Pronunciation and writing

Currently, Kokanu is written in two main writing systems:

• Latin script: This writing system is familiar to many people and easily used in many situations, but it is not culturally neutral and gives an advantage to people who already know the writing system.
• Likanu: This is a new writing system created for Kokanu. While it is designed to work in almost every situation that supports Unicode, it may be difficult to use for people who do not have access to a Likanu keyboard. However, it is culturally neutral and fits well with Kokanu's syllable structure.

There are other writing systems used by some, but these two writing systems are the only ones with official status.

Pronunciation chart

Consonants

Vowels

Writing Likanu

Likanu is the script made for Kokanu. It is written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and it has no capital letters. Instead, angle brackets (‹ ›) are used to indicate names. Likanu, unlike the Latin, Cyrillic or Greek writing systems, is not an alphabet. Instead, it is a kind of writing system called an abugida, where consonants are the primary letters and vowels are modifiers. This works as a midpoint between most kinds of writing systems in the world, with the exception of logographies, like Hanzi/Kanji.

• A syllable starts with a consonant letter (or o to mark no consonant). by itself, a consonant letter forms a syllable with the vowel a. For example, "ʋ" is written in Latin script as "la", not "l".
• To change the vowel in a syllable, you put a vowel letter in front of the consonant. For example, "ʋȷ" is written in Latin script as "le", not "lae", and "e" is not written as "ȷ", it's written as "oȷ", with a letter to specifically mark no consonant.
• To mark an "n" sound at the end of a syllable, put the diacritic ◌̄ above the consonant. For example, "ɛ̄ʃ" is written in Latin script as "con", not "co" or "cno".

Written in Likanu, the Kokanu translation for "I like to speak Kokanu, I am speaking it right now" is "ɞı ʋȷ ɤſxı ʌȷ xʃʌ ɕıɂ ‹xʃxƨſ›､ ōſ ɞı ʋȷ xʃʌ ɛ̄ʃɛ ɕıɂ ɂ". Can you figure out how this would be written in the Latin script?¹

Punctuation and style

In Latin script, Kokanu sentences do not start with capital letters. Instead, capital letters are only used when writing proper nouns or names, such as the word Kokanu. Otherwise, standard punctuation is used. Kokanu has its own set of punctuation, described here.

Punctuation chart

Writing Likanu

Writing Likanu characters can be a challenge, as they cannot be typed with most standard keyboards. While there will eventually be keyboard layouts, one way you can currently type Likanu is using the Likanu web tool, which converts Latin script Kokanu to Likanu and vice-versa.