Neo-Mandaic

Letters

Combining marks

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	pharyngeal	glottal
stop	p b	t d				k ɡ	q
ejectives		tˤ ðˤ
affricate				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
fricative	f v	θ ð	s z sˤ zˤ	ʃ ʒ		ɣ	χ ʁ	ħ ʕ	h
nasal	m		n
approximant	w		l		j
trill/flap			r

Tone

Neo-Mandaic is not a tonal language.

Structure

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Vowel summary

The right-hand column shows standalone vowels. The 'pointed' rows show where the vocalisation mark can be used in educational texts to disambiguate the vowel sound.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Vowel letters

The Mandaic Unicode block uses just 4 characters for vowels.

Click on the characters in the lists for detailed information. For a mapping of sounds to graphemes see vowel_mappings.

The letters used for vowels all have their origin in consonants.

ࡉ [U+0849 MANDAIC LETTER AKSA] and ࡅ [U+0845 MANDAIC LETTER USHENNA] are only rarely used for y and w.

ࡀ [U+0840 MANDAIC LETTER HALQA] and ࡏ [U+084F MANDAIC LETTER IN] are available because the language dropped the glottal and pharyngeal sounds.

Although the script is basically alphabetic, vowel sounds are not always shown. For example, the i is not shown in ࡌࡍ mn min from

Three characters in the Unicode block also have unwritten vowel sounds, ie.

ࡖ ḏ di

ࡗ kḏi

ࡇ ẖ iː

Vowel disambiguation

 ࡚ [U+085A MANDAIC VOCALIZATION MARK] is used in teaching materials to disambiguate the sound of a vowel:w

• o is indicated when used with ࡅ [U+0845 MANDAIC LETTER USHENNA], eg. compare ࡁࡅ buࡁࡅ࡚ bo
• e when used with ࡉ [U+0849 MANDAIC LETTER AKSA], eg. compare ࡁࡉ biࡁࡉ࡚ be
• a when used with ࡀ [U+0840 MANDAIC LETTER HALQA], eg. compare ࡁࡀ baːࡁࡀ࡚ ba

Standalone vowels

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Vowel length

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Nasalisation

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Tones

Neo-Mandaic is not a tonal language.

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Mandaic vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Mandaic orthography, grouped by word-initial ( i ), medial ( m ), and final ( f ) types. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

Consonant summary

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Basic consonants

The Mandaic block has 17 basic, native consonants:

Special characters

ࡇ [U+0847 MANDAIC LETTER IT] ẖ only appears at the end of personal names or at the end of words to indicate the third person singular suffix.

ࡖ [U+0856 MANDAIC LETTER DUSHENNA] has a morphemic function, being used to write the relative pronoun and genitive exponent ḏ-, eg. ࡖࡍࡐࡀࡒࡕ ḏnpāqt dinpaqt who left youࡖࡎࡉࡍࡀ ḏsinā disina of hatred

ࡗ [U+0857 MANDAIC LETTER KAD] is used to write the word ࡗ kḏ when, as, likeIt was derived from a digraph of ࡊࡖ [U+084A MANDAIC LETTER AK + U+0856 MANDAIC LETTER DUSHENNA].

Repertoire extension

 ࡙ [U+0859 MANDAIC AFFRICATION MARK ] extends the character set to cover foreign sounds. Extensions include the following:u

• č, ǰ ࡔ࡙ (ࡔ is ʃ).
• f ࡐ࡙ (ࡐ is p).
• θ ࡕ࡙ (ࡕ is t).
• ð ࡃ࡙ (ࡃ is d).
• ðˤ ࡈ࡙ (ࡈ is tˤ).
• ʒ ࡑ࡙ (ࡑ is sˤ).
• γ ࡂ࡙ (ࡂ is g).
• χ ࡊ࡙ (ࡊ is k).
• ħ ࡄ࡙ (ࡄ is h).

The character ࡘ [U+0858 MANDAIC LETTER AIN] is borrowed from ع [U+0639 ARABIC LETTER AIN] to represent the Arabic sound ʕ.

Vowel absence

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Onset consonants

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Final consonants

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Consonant clusters

Häberlh,729 provides some detailed information about rules for consonant clusters.

