#thoukariks

Post about Debics! (Because I get distracted)

"What's a Debic?"

A Debic [day-bik] is a specific kind of consonant in the Thoukarik writing system. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), Debics would essentially correspond to the Plosive Consonants, like "B", "T", "G", & "K". But it's not as simple as writing down a random symbol.

Thoukarik script is somewhat like music, in that it tells you how to pronounce it by the way it's written out. (Grand Script is the most precise, but we'll only be looking at Standard Script in this post)

Let's write the Thoukarik equivalent of the letter "B" as in bumblebee.

To write a Debic you have to start with a position, the character above is simply "putting your lips together", which isn't a noise — it's only a position.

To make it a noise, specifically a Debic, we start by adding either a "Flag" or a "Tail".

It should be pretty easy for you to tell which symbol has a Flag and which has a Tail. A Flag goes up, a Tail go down.

A Flag tells us that our noise is Open Right (or) and Closed Left (cl). That means that we make the noise by opening our mouth from having our lips together, so that you say "Ba", and not "aB" — that's what a Tail is for.

If you want a noise to close with a "B", you use a Tail, so the word "job" would have the "B" end with a Tail. Where as the word "bear" would need a Flag. Tails are Open Left (ol) and Closed Right (cr)

We'll make our "B" Open Right with a Flag, since we're trying to write the "B" in bumblebee.

Now there are two kinds of Flags and Tails that we could use, depending on whether we want our Debic "Soft" or "Sharp".

Soft and Sharp are essential what IPA calls "voiced" and "voiceless". "B" is a voiced plosive, "P" is a voiceless plosive — that's the only difference.

"B" and "P" both use the same position, (having the lips together) the only difference is whether they're Soft (voiced) or Sharp (voiceless).

So, giving our symbol the curved Flag, we get a Soft Open Right Debic.

To write any more though, you would have to know about Oriuls (vowels), but that's for another post.