Araith

Writing System

The elven alphabet has 24 letters and bears some resemblance to the lower case of the Volic alphabet. It is commonly written with long, swooping stems, the shapes of which are often arranged more with an eye to aesthetics than to consistency.

Geographical Distribution

Variants of Araith are spoken by elves all across the known world. The most widespread variant is Imperial Araith, which was one of the official languages of the Kadarin Empire. Other common variants are Erimos Araith, spoken in the southern desert, and Oreinós Araith, which is so distinct as to almost be a separate language, barely mutually intelligible with the Imperial dialect.

Phonology

Araith has 12 vowel sounds: 7 represented by individual letters and 5 by digraphs. These are transcribed in English as follows: A as in "car", E as in "bed" OR E as in "we", I as in "marine", O as in "fog" OR O as in "note" OR O as in "horse", Y as in "ruby".
Digraphs: ae as "eye", ei as in "neigh", oi as in "noise", au as in "Audi", and ou as in "soup".
There is no distinction between /s/ and /ʃ/ in Araith, with both sounds written and pronounced identically when translating or transcribing from other languages. Similarly, there is no difference between /ts/ and /tʃ/ or "ch", and the same applies to /z/ and /ʒ/.

Common Phrases

anír

elf

grígora

human

Common Female Names

Aspa, Despina, Dimitra, Eliana, Eleftheria, Eleni, Elpida, Eva, Fotini, Ioanna, Kallia, Mara, Marilina, Melina, Merilin, Myrto, Natalia, Nefeli, Thalia, Vana

Common Male Names

Alkinos, Alvaro, Antonis, Aris, Dimitris, Haris, Ilias, Ioannis, Kostas, Minas, Neimar, Pantelis, Sotiris, Spiros, Stelios, Thanos, Themis