brief notes on written Sonts, a script from the Saltreave that does not appear directly though it is at times referenced, compiled from a few bluesky posts
Sonts (written out by non-speakers as Sontisien/Sontisch/Sontsa etc) primarily makes use of a vertical script a la Ogham, or more specifically Scholastic Ogham, though it borrows more from Manchu when it comes to character differentiation and punctuation
one notable trait of Sonts is that, when spoken, names are distinctly gendered through a slight mutation in pronunciation at the last syllable. this is entirely absent in writing, as the space where this accenting would normally be indicated is occupied by the tail that finalises a name, which is the same tail that you would normally use to finalise a column of text at fullest stop, equivalent to a paragraph break
in spoken Sonts, indicating name gender is polite (for example, Mahnédahnse for masculine and Mahnédahnsé for a feminine name) but using a terminating tail is proper in writing, and so refusing to do this is roughly equivalent to leaving someone's name uncapitalised. it's so improper that it comes off as a sign of illiteracy before it even registers as a rude gesture in most cases
this rule is so intuitive to speakers of Sonts that they rarely notice themselves doing it out loud, and in written form, the average Sonts-reader would probably not even think to explain this self-evident rule unless they were specifically educated to teach it
while most non-name nouns are also gendered, this is a consistent feature in written Sonts, as it's somewhat improper to end a sentence on a noun. strictly speaking, it's proper to give an adjective the verb of its attached noun, but the grammatical genders as applied to adjectives have taken on some connotations of their own, and so a few exist as exceptions to this, acting as distinct words. accordingly, this can be employed as a poetic device
there are a few grammatical genders in Sonts, though of the five that are commonly used[1], three avoid this orthographic stumble by being indicated at the start of a word. in the somewhat unusual case that one of these finds its way to the start of a column, where the name would otherwise be written with an initial character, modern Sonts orthography prefers that a (relatively, in scope of centuries) recently-emerged ligature above the name be substituted, to preserve clarity in reading
while horizontal Sonts does exist by necessity for compatibility with foreign ledgers, particularly those of the oft-contacted Vedrons, it is not widely used domestically and, eschewing initial and terminal characters for ease of foreign reading, does tend to preserve non-contextual indicators of gender in names. this falls roughly in line with the rarity of unisex naming in Vedron cultures, though it's somewhat more common in those along the shared sea
in contrast to this, it's not uncommon to see Vedron forms of Sonts names in the Sonts-speaking territories that were once occupied by Greater Vedronia, where the language was disfavoured in official documents
[1]: the five genders, applied to as inflection to nouns including names and to adjectives though rarely to verbs, approximate to <neutral youth/feminine>, <default-feminine elder to the speaker>, <default-masculine elder to the speaker>, <default-masculine-but-not-always owner-that-belongs-to-the-owned (think heir)>, <baby, but in the sense of an animal or raw material, not a person>, and the mistaking of the later three for a consistent part of a noun has resulted in some curious loans into Vedron. a few names even have permanent ké- prefixing baked into them with a conflicting inflection on the final syllable because of this
