Ekronean alphabet

The Ekronean script has 22 letters and is an real alphabet - which means it has written vowels instead of only consonants. Initially, they wrote their language as a boustrophedon, but later they settled for a left-to-write system, and influenced the Israelite script. This language emerged as the Philistines mixed ancient Aegean languages with a Canaanite dialect spoken in the southern Levant. This alphabet has 3 written vowels and 19 written consonants, and is a direct descendant of the Phoenician alphabet, just like any other Geloan language. However, its phonetic inventory is a little bigger, containing 31 phonemes, being /ks/ one of them.

Below there is a table with all 22 letters. The pronounciation is marked using the IPA. Note that there are letters that carry more than one possible phoneme. Also, there is a letter for the "ks" pair of phoneme, similar to the "ksadi" from Israelite.

Table 1: Ekroneke letters

In the table above, whenever there are two phonemes separated by a comma, it means that the letter has two possible phonemes: the first one is its usual sound, and the second phoneme is to be pronounced in special cases. There are rules to when a consonant changes its phoneme: when they are placed after a voiced consonant, then they also change to a voiced phoneme. For example, when x comes after d or z, it sounds ʒ instead of ʃ. The voiceless p becomes a voiced b when preceded by m.
Also, the strong syllable is marked by adding a diacritical mark over the vowel, which also change it from a closed to an open vowel.
There is a letter that marks a glotal stop. This is used when there are two vowels coming one right after another. This is a feature absorbed from its interactions with Canaanite and Yisrelit languages.

Table 2: Example of voiced and unvoiced groupings

There are rules to when a consonant changes its phoneme: when they are placed after a voiced or a nasal consonant, then they also change to a voiced phoneme. For example, when /ʃ/ comes after /d/ or /z/, it changes into /ʒ/. Also, the phonemes become voiced when at the beginning of a word or in between vowels; exception to this rule is /k/, which remains /k/ even between vowels.

Tonicity of a syllable

The patterns for the tonicity of a syllable are (marked in red).

· Oxytones: (…)C/'ej/ (always written with a diacritic); (C)/e/(C)C/'o/(C); (C)/a/(C)C/'o/(C); (…)C/'ɑt/; (…)C/'on/ (always written with a diacritic); (…)C/'an/; (…)C/'em/ and (…)C/'ot/ in all situations.
· Paroxytones: (…)CV(C)C/a/; (C)V(C)C/e/ (always written with a diacritic).

There are a few words that do not comply with the rules above, so the tonicity is marked with a diacritic.

Yisrelit download files

Guide for typing

FONT: Yisrelit sans-serif, made by Gabriel Falcao. You are free to use it, provided no financial gain comes with its use. If you want to use it in blogs or other media for a wider public, just put my name as the author. This font was made using FontForge, which I recommend. Download font clicking HERE.

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Initial form (Shift)

KEYBOARD LAYOUT: This is a keyboard layout made using Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4, which I recommend. Note that for typing final letters, the key "AltGr" (right Alt) must be pressed. (c) Made by Gabriel Falcao. You are free to use it, provided no financial gain comes with its use. If you want to use it in blogs or other media for a wider public, just put my name as the author. Download the keyboard layout clicking HERE - unzip and install.

Medial form (regular)

Below is a map of the characters in this layout. NOTE: it uses latin letters and the font covers them as Yisrelit script; so, if you use this keyboard and don't use the font above, you'll end up with latin letters.

The Yisrelit Dictionary can be downloaded here (still creating).

Final forms (AltGR)

Yisrelit Alphabet

The Yisrelit script has 22 letters and is an impure abjad - which means it has no written vowels but only consonants, even though some consonants are used to represent vowels, just like in Hebrew and Arabic. It is a Semitic language, but unlike the majority of them it's written left-to-right (early Hebrew was written right-to-left). Some of them were actually the same letter and were divided in two different letters (such as ba and va), while in other cases two different letters merged into a single one (such as ta, which derives from the Hebrew letters tet and tav).

Yisrelit script went through a similar process that Arabic faced, and current day script is based on a cursive version that emerged early in Yisrelit's history. There is an ancient script that resembles a lot the one used by early Israelites, Phoenicians, Ekroneans and Moabites.
Below there is a table with all 22 letters. The pronounciation is marked using the IPA. Note that even though ba and va, pe and fe, shin and sin look almost the same, they are separate letters.

Table 1: Yisrelit letters

The letter ala is completely mute if at the beginning or at the end of a word, but between vowels it is a glottal stop, pretty much like Hebrew's and Arabic's alef. It can receive the vowels a or e, be a glottal stop or none.
The "bakesh sechav" (lit.: "ask for a chair", actually an acronym made of the letters it's made of) group of letters weren't always separated letters. The letters ba and va originated from Hebrew letter bet; ka and kha originated from a merge between Hebrew's kaf and kof, while shin and sin originated from a merge between samech and shin.
The letter ksadi derives directly from Ancient Hebrew's sadi with the s phoneme, but later came to be pronounced as ks due to influence from the Ekronites' language.
There are also diacritical sings that mark vowels, but they are used solely to avoid double meaning. They only appear if associated with these letters, in a way you will not use the diacritical for o associated with the letter ala, for example. See them above. Note they aren't named.
The letter waw is pronounced as o or u most of the time, but when we need to say a syllable like wo, a double waw appears, in which the first acts as a consonant and the second as a vowel. The syllable wu does not appear in Yisrelit. This is the closest one gets to see a vowel in Yisrelit.
Due to religious reasons (they follow a very basic version of Judaism, since most of the knowledge and books got lost after their capture and with the pass of time), the Yisrelies avoid writting the letters ala and lamad either at the beginning or at the end of a word in order to avoid writting down the G-d's initials in vain, thus making use of the alamad ligature as a substitute. The same doesn't happen with yad and ha because it is a common prefix for verbs and they don't consider anyone capable to mistake it for G-d's Name.
There is also the wala ligature, that is a combination of the letters waw and ala, that means simply "and". It can also be written with the regular letters.
All the letters have initial, intermediate and final forms. The "bakaf" (in the palm of the hand) letters can only be pronounced and written as va, kha and fe. See below (with letters to be used for typing).

YISRELIT SCRIPT HISTORY

In the table below we can see how the Yisrelit script evolved from Ancient Hebrew/Ancient Phoenician. The columns show the age they were used. In the first age (Ancient Age), the script was written right-to-left (1st), and sometimes left-to-right (2nd, due to Ekronean influence). After the return from the first exile, the Israelites were already using the 2nd/3rd script, losing a letter due to further Ekronean influence. During the beginning Dark Age, after the second exile, the script had significantly evolved to match the loss of consonantal phonemes in the language (3rd/4th) and, before the end of the era, the modern cursive script arose, and both scripts were being commonly used. It was only during the Modern Age that the 3rd/4th script died out, leaving only the modern cursive script.

The Saphonean dialect of Yisrelit is written using the Kina'nit script. Both the Yisrelit and the Kina'nit script share the same origin and they had similar evolution, but the Kina'nit never changed direction of writting due to little Ekronean influence.

The vocalic diacritics were invented in the modern era, and they were created ex nihilo, so there is no evolution to be shown about them.