pitaWiSa writing

WiSaWiSa don't have the ability to use their feet to manipulate a writing instrument, as humans do, nor do they generally make anything besides nests. However, they developed a writing system for pitaWiSa based on their footprints in sand or on clay. Each foot has three toes facing forward and one facing backward, with the backward toe angled a little bit towards the centre of the body, so there is an asymmetry between left (L) and right (R) footprints. Footprints can be oriented in four directions: back toe down (D), back toe left (L), back toe up (U), and back toe right (R). For those unaccustomed to the sight, it's pretty funny to watch a WiSa hopping and spinning around in all different directions to make the correctly-oriented footprints. Although there are only 8 characters, and there are 10 different sounds in pitaWiSa, the alphabet is unambiguous. Because of the strict syllable structure, the same letters can be used to represent the stops and the vowels. If the letter is first in the word, it's a stop. If a stop/vowel comes after a consonant (stop or continuant), it's a vowel. If it comes after a vowel, it's a stop. (When I'm doing a direct transliteration, I use the stop equivalents for both values, but the vowel equivalents could be used just as well.) So 4 letters are used for the 4 continuants, 3 letters are used for the 3 stops and 3 vowels, and the last letter is used to indicate reduplication. It is written once after a stem to indicate single reduplication, and twice after a stem to indicate double reduplication.