The mapping system can be summarised as follows:
|
Linguistic property |
Graphical correlate |
|
Vowel quality |
Orientation of triangle/chevron |
|
Vowel nasality |
Apex dot (ingungwanyana) |
|
Place of articulation |
Position within the syllable block |
|
Manner of articulation |
Shape of the consonant grapheme |
|
Affrication |
Superposition of stop + fricative |
|
Coarticulation |
Superposition of graphemes |
|
Voicing |
Straight line from base to apex (uphimbo) |
|
Glottal action |
Internal dot (lerothodi) |
|
Prenasalisation |
Apex circle (ingungwana) |
|
Nasal consonant |
Circle with internal features |
|
Clicks |
Hourglass grapheme |
|
Null vowel |
Downward chevron |
|
Tone |
Not encoded |
|
Vowel length |
Not encoded |
This explicit feature-based mapping is one of the defining properties of isiBheqe soHlamvu/Ditema tsa dinoko: the graphemes are designed to encode phonological features rather than assigning arbitrary symbols to phonemes or syllables.