[1] Most of the characters derive from the Latin or Greek alphabet, and from earlier systems such as Dania.
Fine nuances in articulation can be distinguished by diacritics (e.g. dots or tildes beneath or across the character).
Reduced vowels are ɪ ʊ ə α. Lenis and fortis consonants are paired: b p, d t, k g. For fricatives they are: As in the IPA and extIPA, diacritics may doubled for greater degree and placed in parentheses for a lesser degree.
For example, ẹ, e᪷ are a close (high) and open (low) e, while e̤, e᪸ are a closer (higher) and more open (lower) e,[note 2] and ẹ᪽, e᪷᪽ are only slightly raised and lowered e. Similarly, ë and ẽ are rounded and nasalized e, while ë̈, ẽ̃ are extra-rounded and extra-nasalized e and ë᪻, ẽ᪻ are slightly rounded and nasalized e. Parentheses around a double diacritic, such as ë̈᪻, mean the degree of modification is intermediate between that indicated by a single and a double diacritic.
An example of the shades of sound indicated by diacritics is the following scale from near-high to near-low front vowels: The Teuthonista phonetic transcription system is used by the following projects: