Re: fengxing (was Re: Familynames (was [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming)

On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Steg Belsky wrote:

> Among the Rokbeigalm, (whose {m} in the name i just realized is
> syllabic), calligraphy is the art of writing words so that all the
> letters in each word are connected, and however many words you have, all
> the letters in all of them form a single visual unit - so having jagged
> lines in one part and curves in another wouldn't work.  This usually
> works in horizontal lines, but i can imagine Rokbeigalmki artists more
> skilled than me being able to nest letters inside eachother, draw
> pictures, etc. out of interwoven letters.
Interesting--I like the connections.  Chevraqis is written similarly, but
vertical, and all the letters in a word are connected via a vertical line
that runs straight down (syllabic written organized around vowels, and
each vowel has that straight vertical stroke).  In fact, all the words in
a column are connected, with a null-grapheme (a loopy sort of thing)
indicating the end of any word that *doesn't* end in a consonant.  Yours
manages to actually look alphabetic, though; Chevraqis looks logographic
(to my eye and others' so far) even though it isn't even close.

http://yhl.freeservers.com/conlang/ch-alpha.html

With what is Rokbeigalmki written?  Theoretically Chevraqis is written
with brush and ink, though I designed it in pen/cil (I've been
discovering various possible nestings and interweavings as you've
mentioned!).  Ink and brush are things I'm wary of carrying in my
backpack, considering how apt I am *not* to close the ink container
tightly enough, and you just can't get Chinese or Winsor-Newton out of
things....

YHL