Xi'an alphabet



The Xi’an alphabet is a writing system to write the Xi’an language.

The alphabet has over 200 "letters", symbols or glyphs. Each letter has more than one form (basic, block, corner). Kyexiin has also a hyphen, 'comma' (epentheses and pause), quotation and a period (full stop) mark. Proper nouns are also marked in the Xi’an script. There are a special glyph for vowel muting and a glyph equal to the ampersand (&).

Some glyphs can occur in different shapes or variants. Glyphs are grouped into blocks and form 'words'. The block format is always:
 * V, Vowel
 * VC, Vowel - Consonant
 * CV, Consonant - Vowel
 * CVC, Consonant - Vowel - Consonant

Therefore some words can be written differently. Xi’an tries to minimize the number of blocks.

It is important to note that pitch diacritics can fundamentally change the meaning of a word. It can be sometimes very tricky to distinguish these diacritics from each other.