Alphabet - Orthography

The writing system of the Miyako languge, Ikema dialect, or even the entire Ryukyuan language group is still an unsettled. There is no standardized way of writing any of these languages, in Japanese-based (kana-based) or Latin-based (romaji-based) writing systems. Even for this online dictionary of Ikema, the writing system is still being discussed and modified; however, there should not be many significant changes to the list below. To make easier to read for Japanese speakers, this alphabet is arranged based on the "50 Sound" phonemic chart order of Japanese. 

Please note:

1. Letters in parentheses () are sounds that cannot exist by themselves in the Ikema dialect. 2. "I" represents a high-central unrounded vowel. One of the significant changes to this current orthography will be to phase the capital I out and replace it with ɨ or ï. 3. Corresponding IPA phonetic symbols will be in brackets: [aɪpʰiːeɪ] 4. Alternate spellings of the sounds will be indicated with a slash /.

Geminates: There are many geminate (long consonant) sounds in Ikema. They are written with a small っ before the long consonant in in the kana script and written with a doubled letter in the latin script. At the beginning of a word, some possible sounds are:

Geminate sounds within a word are relatively rare.