Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)

On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 22:44:56 +0900 Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
writes:
> ObConlang: Do your conlangs have different written
> styles--calligraphy,
> "print," "cursive," other?  I haven't worked with my conscript long
> enough
> to figure out a "fast" cursive way of writing it, but give it
> time....
>
> YHL
-

My main conlang, Rokbeigalmki, has way too many writing styles.
You can see a few of them at the old webpage (i've been working on a new
one for about a year now, haven't gotten far)
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dunes/8515/conlang.html
There's the Original Ziifer script made for my and my brother's conlang
ool-Nuziiferoi, which i then took (with the rest of it's aborted remains)
and built Rokbeigalmki on.  Internal-historically it was designed for
writing with styluses on clay tablets.  A more angular version of it
(think diamonds instead of circles) was also used for carving in stone.
The next one is the first native Rokbeigalmki script (as in not designed
for ool-Nuz.), where the circles have developed into hook shapes.  This
is the "print" style, used for printed materials (oh wait, they don't
have printing press technology, never mind :-) ) .... errr, it's used as
a more formal script, on legal documents and whatnot.
After that comes a style based on the previous one, but designed for
writing full words with a single stroke, so all the letters are
connected.  I've always thought that it doesn't look as
aesthetically-pleasing as it could ideally.  That might be used for
signatures.
After that is a very simplified style which i use almost all the time now
when writing texts more than a few sentences long.  The only problem is
that some of the letterforms look like latin characters, so they can be
confusing when "u" is {o} and "w" is {m} and "m" is {n}, and "s" is {i},
etc.  I made a font for it, too, which came out pretty good except that
the letters run into eachother too much.
After that on the webpage are just Latin and Hebrew transliteration
systems.  I have never really used the Hebrew one, i much prefer the
Cyrillic system.  I tried to come up with an Arabic system in a boring
class this past semester, but not having experience with Urdu, Turkish,
Farsi, etc. ways of "extending" the alphabet i stopped.

And of course there's also calligraphy!
The Rokbeigalmki alphabet was used for calligraphy even before
Rokbeigalmki existed, and you can see an example at
http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bh11744/caligraf.gif
The letters of each word are connected, and words are connected by just
physical proximity even though they don't have joining lines.  This
example is actually breaking some of the rules.

There's also an ideographic (actually morphemograph?) system, created for
my anthropology class the semester before this past one, found at
http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bh11744/theszhes.gif

When i make scribbles in my notepad now it's usually a mixture of all
different kinds of scripts, which i, at least, think looks cool.

And of course there's my newest conlang, the romance one Jûdajca, which
can be written in Latin or in Hebrew letters.  I like writing that one
boustrophedon style, with alternating lines of alternating scripts.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "for you i will also give... a ferret."
     ~ *not* Eyal Golan, "Yafa Sheli"