Selected Chapters

from
A study of the ancient and modern languages in Daleth
an unfinished manuscript by Master Ij’lan Zuchstaba

The signs of the Lubanian language

Most letters of the Lubanian written language started their lives as pictograms. There small pictures were during the ages changed to symbols in order to write them quicker. The calligraphic symbols still reflect the original spirit, but the normally used letters are just letters.
See the examples for hand (famah) and tree (akiti).


Above the original symbols for tree and hand, below the modern way of writing. The tree has a dot in the symbol and stands for “tree” instead of k, the hand doesn’t have a dot and stands for the letter f.

The original written language only contained symbols, but the symbols soon became an indication for a consonant. The tree, akiti, was used for the letter k. If it still had its original meaning of “tree”, a dot was put in the symbol (note that the dots that join sentences are placed outside the brackets that form the words).

Vowels were later added in the form of symbols attached to the consonants.

All three vowels (a, i and o) have a horizontal and a vertical part. If the sound is long, the vertical part is longer - usually a short sound is only half the height of a consonant and a long one has the same size, as a general rule the short vocal should fit in a square.
A vocal never has a meaning as a mere symbol, neither can a symbol consist of a consonant and a vowel. The latter must be seen as a syllable.
There are more symbols (with the dot, that is) than letters. Some of these symbols are cursed and in effect never used because the demons can too easily find out their meaning.

The joiners and keys are like the vowels just symbols to guide reading.

Joiners join the syllables. Keys indicate how a word must be read:
The key at the top is there to reverse the meaning of the symbol or word, the one in the middle is placed as first symbol of a text, indicating that it should be read in a ploughing manner: start left, next line start right, third line start left, et cetera. There are also keys to tell that the text should be read from below to above, from left to right and so on. Some magic books are written from the centre, circling outwards - a difficult read for both demons as humans.
The bottom key indicated that the next symbols are a cover up and meaningless. The number of dots indicates how many symbols should be skipped. In some holy texts, the skipped symbols might have a hidden meaning of their own, but mostly there are symbols used to scare the demons away.

The symbols for “male” and “female” have developed for symbols of the genitals. Together they form the symbol for “plural” (also used for the ainahawair in Daleth, where two times the symbol stands for “2 ainahawair”). The joined symbols with a dot stands for sexual intercourse.



The symbols for time are based on the graph for “sunset” (or sunrise). With an upstanding attachment it stand for the past (with a dot: dusk), with a down pointing attachment for the future (with a dot: dawn). The Lubanian word for sunset is maheb, the symbol stand for the letter m.



Of course there are many more symbols, joiners, keys and indications for gender, time and so on than placed in this document that must be seen as an introduction in how the modern written Lubanian language works and how the language has developed from glyphs to modern letters.