Neography and Writing systems

I don't think this makes for a good featural script the way i've done it (as someone who doesn't know Braille), but i had a dream about this last night so i decided to work it out anyway. Braille letter numbers are in parentheses.

Vertical position indicates PoA. Horizontal position is voicing.

⠁/k/ (1)
⠈/g/ (4)
⠂/t/ (2)
⠐/d/ (5)
⠄/p/ (3)
⠠/b/ (6)
⡀/h/ (7)

Dot 7 (h) indicates a fricative

⡂/s/ (27)
⡐/z/ (57)
⡄/f/ (37)
⡠/v/ (67)

And that's as far as i got in my dream. But i can take it further now that i'm awake.

Add dot 7 to 1 and 4 to make

⡁/x/ (17)
⡈/ɣ/ (47)

Modify ⡂/s/ and ⡐/z/ by adding dots 1 and 3 to move it further forward or backward, making

⡃/ʃ/ (127)
⡆/θ/ (237)
⡑/ʒ/ (157)
⡔/ð/ (357)

And as i try to find a way to turn ⡄/f/ and ⡠/v/ into /ɸ β/ i'm already running out of combinations. Braille's 255 letters are enough for one language, but without a language in mind i found myself trying to represent the IPA and that's a bit much while trying to keep it featural.

I could try just the sounds in my accent's English.

⠁/k/ (1)
⠈/g/ (4)
⠂/t/ (2)
⠐/d/ (5)
⠄/p/ (3)
⠠/b/ (6)
⡀/h/ (7)
⡂/s/ (27)
⡐/z/ (57)
⡄/f/ (37)
⡠/v/ (67)
⡃/ʃ/ (127)
⡆/θ/ (237)
⡑/ʒ/ (157)
⡔/ð/ (357)

And now, the consonants that don't fit nicely into my chart of voice and fricatives/plosives for 3-ish places of articulation. I want to reserve dot 8 for vowels, so i'll use 1 (k) and 4 (g) as modifiers.

I'll do the nasals next. They're all voiced, so dot 1 (k) will be the modifier i use.

⠉/ŋ/
⠑/n/
⠡/m/

Then /ɹ ɫ/ can map to patterns 2 & 3 with dot 4 (g) as a modifier. This mapping isn't as nice as the nasals, partly because pattern 14 is taken and i have to shift them forward from their places of articulation.

⠊/ɫ/ (24)
⠌/ɹ/ (34)

/j w/ next, and if i use dots 1 and 4 as modifiers i can do /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ at the same time.

⠋/t͡ʃ/ (124)
⠙/d͡ʒ/ (145)

⠍/j/ (134)
⠩/w/ (146)

That just leaves /Ɂ/, the glottal stop.

⡉/Ɂ/ (147)

I'm inverting the fricative marker here, but i don't see a better way to do this except maybe using pattern 123 ⠇, all the basic unvoiced plosives.

And now, vowels. All of these will include dot 8 ⢀ to differentiate them from the consonants. I'll start with the ones that are easy to map on the front-back axis.

⢁/i/ (18)
⢂/ɪ/ (28)
⢄/u/ (38)
⢈/a~ɑ/ (48)
⢐/ə/ (58)
⢠/ɔ/ (68)

And modify these with one another to get more vowels and some diphthongs.

⢆/ʊ/ (238)
⢒/ε/ (258)
⢰/ʌ/ (568)
⢊/æ/ (248)
⢉/eɪ/ (148)
⢤/oʊ/ (368)

Next, i'll combine these where i can to get the rest of the diphthongs, and rhotic vowels too. I'm using the symbol /ɹ/ but i think /˞/ is also appropriate.

⢋/aɪ/ (1248)
⢎/aʊ/ (2348)
⢢/ɔɪ/ (268)

⣂/ɪɹ/ (278)
⣒/εɹ/ (2578)
⣆/ʊɹ/ (2378)
⣠/ɔɹ/ (678)
⢌/ɑɹ/ (348)
⢜/əɹ/ (3458)

And i think that's all the sounds my accent uses, barring the occasional /x/ or /ɕ/ in names. And i didn't distinguish nasal vowels (which i think are rarely if ever phonemic). Now, a short sample text. Spaces preserved for legibility.

⠐⣠⡆⢁ ⠊⢂⡠⠐ ⢂⠑ ⡔⢐ ⠡⢂⠐⡂⠂ ⢐⡠ ⡔⢐ ⠈⠌⢉⡉ ⠁⢊⠑⡐⢐⡂ ⠄⠌⣒⢁⡐ , ⠩⢂⡆ ⢰⠉⠁⠊ ⡀⢂⠑⠌⢁ , ⡀⢄ ⠩⢐⡐ ⢐ ⡄⢌⠡⢜ , ⢊⠑ ⢊⠑⡉ ⢒⠡ , ⡀⢄ ⠩⢐⡐ ⡔⢐ ⡄⢌⠡⢜⡐ ⠩⢋⡄

Now, is this a good script⸮ I don't know. I don't think it's good for reading visually. The letters are too similar and too close together. But maybe it's fine for reading manually. I doubt it's better than existing Braille systems because people have put a lot more time and effort into making them good than the two hours or so i've spent on this (i assume), but maybe i'm wrong there. Without knowing Braille i really can't tell.

But here it is. Braille as a featural script. This sure was one way to spend a morning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/constantscript/

Sample text is opening verses of You'll Come as a Lightning

![The picture includes, in order: the MRF neography in my handwritten form, mapped to the standard Esperanto alphabet; the properly Esperantized title "Metaforo Ri-Fantazio"; and common ligatures that an Esperanto-based script would naturally use.](https://hub.azkware.net/photo/5185740011684f13383183a077426797-1.png "The picture includes, in order: the MRF neography in my handwritten form, mapped to the standard Esperanto alphabet; the properly Esperantized title "Metaforo Ri-Fantazio"; and common ligatures that an Esperanto-based script would naturally use.")

