Middle High Elven alphabet

The Middle High Elven alphabet was a variant of the High Elven alphabet used between 200 BEKE and 500 AEKE. It is considered a vast improvement from the Classical High Elven alphabet, and is also considered the direct predecessor of the Middle Etrandish alphabet and all of its descendants.

History
Around 200 BEKE, Vulgar High Elven gave way to Middle High Elven. Unlike it's predecessor, Middle High Elven however was more than the language of the common rabble. It was also embraced as the language of nobility and royalty, and as such, it warranted the need of a standardized way to write. The sound shifts however rendered the Classical High Elven alphabet ill-suited to properly represent Middle High Elven, and as such, the writing was reformed.

One of the most important reforms is the introduction of two new letters for the vowel. While Classical High Elven did not distingusih between the vowel and the semivowel  (which has hardened into  in Middle High Elven) in writing, Middle High Elven introduced a new letter for, and it's longer variant , keeping the original letter reserved for the consonant  only. The usage of for the glide  persisted however, for example in the digraphs  and.

Previously, was used for the front unrounded, and  was for the front rounded , but by Middle High Elven,  got unrounded to , rendering the letter  redoundant - it was recycled to represent the semivowel , but usage for vowel sounds still persisted - for  in etymological spellings and  in foreign words.

All around, the most important innovation of the Middle High Elven alphabet was the introduction of (partial) distinction between vowels and semivowels. Two letters were dropped from the predecessor, and  - in highly established, nativized loanwords, words containing these letters have come to be pronounced as if they were  and, while in scholarly material (Lizardman transliterations) and later loanwords, they were replaced by  and , which were now representing the sounds those two obsolete letters used to stand for:  and.

Competing Schools of Thought
The Middle High Elven orthography wasn't truly unified, as there were two competing schools of thought, two competing orthographies: the classicists and the reformists.

Before these two schools of thought came to be, the orthography was inconsistent and outdated: the letter was used for three sounds in total: the vowel, the semivowel , and the affricate. The letter too represented three sounds: the vowel, the semivowel , and the fricative. This just couldn't go on, hence two competing schools of thought advocating for different means of solving this issue.

The reformists introduced new letters and advocated for their use: for the vowel,  for the semivowel  and  for the affricate  - which evolved from earlier word-initial. They also advocated for recycling the old letter for the semivowel. They even advocated for the re-introduction of the old and antique letter, which had previously fallen out of use.

The classicists were much more conservative, aside from the new letter, they rejected the new letters, but for a long time offered no viable alternative. Eventually, they begrudgingly realized that the old system is simply unsuited for the new language, so they began to advocate for the re-usage of already-existing letters: and  would be both represented by the letter,  and  would be both represented by the letter , but the affricate  would always be represented by  before front vowels,  before back vowels.

While initially, the reformists were dominant, after the classicists begrudgingly made the above-stated compromises, they rose to dominance, and their way of writing would come to serve as the basis of the contemporary High Elven alphabet - hence the absence of the letters, , , with a few exceptions - but the orthography and alphabet of the reformists would travel abroad, and serve as the basis of the Middle Etrandish orthography, and by extension, the contemporary Etrandish and Etrancoasti orthographies.

The letters
and were written  and. normally stand for the velar, except before , where they stand for the palatal. are used to represent the velar before these front vowels, just as  are used to represent the palatal sounds before the back vowels.

An interesting thing to note is that fantó and wuntó are look identical, but are in fact two different letters, the first being used as a numeral only, the second not having a numeral value. Eventually, fantó was completely phased out and its numerical value was assigned to wuntó.

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