Single Letter Words.

Single letter words are a recent addition to Diinlang and were inspired by the Dutton Speedwords system. The actual uses and the phonology of the letters differs from Dutton’s system.

Diinlang uses a number of words that are written with just one letter. These are very commonly used words so this feature makes writing Diinlang quicker and a little more compact.

Where a single letter is used as a word it should be pronounced as if followed by a schwa (?) or a short “e” or “i” sound. Hence m and b are pronounced as they are in English “me” and “be” although phonetically they are “mi” and “bi”. All of the schwa ending words are consonants.

m	mi	I, me
t	ti or tu	you
z	zi  derives into zio, zia, ziz, zo, za and zz	neuter third person. Gendered to mean “he”, “she” and plural means “they, them”
b	bi	be and other forms of verb “to be”
d	di	of, from
j	ji	a, an, some. (Indefinite Article)
k	ki	What? Question.
s	si	that
v	vi	the (Definite Article)

There are four groups of exceptions to the assumed schwa ending.

The vowels “o” and “a” are pronounced “oh” and “ah” when used as words. “a” means “to” or “at”. “e” is pronounced as just “?”, rhyming with the French “que”. “e” means “and”. “r” is pronounced “or” and means “or”. “u” is not currently used but would be pronounced “uh”. “u” may possibly be used for the “uh” sound!

“i” and “x” are pronounced as “in” and “eks” meaning “in” and “out”.

“y” and “n” are pronounced “yah” and “noh” and mean “yes” and “no” in Diinlang.

“p” and “g” stand for the verbal tense markers “pri/pre” and “gon”.

Like all Diinlang this is a work in progress and assignments are likely to change. It was only last night I thought of switching o for r and restoring “or” as a word. I had not come up with a good alternative for “nor” so this solves the problem and also lets nor be abbreviated “nr”. “o” is currently unassigned and may be left as an exclamation. It would be nice to have a single letter for “it” but none of the free letters are suitable. May have to use an unshifted symbol instead.