Orthography

You might notice that the writing system is based on the Latin alphabet, with some unusual diacritics. This is because the Beltös people were an oral culture; they had no writing system (although they did do simple accounting using beads on strings, like a simplified abacus).

During the visit of “Visitor #2” [see Five-Visitors], who was an anthropologist and a linguist, she created the alphabet now in use. This writing system is phonetic (actually, phonemic, if one wants to be precise), even though this sometimes obscures the original roots of the words due to assimilative sound changes. “Visitor #2,” based on her notes, created this alphabet for her own use to record the utterances of the Beltös language, but later during her visit she decided to share it with the people.

The people instantly were enamored with the idea that they could record what they said using hand-drawn marks, and that at a subsequent time someone else could interpret those marks and know what had been said. The alphabet was quickly adopted by the people, traveling from village to village, and in less than three years, almost every person could read and write the language.

There were some elderly Shamans who refused, on principle, to learn to read or write, stating that the recording of speech was demonic and it would lead the people to ruin. Their fears were ignored. Whether this was wise is yet to be seen. The eldest shaman, ‘Ilsam-‘Emmašši, threatened that Bemse Ḱeṕäh, the only active volcano, would rain fire upon the people for this transgression. Thankfully, the mountain has remained dormant. The Priests, however, adopted the new alphabet with great dispatch, and used it to compile their favorite moral teachings and aphorisms.

Capitalization and Punctuation

Punctuation follows English rules. Sentences and proper nouns (names) are capitalized. Proper nouns are inflected for case, as all nouns are. The capitalization applies to the name itself, not to the case prefix. Example:

Badi went to London
‘eBadi šegoṕos bos ḱiLondonäh