Preface

         Dear reader, in the coming bodies of texts you might encounter something that probably most people named as "silly", but yet, for some enthusiasts it might be a work in need of some polishing. The idea of an artificial language was probably best known through some TV series (like Star Trek) and in the world of Cinema via movies like Lord of The Rings. However, the idea was in my mind long time ago, but I didn't dare to show it and develop it until some time around 2006.

         Ayvarith is an artificial language, or what is called sometimes for short "Conlang," a shortening for "Constructed Language". The basic building block for this conlang is three main "real" languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac. The process of the creation is not coherent in all aspects, but I can say more of a random process. The words created can be systematic in one form while some others can be just random in its creation, and to make it more turbid, there are some words which were created absolutely out of nothing related to the three main languages mentioned above. The beginning of the project started on paper, with creating a special characters (script) for the conlang, then into creating a website (in GeoCities). Unfortunately though, the website had been shut down after the time of recession, and to the time of writing these words, the creation of another one is going on slowly. There was a guide and a dictionary and many other things that were created out of nothing. To develop things further, I tried to make out something based on English, and then "force" myself to translate it into Ayvarith.

         The story of Alexander, that you are about to read, is mimicked on some legends in real life, mainly about Alexander the Great and other characters. Whether they are real or just myths in real life, the storyline itself was not a complete mimic, but merely adapting and hiring some elements from these legends that I came through in some of the old books. I'm not a story-writer myself and I don't think I'm a good one at that, thus please remember that this story was made generally for the purpose of developing the conlang of Ayvarith.

         I tried my best to make a font for writing Ayvarith, and despite the fact that the three basic languages mentioned above are written right-to-left, Ayvarith itself is written left-to-right, with some factors from these "real" scripts. However, technical problems are there of course, from the creation of the font itself (three versions were made) to being practical about explaining Ayvarith. For this reason, only transliteration is mentioned here. The system of transliteration has been changed several times before and might change after writing this text, depending on necessities in the process of typing. Below is a guide for pronouncing the Latin letters according to their use under the context of Ayvarith. The process of creating a transliteration system went through some phases, mainly for the reasons of shortening the notations, and suppressing what looks in English as a combination of two letters into one letter, for one phoneme or sound, as it is in Ayvarith (e.g. "sh").

         Before the transliteration guide, there are some important points about how to read the transliteration text, even though I will try to provide an audio reading in a later stage:
         1. Ayvarith transliteration is always written in lowercase except for few incidents (see point 3).
         2. For more informative display for Ayvarith and its characters, you can visit Omniglot  , where Ayvarith letters are displayed but the transliteration system mentioned there is not up-to-date. I can say the transliteration there is Phase II (regarding what you will be reading here is Phase IV). There are other mistakes in the page, thus please just take a note of the Ayvarith letters only.

         3. For some technical reasons, I was apt to shorten some notations by removing the hyphen mark "-". Not all hyphens were removed but majorly those linked to some prepositions (without going into grammatical details). In the original Ayvarith text, some preposition are linked as a prefix to the succeeding words. These prepositions were separated by "-" from the main word to make a note that it is a preposition. This system was exchanged with removing the hyphen and starting the actual word with a capital letter, while attaching the preposition still. This is only a notational work and does not change the way the letter is sounded in Ayvarith. Certain words originally begin with a capital letter in Ayvarith transliteration, this also does not change the sound of the letter, nor does it mean the vowels are connected (e.g. "liAdam" meaning "for a man," is read "li adam"). I marked this change as moving from Phase III to Phase IV.

Guide

1. Vowels: vowels mainly fall in 4 types, with an accent mark just to make it longer.

a: like "u" in "sun".
á: like "a" in "father".
e: like "e" in "ten".
é: like "a" in "whale"
i: like "i" in "bit".
í: like "ee" in "teen".
u: like "oo" in "book".
ú: like "oo" in "moon".

2. Consonants: consonants mainly are divided into 2 groups; Ayvaric and non-Ayvaric. The non-Ayvaric consonants are those used in some loan words (from real or other artificial languages) and do not represent originally a sound in a regular Ayvarith tongue. Not all non-Ayvaric letters are used in Alexander's story, but all are listed below. Please refer back to the Omniglot   website for more elaborate representation. I try to explain the pronunciation relative to the English language mainly (with few others), and audio if possible. Letters in blue are non-Ayvaric sounds.

b: as in Boat.

j: as in Jacket.

g: as in Gas (never as in Jacket).

d: as in Day.

h: as in Heaven.

w: as in Water, Way.

v: labial "V" as in Spanish. Example MP3: valaħ (to excuse), avvá (father), qiliv (heart)  

z: as in Zebra.

ħ(h-bar): hard fricative glottal sound, not found in English. Example MP3: ħáribiþ (forest), miħmán (carrier), mavtúħ (open [adjective])  

ŧ(t-bar): hard palatal plosive sound, with tip of tongue against the upper ridge. Example MP3: ŧaąar (to be happy), naÅ¡ŧar (to spread), ğalíŧ (wrong)  

y: as in Yeast (never as a vowel). Example MP3: ymad (teach!), maynú (who?), muy (water)  

k: as in Kick.

l: as in  Live (not as in Life). Example MP3: laąadgút (moments), Alayhá (God), faąal (to do)  

m: as in Moon.

n: as in Noon.

s: as in Summer.

ą(a-ogonek): voiced pharyngeal plosive sound. Example MP3: ąayun (eye), muąlaÅ¡av (mind/thought), Å¡aąÃ­ą (beam/ray)  

f: as in Fantasy.

c: hard "S" sound with the tip of tongue touching the lower ridge. Example MP3: camcamúd (horizon), facqá (chapter), qaąuc (some)  

q: close to a glottal "k" sound.Example MP3: qiliv (heart), buqliyá (welcome), caddúq (righteous/pious)  

r: trilled "R" sound (not like American "R"). ramram (to raise), baraą (to pass), zaąar (to help)  

Å¡(s-caron): as in English "SH" in Shine.

t: as in Tea.

þ(thorn): as in English "TH" in Thing.

x: as "CH" in Scottish Loch, or German Bach. Example MP3: xawan (to be), axú (brother), millikáx (a random name)  

ğ(g-breve): as a French "R". Example MP3: ğašír (very/much), miğmát (angry), mağ (with)  

ð(eth): as in English "TH" in This and That.

t: rolled "t" with tongue tip rolled to the back touching the palate. Example MP3: No significant words  

d: rolled "d" with tongue tip rolled to the back touching the palate. Example MP3: No significant words  

x: like Scottish or German "CH" in Loch and Bach, but aspirated with air friction on the palate (not glottal). Example MP3: No significant words  

f: labial "F" sound, done without using the lower ridge but only the lips. Example MP3: No significant words  

r: American "R" sound.

ç: "CH" sound as in English Church.

v: the usual "V" sound, as in English.

p: as in Pine.

l: liquid "L" sound (or heavy "L") as in Like, Life. Example MP3: No significant words  

ž(z-caron): soft sound close to "J", similar to "S" in English Pleasure. Example MP3: No significant words  

Sometimes, a consonant comes doubled (see and hear the sample for the letter V above). This is a sign of a stress on the consonant.