Chotarian alphabet

The Chotarian alphabet was a script used to write Chotarian and other languages in the general area of the Chotarian civilisation. Its use began from around 200 BCE, when it was ostensibly first introduced in the Urumen-ruled Third Chotarian Empire through the influence of Dabaian traders from the southwest, and displaced cuneiform. After the Third Chotarian Interdynastic, the look of its glyphs was extensively renovated based on another tamga that was used by the Dabaians, and this new script (also known as the Lacrean alphabet to specifically distinguish it) was popularised as part of the Fourth Chotarian Empire's de-Urumenising cultural policies. The spread of the alphabet contributed to the standardisation of the Neo-Chotarian dialects, particularly Old Lacrean, which came increasingly to eclipse Chotarian from this period on. The Urumen alphabet was adopted by the Undughu civilisation into the Undughu script under the First Despotism, which displaced (also Chotarian-derived) Undughu cuneiform, while the Lacrean evolution was adopted in the 10th century under the influence of the Fifth Chotarian Empire, which conquered most of the Undughuland by 981.

After the Secote conquest of Outer Joriscia in the 11th century CE, the introduction of Siriash meant that the Chotarian script was displaced by the Messenian alphabet, outside of areas that clung tightly onto Chotarian culture, such as the Heghta Kingdom or the cities of Low Lacre, although its survival in Lacre meant that from the 13th to 15th centuries Second Dawn and the Combination of Lacre there was a resurgence of its use. It was also retained in the Undughu lands, and Kiy, to write local vernaculars or the Kainish language. The rise of Vaestism and the imposition of the Vladykast script, especially under Great Neritsia, extinguished the use of Chotarian in the south by the 17th century; the conversion and expansion of the Lutoborsk ended Undughu use of it by the 19th, and the Sublimation of Kiy after 1881 finally consigned all variants of Chotarian to history.