Calligraphy

[alavda-isere]

[Dedalvs]

[alavda-isere]

[Dedalvs]

[kadani]

My 0·002 Kitivalha on these issues. I hoped that the vowel signs were... combinable.. so xueba is x(ue)b(a) the brackets show enclosed characters. This means that *xeuba would look exactly the same, but the only combinations so far where that matters is ai/ia and ua/au. In these causes 2 different vowel signs might exist.

For itsa, I imagined it to be *(i)ts(a). Where * is an 'empty' letter. If there is no final vowel, I thought that the characters could just stay without vowel sign.

I like kadani (A) (and can imagine kadani (B) as alternative font of it, just like Latin has serif and sans serif fonts) and the Halfsies.

[Matthew Turnbull]

[Dedalvs]

[alavda-isere]

For what it's worth, I also like some sort of cancellation + null consonant scheme. I have a slight preference for the Devanagari-style vowel cancellation, simply because I think it'd be easier for my brain to register an overt subraction rather than an implied one (which is what the synharmic deletion seems like to me!). I think multiple vowels over a consonant (xue +ba) would require too many letter forms to memorize. I'm not about to do the math now, but as it is, we have 20 consonants and 5 vowels, which is 100 CV forms before including onset-less and closed syllables. Granted, that it'll be an abugida-type system makes this simpler than a straight syllabary (a la Japanese), but still. I'm for any system that's simple for both us as learners and our script designer/s

[Dedalvs]

Okay, I devised some letter forms. I'll post the image here, and then discuss what to do with it in a post following this one (the image is pretty large).

Oh, quick note: With the vowels, I first put the vowel part by itself, and then put it on top of a consonant to show what it would like in use.

[Dedalvs]

Okay, so here's what I did. I created a bunch of consonantal and vowel forms--many more than we'll actually need--and made them into a font. I assigned them to characters so I could type them, but I've left them without phonemic associations here. The idea is that if people like this script, we can choose which glyphs go with which phonemes (and I gave them numbers and grouped them more or less by type for ease of reference).

I created several base glyph types, and have made variations on them. Turned glyphs or modified glyphs don't necessarily mean anything, and they don't need to; I've simply provided them to give them as many looks as possible.

If we do get to the point where we decide on glyphs, I should mention that there's no need for there to be systematicity (e.g. where a dot means nasalization, or voicing, or lack of voicing, or velar, etc.). There can be, but it's not necessary. Notice that in English, the dot above the "i" and "j" don't mean anything; they're just part of the character. And while in Turkish the difference between a dotted and undotted "i" is important, it isn't systematic (e.g. the difference between "e" and "a" isn't a dot over one and a lack of one over the other). So, for example, it's perfectly reasonable to decide that 64 will be a vowel, but none of the other vowel characters will have dots.

Also, a quick comment about 22. That one is, essentially, an empty consonant, but it doesn't need to be the empty consonant (or anything at all, for that matter). In Arabic (in hand writing, not in a font), the consonant "s" is indicated with simply an elongated line; there's no marking on it whatsoever. Similarly, "ʃ" is indicated with that same line with three dots over it (kind of the difference between 22 and 23). I thought it'd be nice to list that as an option.

There's plenty of options in this inventory for interesting marking strategies. As an example, here's the vowel inventory of a new language of mine, Aaalis, in its script:



Notice that the dot, in these examples, doesn't actually mean anything; it's just used in making different vowels. Similarly, there is no length marker: There are simply varying strategies for realizing length given the vowel type.

And, as a last note, any of the characters can be modified, if you give me an idea how you want it to be modified (e.g. a given line is too thick or too thin; some line or curve should be moved to one side or another, etc.).