Written Halfling

Writing the Halfling language down has a long, albeit stormy and obscure history: while writing systems for the Halfling language have existed since 800 BEKE at earliest in one form or another, the language remained a de facto oral language until around 300 AEKE, when the language was already in decline. In the late 7th century, the language was revived, and with it, two standardized varieties (Froturn Halfling and Antanath Halfling) were created, both with their own writing systems and standardized orthographies.

Early attempts
The earliest instances of written Halfling would be texts written in the Archaic High Elven language, Proto-Human language and Old Dwarven language, with quotes in Late Proto-Halfling, respectively written in the Early High Elven alphabet (rarely the Tolianem script), the Human Runes and the Old Dwarven script. These weren't true writing systems, but rather just phonetic transliterations of names and untranslated quotes, and were heavily biased based on the phonologies of the aforementioned three languages.

Out of these, eventually, two semi-standardized - but still highly defective - systems emerged, adopting the Classical High Elven alphabet and the Classical Dwarven abjad for writing Western Halfling and Eastern Halfling respectively. Both systems were seldom used (meaning that Halfling mostly remained a de facto oral language), highly defective, and still closer to phonetical transcriptions into High Elven and Dwarven respectively, than true writing systems invented for Halfling.

Western Halfling script
The Western Halfling script was an adaptation of the Classical High Elven alphabet for writing the Western Halfling language, used before the 7th century AEKE, when it was replaced by a more standardized form. It had the following quirks and shortcomings:
 * Even though the Classical High Elven language had means of transcribing - as  respectively - they weren't always distinguished from  when writing down Halfling.
 * Just like in High Elven, the vowels and the semivowels  were both written as  respectively, no distinction made in writing
 * This also meant that the diphthongs and  were written as  and  respectively.
 * The vowels and  were both written as . Some writers instead conflated  and  - writing both as  - or  with  - writing both as.
 * The long vowel and the vowel cluster  were both written as.
 * Broad and slender consonants weren't distinguished from each other in the syllable coda.
 * The lenition of voiced stops and affricates was never indicated in writing. Given how it wasn't phonemic, this can't be considered a defect.
 * Sometimes, was written as, ,  or  instead of the expected  and.

Eastern Halfling script
The Eastern Halfling script was an adaptation of the Classical Dwarven abjad for the Eastern Halfling language, historically used exclusively by the Halfling diaspora in the Autonomous Dwarven Region and Stélhelm - the Halflings of Revel and Ehren remained illiterate until they adopted the Etrandish language.

The Eastern Halfling script turns what was an abugida-like impure abjad into a full alphabet: the vowels were respectively written as. The consonants could be transcribed losslessly with the Classical Dwarven script. Despite not being phonemic, the lenition of voiced stops and affricates was in fact indicated in the writing. Aside from the clunkiness of the system, its only major shortcoming was that it did not indicate vowel length at all, despite vowel length being phonemic in the Halfling language.

Some historians theorize that the Stélhelm script (used for writing Proto-Human and Old Etrandish in the Kingdom of Steelhelm) was adopted from the Halflings, rather than directly from the Dwarves, due to several common features of both writing systems (e.g. writing down vowels as separate letters, effectively turning the abjad into a pure alphabet; lack of vowel length distinction in writing, etc.).

Froturn Halfling
The Froturn Halfling language is written with a variant of the Middle High Elven alphabet. Unlike its predecessor, it is standardized and pruned of defects, having been modified specifically to make all the phonemic distinctions that Western Halfling makes. It has the following orthographic conventions:
 * The vowels are respectively written . The semivowel  is written as, sometimes as.
 * The broad consonants are written .  is written  word-initially,   between two vowels. The postalveolar sibilants  are written as  when in the syllable coda.
 * The consonant clusters - historically  - are written as  instead of the expected . Likewise,  is generally written as  or  instead of  after other consonants.
 * The slender consonants are written  before the front vowels, as  before the back vowels . The postalveolar sibilants  are written as  when in the syllable coda.
 * Nasal diphthongs ending with - e.g.  - are written with  instead of, e.g.  as  instead of . As such,  and  are always written as  when followed by.
 * There is no need to distinguish between broad and slender consonants in the syllable coda, because coda consonants harmonize to the onset.

Antanath Halfling
The Antanath Halfling languageis written with the Antanath script.