves love best.

The Sage relates that in Fairyland, these times marked by vowels are potential gateways to strange flows of time where one can leave the usual day-night cycle of Fairyland and experience even stranger out-of-time phenomena. Indeed, the Traveller explained that he made us of this curious effect to make his escape from the Realm and return to the lands of his home.

The full set of 28 letters can be divided into four sets of seven days (ie. four seven-day wicks), and thus track a lunar calendar of thirteen lunar months with one or two additional special holidays to define a year. Many elf-maidens keep a calendar of menses (a personal lunar calendar, as it were) based on this alphabet, and work to align themselves with the actual phase of the moon for magic purposes (*). In this sense the calendar month is divided into four quarters of seven days each, signifying East, North, West and South, which has interesting overlap with the system of celestial mansions, the constellations of the Chinese orthodoxy.

Some scholars map the first 12 glyphs of the fae alphabet to the Astrological signs known to the mortal realms, and yet others repeat them, aligning a second cycle upon the set of letters 'M' (13) to 'Z' (24).

Augmentations of foundational form

You will notice the signs for Ng (21st), nG (26th) and nK (28th) are all very similar (along with other groupings).

The basic shape of two curving lines crossing each-other is meant to evoke the subtle constriction in the back of the throat that achieves the sound.

The first instance of Ng (letter #21) represents the sound 'ng' ( ŋ ) as in "king" (with the g silent).

... ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eng_(letter) )

In the second instance of 'Ng' (#26) with the dot in the lower portion, the G is voiced, as in "finger".

The sign for 'Nk' (28th and last, with dot in the upper portion) would be used in the word "think" or "ink". (ie. the word ink would be only two letters, i and nk). The philosophy here being that the low-positioned dot in voiced 'Ng' signals the deeper sound of 'Ng' versus the higher crack of 'Nk'.

As such, signs with a dot above or within usually indicate a voiced sound, as opposed to an unvoiced sound (see 'D' vs 'T', or 'B' vs 'P', and less specifically, 'J' vs 'Ch' vs 'Y', which follows a similar pattern to the 'Ng' and it's derivatives).

In vowels, a dot usually means extra length or 'depth' (for example, turning 'U' as in 'up', into a short 'OO' as in 'book')

Instead of dots, the modification that differentiates the unvoiced 'K' (glyph #3) from that for the voiced 'G' (#7) is a special case - the 'wing' being 'closed' signals the additional voicing, and is meant to indicate the heavier, more emphasized glottal effect. The Traveller relates that this might be to do with the importance of the number seven to the fae. It also opens up the use of dots or other marks upon the basic 'K' shape to signify more advanced click consonants.

The core shape of the 'K' and 'G' glyphs are meant to evoke the form of a large long-necked bird or the dragon, in rampant posture, with wings extended in display, or visualized in the act of landing. Ancient forms of these glyphs had a short line to represent the legs, but this feature was long ago dropped to prefer efficiency and minimalism.

A rather short and straight 'wing' on the 'K' glyph signals a simple 'k/c' sound as in "cat" or "king". A slightly longer wing, curving downwards, turns the sound into more of an emphasized, 'popping', or rounded 'K' or 'Q'. A very curved wing, almost closed signals 'Qu' (ie. 'Kw') as in "queen" or "quite". The 3rd and last alternative form of 'K' on the illustration provided is essentially 'X' or 'Ks' as in "fox". It is not used for the sound 'z' or 'k' as 'X' sometime is in English (such as in the name Xavier).

A small number of sages of the Adarim have questioned the uneven ordering of glyphs representing pairings of 'voiced' versus 'unvoiced' sounds, and what this might mean with regards towards fairy history in the form of mnemonics (ie. in the case of the pairing of 'B' and 'P' - and also 'V' and 'F', for example - these are built on the same core shape, and the voiced 'B' is earlier in the alphabet than unvoiced 'P', but in the case of 'K' and 'G', and so too 'Th' and 'Dh', the unvoiced sound is first in the order. This may have something to do with certain elven folk transitioning, at some point in their history, from primarily sound-centric towards telepathic or somatic communication (becoming 'unvoiced', as it were), or vise versa (ie. 'gaining a voice').

