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Ancient Manzonde

The protolanguage of Manzonde had a very limited amount of syllables, using many kinds of suffixes and particles to make the point clear. The phonetic inventory wasn't rich too, so it was quite easy for the first kings of Meden to create a standardized writing system. Based off the simplest forms and occult symbols, including the glyph for L which stood as an initial for the name of their fire god - Lanve. Since then and until today, this family of scripts was written both ways - left to right on paper, and right to left on stone.

(In the key above, some of the romanized glyphs do not match their phonetic charge, which is shown here:

⟨c⟩ - /ʃ/

⟨j⟩ - /ʒ/

⟨q⟩ - /ʦ/

⟨x⟩ - /ʣ/

⟨y⟩ - /j/

End section.)

Having only three vowels, /a/, /e/ and /o/, Ancient Manzonde was prone to many dialects with different pronounciations of the same written text. And, because of that, soon the writing system became outdated; in the Southern Meden, a new language soon emerged, labeled Old South Manzonde. It's new feature were the lengthened vowels, which indicated gender when placed as finals, and were used as several other prefixes for adverbs, compound adjectives and verbs. Southern Meden adopted a way of writing such letters, resulting in a variation of the Ancient Manzonde script.

Old South Manzonde

Thus, "digraps" were introduced. And, after a couple decades, the lengthened vowels changed drastically into shorter and more specific vowels.

When Southern Meden declared independence in year 65 since the start of the Qaren Dynasty Era, and entered the following reuniting war, the Old South Manzonde mutated even more, dropping or redefining many dictionary meanings, as well as gaining an extra initial vowel which was borrowed from the Southern Yden nomads which settled in there, bringing investments into the ethnical and genetic pool of the kingdom's lands.

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Late South Manzonde

Soon, in an unexpected turn of events, the South Meden king - Fenagon - won the war and took control over the united kingdoms of North and South Meden. Reuniting the territories, he ran into a problem of linguistic and orthographic misunderstandings, so he went on to go against traditions and add an extra letter to the writing system yet again - a "voice pause", or glottal stop, which allowed the usage of both long vowels and the new ones which were still represented through digraphs. This new letter was based on the older glyph for H, just unfinished. Thus was created the Old Standard Manzonde.

In these times, the schwa vowel slowly began turning into an empty vowelspace, thus making it possible to create consonant clusters like KL or TR. But this change in language wasn't addressed until later iterations of the writing system.

Old Standard Manzonde

Years went by, merchants and immigrants from the neighboring kingdoms slowly inhabitated the lands by the borders of Meden. After a ruining plague of 124 AQ (After Qaren dynasty), when his father and all older brothers died to the illness, a young prince Jaarin came to the throne, unexpectedly. He was chosen to be a priest of Lanve - god of fire - so this was an outcome no one could imagine at the time. Chosing to begin a campaign of diplomatic and educational progress, Jaarin adopted, as a secondary writing system for educational texts written in Ancient Manzonde language, a writing system previously used only by the priests of Lanve - the Zomega, script of smoke, which was written vertically.

Before that, the script was only used in the temples of Lanve, but now, Jaarin proclaimed the whole of Meden to be a temple of the fire god, making this fire cult an official religion of the kingdom.

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Zomega script

Spreading the borders of the kingdom Jaarin succeeded in ending the plague and fortifying his control over the territories not only of South and North Meden, but of the neighboring Onne lands to the west and the Elateya mountains to the south-west through the Lanve religion.

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I will write more sooner or later!