I briefly considered changing a horizontal script i'm working on to be vertical, but realized i shouldn't because most of the characters are much taller than they are wide (wasting space vertically), and they'd be uncomfortable to write sideways. That brought to mind another script that started vertical and cursive, but also takes up a lot more vertical than horizontal space per character.

It's not just that one script i made that does this. I see it in many vertical scripts in Reddit's neography community, Ta'agra, and even Arabic.

So why does it seem like cursive horizontal scripts have wider characters than similar print horizontal scripts, and cursive vertical scripts have taller characters than similar print vertical scripts? Am i just seeing patterns where none exist because i'm up at 01:00 doing neography instead of going to bed?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38726770

I lovee the way "dragon" turned out it's so cutee

Or what’ve you worked on in the past? Let’s get this community active again…

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15741719

Here's my idea of what a completely hummed language could look like, refined from my post on c/neography a couple weeks ago (here). It only uses 4 or so different sounds, /Ɂ/, /h/, /m/, /ɴ/, /m̰/, & /ɴ̰/, all but two of which can have any combination of 5 pitches to make an arbitrary number of tones.

I won't go into much detail on how exactly the writing system works since it's mostly unchanged from my first post about it. Tones are made by stacking pitches from top to bottom, alternating between the left and right sides. The bottommost pitch is always on the left. Words are read from top to bottom and left to right. A diagonal line can be added above the horizontal bar tones connect to to show that a tone uses /ɴ/ instead of /m/. A bare vertical line lengthens the last pitch of the previous tone and an arch connecting two tones marks something between an affricate and a diphthong, as opposed to having a slight pause (but not a glottal stop) between tones.I don't have a romanization system, i've just been using IPA with Chao numerals and an affricate marker for connected sounds.

I probably won't ever make a full conlang out of this, but other people are welcome to expand on what i've done here. All the examples i gave in the attached picture are just sounds to show off the writing system and don't mean anything.

I really like this writing system (first posted here) but i didn't feel like making a full language out of just humming. I'm satisfied to know that it's (theoretically) possible so i've adapted my script to include some different sounds. The spoken language has a long way to go before it's usable but this writing system is already pretty much done, unless i decide to change some letters or add more characters to fit between words.

Now vowel characters alternate being on the left and the right, with the bottom one always on the left. The no-vowel character (far right in the vowels) is used when the last sound in a word is a consonent. Consonents can connect to the vowel bar on either side, but must connect to the bar above where all the characters after that sound connect. It reads top to bottom, left to right, so the characters have to be written top to bottom in order, but bits of them can cover the same horizontal space as long as the connection points are in order.

Hyphens are used pretty much the same way as in English; to connect the two halves of a long word or to connect to words that are sort of a single word already. The and symbol (&), comma, and question mark are used pretty much the same as their existing counterparts.

Here are some example sentences to show off what text in this language will eventually look like. They were drawn before i decided to include /ə/ and rhotic vowels (the second vowel bar from the right). I made some errors in the IPA transcription, so if you try to read it yourself and something doesn't line up right, that might be on me.

This script is still unnamed (it's just filed as "lang05" on my computer) so if anyone has name suggestions, i'd love to hear them.

Here's a script i came up with today for an as yet nonexistent conlang that's entirely hummed.

It's built around /m/, which can have any tone made from these 5 pitches, and can be creaky or modal. It also features /Ɂ/ and /h/, both of which can appear anywhere in a word or sentence. Tones are written by stacking the pitches on top of each other, and a block of text is read from top to bottom and left to right. When a tone contains more than 1 pitch, they alternate being written on the left and right sides, starting at the bottom on the left. Parts of the pitches can overlap horizontally but the bottommost parts must always be in order.

Two tone sticks (i don't have a good name for them yet) can be connected horizontally to save vertical space or to write part of a tone as creaky and part of it as modal. I don't have a way to connect more than 2 sticks, but i could probably make one if it ever comes up. The "keep tone" thing is for lengthening the last pitch of the tone before it. It might be unnecessary since you could just add a connected tone stick of the correct pitch. Creaky voice is indicated by a ring over the tone. Words are separated by a diagonal line through the horizontal bar the whole thing is written on and sentences are started and ended using initial and terminal /Ɂ/ and /h/ or using a little curl as seen in the creaky voice picture.

Sorry if i got the IPA tones wrong. I find them a bit limited and confusing, but that's probably just because this is my first time working with any tonal language and i'm not used to them yet. I probably won't make a full language out of this but maybe i'll reuse the writing system somewhere else.

This is a game called chants of the sennaar and in order to progress in this game you must start to understand the writing system through context and the puzzles presented. I think this works super well and was much easier than I expected.

I kinda like the way this looks as it makes the script predictable but I still feel like it could really be improved

These two are pretty bad in my opinion as I can't really tell where the dots are meant to be and it looks very overcomplicated.

This is the original font and I believe it can be easily written (unfortunately my artistic skill is pretty low).

I'll start with the ones I'm considering: -Clausal distinction by colour of the word -Boustrophedon (alternating direction of writing) -intent indicators

Every once in a while I sometimes think about remaking the English writing system, as is normal I'm sure😅, and I wonder what would be the most useful revision of punctuation or phonetic.

First panel of a few but I'm not sure if ill finish the whole comic. Translated myself so it's probably bad toaq 😅 but the fun is the journey.