# 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 Lowercaseabcdefghijklmn Mirad Letter Name abacadaefegeheijikilimini UppercaseABCDEFGHIJKLMN Mirad Letter Name agaagbaagcaagdaageagfeaggeagheagiagjiagkiagliagmiagni
       Alphabet O-Z Lowercaseopqrstuvwxyz Mirad Letter Name opokorosotouvuwuxuyuzu UppercaseOPQRSTUVWXYZ Mirad Letter Name agoagpoagkoagroagsoagtoaguagvuagwuagxuagyuagzu
    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 Teazmem....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 ENGLISHSYMBOLMIRAD 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.
← Why Mirad? · Mirad Grammar · Pronunciation →