Signs with a small open circle (crown or corona) above them (instead of a dot), represent an 'open' or 'more rounded' sound (ie. the sound of 'F' when it appears before an 'O' sound (such as in "fog") might be more rounded than when it appears before 'i' (as in "fig"). [see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness]

If a consonant is voiced (such as 'B' or 'D'), and represented already with a dot above, then rounding it involves either 1) adding a loop to it's tail, or 2) the preferred option, if great effort is being taken in neatness, the rounding can be signaled by a circle with a dot in it's center, drawn in the place the dot usually appears [ed: an example of this is not shown on the illustration provided]. In the case of the loop in the tail, this can cause confusion when reading ancient texts in the case of the glyphs for 'S' and 'Z' - for old forms of 'S' and 'Z' were both dotted above (the dot being simply part of it's form - representing the fire of a lit torch, the 'head of the snake', or the 'socket of the tooth', and also as the pommel or handle or guard of a sword). The voiced nature of 'Z' (as a derivative of 'S') was signaled (in the older S-always-dotted form) by a loop in the tail (and this was also seen in old forms of 'Zh', for example). In the current form of the Alphabet the unvoiced 'S' has no dot, in order to make the general scheme for voicing more consistent. A dot appearing on the same shape turns it into the basic consonant 'Z', though many scribes (even in modern texts) render a Z as a dotless 'S' with a looped tail, since this shape is very efficient to draw, and is thus accepted as an orthodox shorthand, even though it breaks the general scheme of dotting of voiced consonants (a pattern, it must be noted, that is not used on the 'liquid' consonants such as 'L' and 'N' and 'R', etc).

A primitive form of the alphabet, same sages theorize, contained as numbered primary items only either the voiced or unvoiced consonants, with the opposite voicing being viewed as alternative shapes. This view of the alphabet (and phonetics in general) ostensibly aids one in seeing through the orthodoxy of voicing and other inflection, that arguably hides connections in meaning between different words - just as much as vowel shifts can and do. What really, is the difference between "pen" and "ben", or "bone" and "phone", or between "shine" and "sine" or "sign"?.

Note that the first listed alternative forms of 'V' (#6) and 'F' (#23) (appearing simultaneously as a female breast in profile, and as an arm holding a shepherds crook or sling-staff, club or war-mace), are actually the original glyphs for these sounds, but ages ago the elves decided (on the basis of the aesthetics of complete words, rather than a single glyph taken alone) to prefer a more vertical, less broad shape for these two letters. In the current forms of 'V' and 'F', the 'arm' (the lower swooping curve) holding the 'mace' (the main vertical hook shape) becomes implicit, and the direction of the loop of the upper 'hook' has switched to face rightward to reinforce the direction of writing (usually from left to right). Some scribes still, for accuracy, use the wider forms of 'F' and 'V' (instead of using crowns) to represent more rounded sounds ('F' as in "fog", but not "fig", and 'V' as in "vogue", but not "venom"). Many older texts exist that do not use the current form of these glyphs at all, and there only the older broad forms appear.

Excepting the special case of the glyph for 'G' (#7) and the ancient 'Mb' variant of 'M' (#13), those glyphs with a small, closed, asymmetrical division or gap in the body of the shape (otherwise seen as little wings or arms held alongside) such as those for 'Ts' (variant of 'T') and 'Ks' (variant of 'K') represent the addition of an 'S' to the sound, when this wing or arm is on the right side of the body of the form. These signal new self-contained consonants (ie. 'Ts' is somewhere between a 'T' and an 'S', and these augmentations are not, in general, to be used to pluralize words (ie. to convert 'bird' to 'birds').

... ( see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade )

This so-called 'wing' (when on the right) is actually a small 'S' glyph added to another sound.

A 'wing' or 'arm' on the left, however, such as in the signs for 'Sh' and 'Zh' (voiced variant of Sh) generally indicates sibilant or a fricative nature (and in the case of 'S'-like sounds, above and beyond the baseline 's'. This can represent the addition of 'breathe', or more particularly, the addition of sibilant aspect; or a sibilant shifting to a fricative; and if already a fricative, then perhaps a shift from alveolar to post-alveolar positioning of the tongue (ie. creating the 'gap', for example, that makes the difference between 'S' and 'Zjh').

