Middle Sonic (Federation C) Alphabet

Federation Middle Sonic, also known as Language Three or Federation C, is the Grand Federation language most familiar to Humans.  Middle Sonic has 39 simple (non-tonal, variable pitch, duration insensitive) phonemes usually expressed between at 80 and 400 hertz.  The language was originally developed by a committee headed by the Teechiri, Vandar and Yumbaral.  Middle Sonic has achieved widespread use in the coreward regions of former Imperial  Space where it was spoken by the Khabadera, Federation Humans, Gulkan and Kraz.  The alphabet developed for Middle Sonic is currently used both to express its original tongue and to express languages of species and cultures well adapted to a mid sonic phonemic representation.  Over two hundred distinct languages, including Anglic, utilize this alphabet.  The Middle Sonic alphabet is the official script of the Zhantlas Union.

Letters

The standard Middle Sonic alphabet has 33 phonemic characters, which mostly correspond to the Imperial Anglic and Orion Anglic alphabets.

#	Fed C	Imperial	Orion
01		U	U
02		O	O
03		A	A
04		E	E
05		I	I
06		AE	Æ
07		B	B
08		D	D
09		T	T
10		G	G
11		K	K
12		P	P
13		Kh	₭
14		Zh	ʒ
15		V	V
16		F	F
17		H	H
18		S	S
19		Z	Z
20		Th	θ
21		ch	Ж
22		J	J
23		Ch	Ч
24		Ts	Ts
25		L	L
26		R	R
27		Y	Y
28		N	N
29		M	M
30		ñ	ñ
31		pop (!)	!
32		click (>)	>
33		tick (})	}

Modifiers

Additionally, Middle Sonic utilizes a set of modifiers which follow a letter character and affect its pronunciation or intonation.  Up to three modifier may affect a single character.  These three modifiers are:

	long vowel
	glottal stop
	emphasis

Long vowel modifiers change the sound of the preceding vowel.  Note that long vowels do not have a straight correspondence to Anglic.  For instance, and do correspond to long 'U' and long 'O' in Anglic, but and are reversed, corresponding to long 'E' and long 'A', respectively.  Additionally, most closely corresponds to a long 'I' and the to the diphthong ɔɪ, or the 'oi' sound in 'choice'.  Some variants of Middle Sonic, including B'dr'rak-influenced Federation J, allows long modifiers to apply to consonants as well.

A glottal stop indicates a clear separation of letters into separate syllables.  Some renditions of Middle Sonic use glottal indicators to separate every syllable, but most use the modifier only sparingly to clarify ambiguities in pronunciation.

The emphasis modifier, like the glottal stop, is either used sparingly or extensively, depending on dialect or language expressed.  It normally indicates stress to a syllable.  Tonal versions of Middle Sonic, also classified as Federation I, use multiple emphasis marks to indicate tone types.  Modified emphasis markers can indicated up to seven distinct tones.

Sentence Structure

Sentence types within Middle Sonic match those found in Federation Symbolic Script and are normally expressed either Literal Symbolic Script or Open Voided Symbolic Script.  Middle Sonic does not use word type modifiers and ambiguities over word function require syntactical context to clarify.

Data Structure

A Middle Sonic character is represented in data streams as a 9-bit number with the first 6 bits representing the base character (1-33 plus a reserved space for variants) and the last 3 bits representing the presence or absence of long, glottal and emphasis modifiers.  A zero value 9-bit character indicates spacing between worlds.  Sentence, numeric and data packet parameters match those defined by the Federation Symbolic Script.

Numbers

Middle Sonic has no corresponding numerical representations.  Most users of the alphabet express numbers in Symbolic Literal, Voided or Looped Script.

All pages and images ©1999 - 2005 by Geir Lanesskog, All Right Reserved
Usage Policy