Old Nubian language: Encyclopedia II - Old Nubian language - Writing

Old Nubian language - Writing

Old Nubian is written with an uncial variety of the Greek alphabet, extended with three Coptic letters — ϣ "sh", ϩ "h", and ϭ "j" — and three unique to Nubian, apparently derived from Meroitic: ng, ny, and w (not included in Unicode.) Each letter could have a line drawn above it, when it was:

• a vowel which formed a syllable by itself, or was preceded by one of l, n, r, or j;
• a consonant with an i (sometimes unwritten) preceding it.

The sound /i/ could be written ε,  ̄ ει, η;, ι, or υ; /u/ was normally written ου. In diphthongs, a dieresis was sometimes used over ι to indicate a semivowel y.

Geminate consonants were written double; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones. Tones were not marked.

Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\, used roughly like an English period or colon, a slash / used like a question mark, and a double slash // sometimes used to separate verses.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Writing", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki