I've been playing with this concept for a while, ever since I realized that Devanagari encodes long and nasal vowels as first-class citizens. Existing orthographies for Emilian (none of which is official or standard) use a number of diacritics and/or digraphs to represent these sounds, which is a pity.
Some notes:
- /a/ is the inherent vowel.
- The virama (vowel-cancelling sign) is implied at the end of a word. A word-final /a/ is written as if it was /aː/, since there are far less word-final /a/s than word-final consonants in Emilian, and there are no word-final (non-nasalized) /aː/s anyway.
- I made a mistake in the image, ऒ always represents short /o/.
- The alphabet uses some symbols from extended Devanagari, such as ऍ ऎ ऑ ऒ, to represent short vowels that standard (Sanskritic) Devanagari doesn't feature. These symbols are used as little as possible (see below).
- Emilian only distinguishes short and long vowels in stressed position. Moreover, it only distinguishes semi-open /ε ɔ/ and semi-closed /e o/ in stressed positions. Therefore, in unstressed positions ए ओ are preferred to ऎ ऒ for simplicity's sake, since there is no ambiguity anyway.
- Aspirates are absent in Emilian, thus /f/ is written as फ without a nukta.
- व represents /v~ʋ/ between vowels and /w/ elsewhere. In the rare case of an intervocalic /w/ or a non-intervocalic /v~ʋ/, व़ is used instead.
- In loanwords from Italian, /ʃ/ is replaced with Emilian /s̠/. In such cases, /s̠/ is spelled श.
- Emilian contrasts retracted laminar /s̠ z̠/ with dental apical /s̪ z̪/ (the sybilant versions of /θ ð/). The latter two sounds often correspond to /tʃ dʒ/ in Italian and have thus been spelled with the symbols for /tʃ dʒ/ plus a nukta, i.e. च़ ज़. /z̠/ is spelled स़ due to ज़ having been used for /z̪/.
- When nasalized, /ε ɔ/ turn to /εi~æi ɔu~ɒu/. The presence of a nasalization mark on those vowels implies the dyphthongization.
- To avoid confusion with vowel nasalization (which is phonemic at least in stressed contexts), nasal consonants are never written with a bindu after a (stressed) non-nasalized vowel.
- Emilian makes extended use of apostrophes, which are rendered with an avagraha ऽ in Devanagari.
Sample text:
अव सलूत तॊत! मॅ अम चाम [...] ए अ देस़वॆञ दा मौद्ना। अम प्येस़ दिमॊन्दि लऽएमिल्याँ ए तॊति अल लॆन्ग्वि दल मन्द। क्वस्त कॅ लऽऍ ऊँ तेंततीव एद द्रुवैर उँ अल्फबेत इंद्याँ पर स्क्रॆवेर ला मे बैला लॆन्ग्वा।
Transliterated with the Latin writing system I normally use:
Av salût tót! Mè am ciâm [redacted] e a deṡvégn da Môdna. Am piěṡ dimóndi l'emilian e tóti al léngui dal mànd. Quàst chè l'è un tentatîv ed druvêr un alfabět indian par scréver la mě bêla léngua.