Etrandish orthography

Middle Etrandish orthography was relatively straightforward. Current Etrandish orthography on the other hand, has evolved to include several peculiarities that make it not entirely coherent with the pronunciation.

Native Etrandish vocabulary vs High Elven loanwords
One of the big differences between the spelling of Native Etrandish vocabulary and High Elven loanwords is the rendering of the palatal sibilants :
 * in High Elven loanwords, they are spelled as (ci gi sci), just like in High Elven
 * in Native Etrandish words, they are primarily spelled as (ch j sh) - at least before  (a o u). Sometimes, the High Elven convention of using  (c g) before  (e i) is employed, especially word-medially and in personal names.
 * In Native Etrandish words (ch) is nearly always used for  - rarely for  or  -, but in High Elven loanwords, it is always used for.

Loanwords from Classical High Elven, Middle High Elven and contemporary High Elven are spelled exactly the way they would be in High Elven, and their pronunciations tend to be Etrandish approximations of what seems to be a mix between Classical High Elven and Middle high Elven:
 * (y ý) were pronounced as in Classical High Elven, exactly the same way they are pronounced in Etrandish now. Meanwhile, in Middle High Elven, they unrounded to, leading to a case where the Etrandish pronunciation is much more conservative and closer to the original.
 * (ae) is pronounced as in Etrandish, which is once again quite similar to the way it was pronounced in Classical High Elven, . In Middle High Elven, the digraph was pronounced as, which got raised to  in contemporary High Elven.
 * In Etrandish, monophthongizes to  before coda-position, leading to  (aer) being pronounced very similarly to the way it was in Middle High Elven.
 * In contemporary Etrandish, Middle Etrandish became  in both native Etrandish vocabulary and High Elven loanwords. Highly literate priests, erudites and aristocrats may use the conservative pronunciation  in High Elven loanwords.
 * In Classical High Elven, the digraphs (ph th ch) were pronounced  - they became  in Middle High Elven. In Etrandish, they are pronounced, because the digraph  (th) is also used for the dental fricatives.

(ae) vs (ai)
In Etrandish, both digraphs stand for the same phoneme, the diphthong, and its monophthongized allophone before coda-position. However, they are not fully equivalent, as etymologically, they have different origins.
 * Old Etrandish and  merged as  in Middle Etrandish, but the differences between the two are still reflected in the spellings:
 * Native Etrandish words that had in Old Etrandish use  (ae)
 * Native Etrandish words in Old Etrandish use  (ai)
 * High Elven loanwords always use (ae)
 * Loanwords from Wood Elven and other languages generally use (ai)

(yu) vs (iu)
Since the letter (y) stands for both  and  in Etrandish, they have developed a peculiar way to spell  and  - spelling the earlier as  (yu) and the latter as  (iu).

and are spelled as  (yú) and  (iú).

Former long vowels and diphthongs
Middle Etrandish had six phonemic long vowels and six phonemic diphthongs. Out of these, three long vowels and three diphthongs would merge: Middle Etrandish and  would merge into  in Current Etrandish.

As a result, a large number of digraphs would come to represent the same phoneme.