Ah, hi, everyone! Welcome to CCC101! In this instalment of our lovely little conlanging class, we will learn an absolutely ESSENTIAL part to a language: its writing system.
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There are many ways to write a language and many systems worldwide. Since my language is one that doesn't exist in our world, I don't think it should use any real-world writing systems, other than the Latin script for romanization.
The name of MY language is spoken as /tʰelxʷeqiːn/. HOW ON EARTH are we gonna write that in our romanization system? You can make your romanization have a particular style to it. Perhaps, it could look more Elvish by adding 'æ' and writing 'f' for 'v', for instance. Make sure your romanization makes SOME sense to your language's sounds.
My proto-people live in a mountainous region, so I want it to have a ROUGH look to it. Here's what I came up with:
m = m
n = n (ng at the end of syllables)
p = p
b = b
t = t
d = d
q = q
k = k
g = g
x = kh
ɣ = gh
ʁ = rh
ʔ = '
h = h
l = l
j = y
?ʷ = ?û
?ʰ = ?'
a = a
aː = ā
e = e
eː = ē
i = i
iː = ī
o = o
oː = ō
u = u
uː = ū
I'm LOL-ing right now!!! And some more educated linguists must be berating me for my choice of diacritics. I'm sorry, I just wanted to make things clearer for people to understand labialization. Fine, then. Let's see how /tʰelxʷeqiːn/ is written in this new romanization!
/tʰelxʷeqiːn/ = T'elkhûeqīng
...Well, that sure is something. Now, let's get to the fun part: MAKING NEW SCRIPTS!
People haven't written with graphite pencils all their life! Back in ye olden times, cavepeople used ancient techniques like carving things into stone or sculpting styli to write on palm leaves. Because of these different techniques, the symbols come out different!
Not to mention, there are also different writing systems, like abjads, abugidas and syllabaries. For us, we're going to start with a logography/alphabet mix! All nouns will be written as a logogram, a kind of glyph to show what that thing is while not using letters. Let's fire up my drawing app and get to creating new symbols!
Now, this is what I came up with:
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You can question all my choices all you want but I don't care. Now, let's see how /tʰelxʷeqiːn/ is written here!
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That looks pretty nice, ngl! You could also experiment with writing direction.
It could be:
Right to left!
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Up to down!
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Down to up!
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Anyway, we're done for now! The moral of the story is to experiment! Have fun and create!
Pyūkhat'urhnûōmûet'ikh! [pjuːxatʰuʁnʷoːmʷetʔix] NIGHT-GOOD HAVE-2P PEASANT SINGULAR Literally: You have a fair night Good night!
