Pwekish Alphabet

BentolRomak: The Romanization of Pwekish

BentolRomak is the romanization system of BentolPwék, the traditional writing method of the Pwekish language. This system employs a set of Latin characters that closely resemble those used in English, with a few notable exceptions, such as "ñ," "ņ," and "'".

BentolRomak is the most widely used writing style for Pwekish, celebrated for its simplicity and ease of typing. There are three variations of BentolRomak: "Dyiktsíp BentolRomak," "Xəņdyaņ BentolRomak," and "Inglekpoy BentolRomak." However, the majority of written texts are composed using "Dyiktsíp BentolRomak," which is also the version utilized on our website.

Below is a table displaying the alphabet of BentolRomak. Please note that compound letters do not have specific names.

BentolPwék: The Traditional Script of Pwekish

BentolPwék serves as the traditional script for the Pwekish language. Its letters were originally derived from the cursive forms of Chinese characters. These characters either represent the sound of each letter or correspond to a Pwekish word that contains that sound. As these Chinese characters evolved into BentolPwék letters, their original readings became the names of the letters themselves.

Types

BentolPwék is a writing system similar to Japanese, with can be divided into 3 different parts:

1. Punloy BentolPwék (本來書佩, "The Original Writing of the Pwekish"), which looks cursive.
2. Kentan BentolPwék (簡單書佩, "The Simplified Writing of the Pwekish"), which looks straight.
3. Handzi (漢字, "Chinese Characters"), which is almost the same as traditional Chinese characters.

Usage

These 3 sets of characters are used for different purposes:

• Punloy BentolPwék
  • Pwekish vocabularies that cannot be represented with any Handzi (Chinese) character
  • Tail of verbs (if the verb written has more than 1 syllable)
  • Grammatical particles and affixes
  • Representations of the reading of Handzi characters
• Kentan BentolPwék
  • Loanword class vocabularies
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Representations of non-native reading of Handzi characters (i.e. those that are from Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc)
• Handzi
  • Most nouns
  • Head of verbs (i.e. the first syllable of verbs)
  • Hanngo class vocabularies

Below is a table illustrating the corresponding BentolPwék letters for the BentolRomak alphabet.

Personal Verb Initial Mutation

In the Pwekish language, verbs are conjugated according to the subject of a sentence. For the second person (i.e., "you") and third person (i.e., "he," "she," "it," or "they"), the initial consonant of the verb undergoes a change. This phenomenon is known as the Personal Verb Initial Mutation in Pwekish language studies. The rules governing these mutations can be easily memorized using the 3 Letter Law (Pwekish: 三字母法則, or Sàm-Dzimu Faptsk), which categorizes letters into groups of three.

1. p, b, m
2. f, v, w
3. t, d, n
4. s, z, r
5. k, g, ņ
6. l, y, ñ
7. h, x, '

In these groups:

• The first letter is called the Fuku'ìm (吹󰁕󰂮音), which generally represents voiceless consonants.
• The second letter is referred to as the Dyok'ìm (濁音), which typically signifies voiced consonants.
• The third letter is known as the Eson'ìm (鼻音), which generally corresponds to nasal consonants.

Mutation Rules

For verbs conjugated for the 2nd person, the transformations are as follows:

• Fuku'ìm becomes the corresponding Dyok'ìm.
• Dyok'ìm becomes the corresponding Eson'ìm.
• Eson'ìm becomes the corresponding Fuku'ìm.

For verbs conjugated for the 3rd person, the transformations are as follows:

• Fuku'ìm becomes the corresponding Eson'ìm.
• Dyok'ìm becomes the corresponding Fuku'ìm.
• Eson'ìm becomes the corresponding Dyok'ìm.

In BentolPwek, these are denoted as 󰃈- for the 2nd person and 󰃉- for the 3rd person. In BentolRomak, the transformations are indicated as follows:

• Fuku'ìm: -h
• Dyok'ìm: h-
• Eson'ìm: n-

Important Notes

Here are some tips for the usage of the Personal Verb Initial Mutation

• Personal Verb Initial Mutation occurs only at the beginning of verbs, regardless of any affixes or modifiers attached to the verb.
• It can apply to verbs that specifically describe an action related to a particular person, as well as to verbs transformed into nouns or modifiers.
• This mutation also affects adjectives when used in the predicative form.

Below is a table showcasing all the personal verb initial mutations in Pwekish.