Consonant length

 ࡛ [U+085B MANDAIC GEMINATION MARK ] indicates gemination of a consonant (referred to by native writers as 'hard' pronunciation), eg. ࡋࡉࡁ࡛ࡀ lib˖ā lebba heart

Note that geminated ࡕ࡙ tˑ θ is pronounced χt.h,728

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Mandaic consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Mandaic orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

Cursive text

Mandaic is cursive, ie. letters in a word are joined up. Fonts need to produce the appropriate joining form for a code point, according to its visual context.

The cursive treatment doesn't produce significant variations of the essential part of a rendered character (unlike Arabic). In some letters, the joining edge of the glyph adapts to join with an adjacent character. Two examples show how strokes away from the baseline are typically shortened to create joining shapes.

Other small adaptations may occur between certain adjacent characters, such as kl, wt and mn.^d

Two letters don't join on either side: ࡗ [U+0857 MANDAIC LETTER KAD] and ࡘ [U+0858 MANDAIC LETTER AIN].

Context-based shaping & positioning

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The position of diacritics may vary according to whether or not the glyph of the base character extends below the baseline. The diacritic also needs to be positioned horizontally underneath the character in the appropriate place. Several such variations are shown here:

Font styling & weight

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Grapheme clusters

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Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Phrase & section boundaries

Mandaic uses sentence punctuation sparselye. ࡞ [U+085E MANDAIC PUNCTUATION] is used to start and end text sections. Everson describes a smaller version of this symbol that is used like a comma.e There is no Unicode character for the smaller version.

The smaller size is also used in colophons (historical lay text added to religious text).^d

Observation: The keyboard at MandeanNetwork.com suggests that writers of Mandaic use Arabic punctuation, such as the following, in addition to western punctuation such as colon, full stop, etc. This is TBC.

Bracketed text

Observation: The keyboard at MandeanNetwork.com suggests that writers of Mandaic use Arabic parentheses, such as the following (the shape may vary). This is TBC.

Quotations & citations

Observation: The keyboard at MandeanNetwork.com suggests that writers of Mandaic use the following. This is TBC.

Emphasis

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Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

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Inline notes & annotations

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Other punctuation

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Other inline text decoration

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Line breaking

Lines usually break between words.

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Mandaic orthography.

Text alignment & justification

When text is fully justified the baseline may be stretched, as in Arabic. The Unicode Standard saysu that ـ [U+0640 ARABIC TATWEEL] may be used to achieve that effect, however this is not a good solution in text where the line width varies, eg. in a web browser whose window can be stretched. (The reason being that as the paragraphs reflow words will wrap into different positions on the line.)

The following reflect justification practices observed in the (handwritten) text Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer.

The whole document is justified on both sides of the text. In many cases the final word is stretched internally to make the line fit the width of the available space. Only rarely are words earlier in the line stretched.

A difference from Arabic is that many lines are stretched to the end of the available space by a trailing baseline extension. The choice of internal vs trailing extension appears to be related to the character at the end of the word.

On a good number of lines, final letters in a word appear to be squeezed onto the line by writing them above the preceding part of the line. A short example can be seen in fig_justification_hr.

Another notable feature is the use of a 'rule' such as ࡎـــــࡀ U+084E MANDAIC LETTER AS + baseline extension + U+0840 MANDAIC LETTER HALQA, where the baseline extension can cause the combination to span all or a large part of the line. In some cases, the letter ࡔ or ࡄ may appear at the midpoint of the rule. If this combination doesn't fill a whole line, it appears at the end of a line and is long enough to fill the remaining space.

Further research is needed to ascertain whether these justification techniques are generally applicable to Mandaic text, rather than unique to this document.

Daniels saysd that ࡇ [U+0847 MANDAIC LETTER IT] can sometimes be 'manipulated calligraphically in an otherwise pedestrian manuscript in order to fill out a line'.

Text spacing

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This section looks at ways in which spacing is applied between characters over and above that which is introduced during justification.

Baselines, line height, etc.

Mandaic uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

A few Mandaic characters have glyphs that rise above the main height, and a few more that descend below the baseline. Diacritics are attached below the letters.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Mandaic glyphs from the Noto font. Many Mandaic letters are less high than the Latin x-height, however some extend well below the Latin descenders, especially when they have combining marks attached. A few character glyphs reach the Latin cap-height.

Counters, lists, etc.

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Styling initials

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