Of the Vowels

There are four 'true vowels' and many derivative vowels in the Phonetic Alphabet of the Inner Sea.

Of the true vowels (numbered as part of the main Alphabet):

The natural sound of 'A' (glyph 'V') is that heard in the word 'bat' or 'cat' or 'mat'.

The natural sound of 'E' is that in the word 'pen' or 'red' or 'said'.

The natural sound of 'I' / 'i' is as in the word 'fig' or 'big' or 'slick'.

The natural sound of 'O' is that found in 'fog or 'log' or 'coupOn'.

Of the apparently missing 'U' (you are not from Fairyland... or are you?)...

The consonant 'W' (letter 22) shifts into various 'U' vowel forms, as can 'F' (23) and 'V' (6), and these letters can be seen (in green language application) as vowels in their own right (just as 'Y' is sometimes seen as a psuedo-vowel in English, it being a form of 'i' (I) as is 'J').

Thus the word 'book' might be written with the fairy signs BWK ( 2.22.3 ) [b.w.k @ 'house of liquid-fire in the hand']

... but could also be expressed BṴK ('book'), using either the last or second last derivative forms of 'W/U' as seen in the illustration (BṴK: 'container of a vessel/womb, of handicraft')

This due to the fact that the English letters, 'F', 'V', 'U', 'W' and even 'Y' all have their root in Phoenician Vav or Waw (and this is why the words 'wolf', 'fluff', 'value', 'valve' and 'volva' and 'vulva' and 'Volvo' and 'flue' are all actually the same word wearing masks). The Vav perhaps descending ultimately from the Elf-letter 'W' (22), itself a reflection of 'M' (13) [Mem, 'water']. According to a number of sages (but not necessarily a consensus), the Elven glyphs for 'F', 'V', 'W' and the variations of 'U' are all sigils of families descending from one of the royal offspring of a single ancestor, Åmbaraiḥa, associated with the element of water and the craft of oral history. Her children, represented by these glyphs, may all have been born as quadruplets. Others say rather that the sigils 'F', 'V' and 'W' descend from a sibling (perhap a male twin) of Åmbaraiḥa gifted with power over the element of fire. The Hebrew Vav, we are told, has the meaning of 'hook', or 'nail', and perhaps 'peg' (something that catches and pins down - see the Ford of Bruinen for the watery sense, but note that 'peg' - as a 'post/pillar' - is an interpretation of Samekh; see 'S'), and derives from an ancient Egyptian sign for a mace (a weapon). In terms of fire, ponder mace @ match (the protective spray, 'mace', burns, a match starts a fire). Battle is fiery (fairy). The story needs a hook. To cross the river into unknown lands begins the Advent-ure. Or to step into the River of Time itself. The word 'fire' begins with F (vav, waw) the fiery mace, a weapon that enthralls thee and keeps thee pinned down by the campfire to hear what was penned. And fire is watery, for 'F' is also 'W' and 'V' and so too 'U'... And so you see.

These notions above speak of the so-called 'Yin-yang of Waters' (or Fires), a major element of fairy culture.

There are multiple derived forms of the glyphs for the vowels 'A', 'E', 'I', 'O' and 'W/U' that indicate different pronunciations, lengthened or otherwise affected soundings, or to represent diphthongs (ie.combined vowels, such as the sound of the 'ai' in 'explain'). These altered vowels are described later, in the section examining every glyph in detail.

The vowel 'A', the first letter in the alphabet, contains, in a sense, all the other vowels. The other vowels are thus seen as inflected forms of 'A'.

Unlike the consonants, which are tribal sigils of the Elves of Fairyland, the vowels are associated rather with other stranger fae or elemental sprites, as noted below. The vowels also present a certain personality of expression or tone that colours the word within which they appear, and this a subject that a number of sages have reported on, but generally, the semantic rigour associated with the vowels-as-vowels is lesser - more rustic - than that of the consonants

In general, of the vowels..

