The script is called Serali (and why the hell not? "pritiskripti" is too long, and I can't think of anything else at the moment), after the scribe who codified and reorganised several other scripts which were formerly in use. It is perhaps a sort of semi-featural syllabary, and takes advantage of the phonology of the slightly archaic and formalised Rachovian for which it was designed. The permitted syllable structures were largely restricted to (s)CV and (s)TRV, where C = any consonant, T = any stop, R = one of /l r v/, and V is any vowel; moreover, some consonants were found only before front vowels and others only before back vowels. (If you know Slavonic historical linguistics, this is comparable to the state of Proto-Slavonic just before the changes in vowel length.)
In its purest form, Serali is written horizontally from left to right within four parallel equally-spaced straight lines. Each grapheme consists of one of nineteen bodies, which are written between the middle two lines, and one of several tails, which descend to the lowest line; additionally it may also take a crest, which typically rises to the highest line. The body represents the principal consonant in the onset (C or T above), and the tail represents the vowel of the coda. Some bodies represent different phonemes before front and back vowels.
The crest represents consonant clusters in the onset. This takes the form of a circle for a preceding /s/, which is written next to and not above the body, left and right hooks for following /l/ and /r/, and a loop for following /v/. Where there are three consonants, the crests are combined. Some combinations of crest and body have conventional representations, as shown; the one for /sv/ is informally known as "donkey", for obvious reasons. The overline for /n/ is only used with the bodies for /k g x v/ and occasionally /s/.
![Image](http://bricka.16mb.com/cons.png)
The tails mostly come in pairs in which the clockwise member represents a back vowel and the anticlockwise member represents the corresponding front vowel; the combination of the tail for /e/ and the body for /k/ thus represents /ʧe/, since /ke/ and /ʧa/ did not occur. The various different tails for long vowels represent the continuations of different scribal traditions, and are all officially sanctioned, although the first of each group is preferred. The exceptions are the tails for /ju:/ and /y:/; /y:/ is a back-central unrounded vowel from older /u:/, and /u:/ is the only vowel before which can follow both palatalised and unpalatalised consonants (from /eu/ and /ou/ respectively). Note that the long nasals each have four possible tails; this is a consequence of the fact that these phonemes were quite rare. Note too that Serali does not represent the pitch distinctions on long vowels.
![Image](http://bricka.16mb.com/vowels.png)
Because Rachovian is currently undergoing revision, I've chosen to use Old Church Slavonic for the samples, except for two of them which are in Czech; identifying their sources is left an an exercise for the reader, as is finding the mistakes which I've deliberately left in
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
![Image](http://bricka.16mb.com/samples.png)
![Image](http://bricka.16mb.com/cz.png)