Mirad Grammar/Alphabet

The Alphabet

Mirad uses the Roman alphabet as in Modern English. There is an upper case (majuscules or capital letters) and a lower case (miniscules or small letters). The upper case letters are used for capitalization exactly as in English. Mirad, at least for non-foreign words, uses no diacritic marks such as the brève, the grave accent, or the dieresis. The order of the alphabet is the same as in English. The letters, though, are pronounced as shown in the chart. Note that there is a pattern: The vowel of each Mirad letter name changes to the single vowel letter before it. For example, the vowel in the name for letter f changes to e following the letter e in the alphabetic sequence. The Mirad letter name for j is ji because it is just beyond the vowel letter i in the alphabetic sequence. Uppercase letters have a Mirad letter name beginning in ag, a prefix meaning big.

Alphabet A-N

Lowercase	a	b	c	d		e	f	g	h		i	j	k	l	m	n
Mirad Letter Name	a	ba	ca	da		e	fe	ge	he		i	ji	ki	li	mi	ni
Uppercase	A	B	C	D		E	F	G	H		I	J	K	L	M	N
Mirad Letter Name	aga	agba	agca	agda		age	agfe	agge	aghe		agi	agji	agki	agli	agmi	agni

Alphabet O-Z

Lowercase	o	p	q	r	s	t		u	v	w	x	y	z
Mirad Letter Name	o	po	ko	ro	so	to		u	vu	wu	xu	yu	zu
Uppercase	O	P	Q	R	S	T		U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Mirad Letter Name	ago	agpo	agko	agro	agso	agto		agu	agvu	agwu	agxu	agyu	agzu

The letters c and q are used only to represent words and names imported into Mirad from other languages, or for words in which letters of the alphabet are used to spell out chemical terms, metric units, country names, languages, and other terms based on existing world standards like ISO.

Letter Names

Spelling a word aloud means uttering the word's Mirad letter names in succession left to right. If the letter is a upper case, then the letter name is preceded by ag-....big, eg.:

• anxwa is spelled aloud as a-ni-xu-wu-a
• Mirad is spelled aloud as agmi-i-ro-a-da

Note that age for E and agge for G need to be carefully distinguished. The former, age is pronounced a-ge, while the latter, agge, is pronounced ag-ge.

Capitalization

Capitalization in Mirad is handled almost exactly as in English:

• The first word of a new sentence is capitalized.

• At ife et.....I love you.
• Iyt da: "At ife et."....She said, "I love you."

• All proper nouns are capitalized, including names of people, organizations, books, languages, countries, etc.

• Mirad....Mirad
• Ferom....France
• ha Feromati....the French
• Alica be Flisem....Alice in Wonderland
• ha Yoongun....The Pentagon

• Acronyms are capitalized.

• ZUYX....NATO.
• DXV....FBI.

• If a verb or adjective is based on a proper noun, the proper noun part of the word gets capitalized.

• Deumxer....to Germanify
• loNazixer....to de-Nazify
• Irolim-ulza....Kelly (= Ireland) green.

• The planets and inhabitants of planets are capitalized.

• Ha tyod bi Imer.....The people of Earth.
• Ha Umerati upeye.....The Martians are coming.

• The word god is capitalized if referring to a religion's one, true god, otherwise not.

• Ha toti se futipa.....The gods are angry.
• Fyadilu bu Tot.....Pray to God.
• Van yat fyadilu bu Allah.....Let's pray to Allah.

Unlike in English, though:

• The days of the week, the months of the year, and the seasons are not capitalized.

• juab....Monday
• jieb....February
• jeub....Winter

Punctuation

Punctuation is handled as in English, with the following exception:

• A colon (:) is used in direct quotations, as opposed to the comma (,) used in English, eg.:

He said, "Let there be light."....It da: "Van esu man."

Here is a chart showing punctuation marks and symbols along with their names in Mirad:

Punctuation Marks and Symbols

ENGLISH	SYMBOL	MIRAD
MARKS (siyn)
period	.	nodsiyn
comma	,	grunsiyn
colon	:	ennodsiyn
semi-colon	;	nodgrunsiyn
question mark	?	didsiyn
exclamation point	!	yoksiyn
single quote	'	aona gedsiyn
double quote	"	eona gedsiyn
hyphen	-	naydsiyn
dash, em dash	--	eona nadsiyn
underscore, low line	_	oybnadsiyn
vertical line	|	aonadsiyn
wave dash	~	pyaon nadsiyn
forward slash, solidus	/	zaya kinad
backward slash, reverse solidus	\	zoya kinad
double slash	//	eona kinad
apostrophe	'	oysunsiyn
left parenthesis right parenthesis	( )	zua uzkun yebyujarsiyn zia uzkun yebyujarsiyn
left angle bracket right angle bracket	< ]	zua gun yebyujarsiyn zia gun yebyujarsiyn
left square bracket right square bracket	[ ]	zua izkun yebyujarsiyn zia izkun yebyujarsiyn
left curly bracket right curly bracket	{ }	zua uzyua yebyujarsiyn zia uzyua yebyujarsiyn
ellipsis	...	innodsiyn
caret	^	garsiyn
SYMBOLS (siun)
ampersand	&	aysiun
at sign	@	asiun
percent sign	%	asoynsiun
hash tag, pound sign, number sign	#	sagsiun
asterisk	*	marsiun
dollar sign	?	Usodansiun/

Note: Most of these marks and symbols are on a standard English-language keyboard. Mathematical symbols are not listed here, nor are most accent marks like "grave accent". See the Mathematical Expressions section of Numbers.

Text Direction

Text in Mirad is written from left to right with spaces between words.