Nauruan Language - Writing System

Writing System

In the Nauruan written language, 17 letters were originally used:

  • The five vowels: a, e, i, o, u
  • Twelve consonants: b, d, g, j, k, m, n, p, q, r, t, w

The letters c, f, h, l, s, v, x, y and z were not included. With the growing influence of foreign languages (most of all German, Tok Pisin and Kiribati) more letters were incorporated into the Nauruan alphabet. In addition, phonetic differences of a few vowels arose, so that umlauts and other similar sounding sounds were indicated with a tilde.

Read more about this topic:  Nauruan Language

Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or system:

    “Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”
    —Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)

    “The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)