'A') is seen as steady and even-handed, mild-mannered, decisive, sociable. It might imply one in place and still, or a forward (positive) movement. The glyphs for A are sigils representing the Sylphs and other forces of the Air.

'E') is seen as exuberant, or emotional, perhaps overly so, to the point of being easily manipulated; less steady. A 'window' or 'glorious or shocking view' or 'insight' might be meant. It can imply 'off to one side' (be it left or right) and thus the potential to miss the mark. The 'E' glyphs are most often associated particularly with the various Fire elementals, such as those beings known as salamanders to mortal sages.

'I') is seen as inward, perhaps selfish. Not necessarily moody or depressive, but less sociable. It can represent the 'small' (ie. microcosm, which itself reflects the macrocosm, and thus the great). The core meaning of 'i' is the 'arm', that is, a tool of agency in the world. To use ones' arms (or 'power') effectively may require good instruction. Can imply a backward motion (to bring something toward you is to have it move in the reverse direction to that which you are facing). This vowel and it's glyph is associated with the dryads, gnomes, dwarves, giants (jotun) and other sprites of the element of Earth (that is, petrified wood (*), (*)).

'O') is seen as wise, observant and 'streetsmart', but perhaps grasping, overly ambitious, perhaps even ill-intentioned (ie. see the mortal tradition of the 'evil eye' and the wards against it). It's core meaning indeed, is the 'eye' (that to do with 'optics'). The glyph is associated simultaneously with the concept of the 'dark watcher' and of the Eye of Providence, the oversight of God. In terms of directionality, can implies verticality (the eye watches 'over'...or from beneath, that is, it understands).

'W'/'U') is seen as deep, contemplative, but perhaps melancholy. A feeling of 'the bearer' of burdens. The undertow of the 'underworld'. Less sociable, or perhaps overbearing otherwise. The 'U' shaped forms are particularly expressive of the concept of a vessel (such as a beaker, jar, jug or bottle, and biologically-speaking the stomach or womb), and thus the deeper, inflected 'U/'W' sounds can imply a downward direction (but not the sound 'U' as in the words "up" or "love" which imply rather the upward direction, and is actually more closely related to the upright sound 'A' as in "bat"). Of the former, in general, these glyphs are associated with the water elementals such as the undines, water-sprites and other river-folk, and so too the mermaids of the ocean.

Note the duality and range of 'U' (such as in the word "up" versus the word "full", which evokes a very different, deeper sound tending towards the consonant 'W'). Many words in English use the letter 'U' in places where the sound is actually closer to 'A' (such as in the word "up", using the upright variant of the sound of 'u') while many words use 'A' when the letter 'U' might suffice (such as in "above", where the leading 'a' is not the upright 'a' of "bat" or "cat"). Since the Inner Sea alphabet is purely phonetic, effort should be made to properly reflect the actual sound and pronunciation in spellings. When transliterating from the Elvish into Latin letters, a deeper 'u' (as in "look" or the lengthened "fool") should be signalled with an inflected vowel glyph (ie using umlauts or some other marking). A simple 'u' is presumed to be the sound in "up" and "sun".

Of the 'derived vowels', or diphthongs:

There are single glyphs commonly used to represent variant vowel pronunciations. Most often seen are:

If you desire to use the elf-letters but maintain English spelling as far as possible (perhaps for the reason of maintaining and remembering their gematria (ie. their numerology in English) then the word 'book' would be written BOOK (using elf signs 2.15.15.3), signalling 'house, two eyes, hand/palm' - that is 'you read at home with your eyes upon (the book) in your hand'.

As an aside, you count on your fingers, which are upon your hands

The signs and their meanings -

From the writings of the Sage, and making use of additional information from the Traveller - and this bolstered by archetypal notions carried through various mortal traditions that seem to support an Elven alphabet hypothesis.

Note that except for 'A' here below, the English-Latin letters are used to represent the sounds intended by the glyphs in the accompanying illustration.

A B K D E V G H I J Ch L M N O P Th R S T Ng W/U F Z Dh nG Sh nK