Fantasy Authors are really poor if thats the case. Specifically those authors who are trying to invent a conlang without any team lmao. Im one of those Poor Fantasy Authors💀🔥
Unlike created languages, natural languages took thousands of years evolving in total anarchy without ever applying any rule of global coherency other than immediate comfort. This is why mosquitos are masculine in modern French, but flies are feminine.
@@onyxrin1946 i'm not a language expert either, but what i mean is that natural languages are not bound to the grammar rules (the grammar rules are just observations made to describe a language). In French, non-human things are gendered, and there is no rule to describe it (there have been attempts to describe it, but there is no perfect rule on which thing should be male or female. There is even a one man show about good things being male and bad things being female). For french learners, this means they have to learn the gender of each and every noun for no reason other than "that's how it is". ===== (useless trivia) To give another example, in Japanese, kanji have 2 main pronunciations. But some kanji have dozens of pronunciations, and japanese learners try to memorize everything as if the pronunciation was important for the kanji (and japanese classes also tend to give each and every possible reading for each kanji). They also think the kanji writing is supposed to be a definition of the word. Historically, however, the kanji was taken from China, and were "patched" into the language to give kanji writings to japanese words. In most cases, the rules they followed are: -if the word has a single kanji (ex: cat, dog,...), just use the kanji and give it the japanese pronunciation (that's called the kun-yomi reading of a kanji) -if the word cannot be written by a single kanji (ex: modern nouns like airplane and airport), let's try to find chinese (from a japanese point of view) pronunciations that kind of match the word and have a similar meaning (the supposedly chinese pronunciation of a kanji is called the on-yomi reading). Because these words are made of multiple kanji, the kun-yomi is used in words with a single kanji, and the on-yomi is used in words with more kanji -if nothing works, let's take the simplest kanji in terms of meaning and just use the japanese word (ex: otona, meaning parent, is written as "big person"). In this case, there is clearly no reason to look for a link with the kun-yomi or on-yomi readings, but japanese books and courses consider "oto" and "na" valid pronunciations of the "big" and "person" kanji (which is technically true, but has no importance) When learning the pronunciations for simple kanji like "big", the japanese learners also try to learn unique pronunciations like "oto", because they think this pronunciation is a part of the kanji they are trying to learn. Which make no sense, because they would better learn the 2 main pronunciations (kun-yomi and on-yomi) and that the word for parent is different rather than learning each and every possible reading of a kanji across the language. Sometimes, the pronunciation just doesn't match the kanji because the kanji were not made for japanese. There have been attempts to replace kanji with an other writing system. This gave the hiragana/katakana, which are now mixed with kanji (because they failed to replace the kanji completely) That's why japanese people use 3 writing systems to write a sentence today. On the contrary, koreans succeded in making a writing system to completely replace kanji, which is why they don't use chinese characters anymore. ====== Constructed languages, when they don't try to sound like natural languages, can just skip the irregularities and incoherencies. They can also skip the redundancy of using plural on adjectives or declining nouns like some european languages. (In case you recognised a pattern with european languages, that's because latin has almost all of it) Esperanto, for instance, does not have both complex conjugation tables and irregular verbs. ==== more useless trivia Most european languages do, but English simplifies everything by only having an "s" for he/she/it. In French, for instance, the verb "aller" (to go) at the present gives: -je vais -tu vas -il va -nous allons -vous aller -ils vont In these 6 cases, 4 lines ("vais", "vas", "va", "vont") have nothing to do with "aller" ===== There, i don't have anything to say anymore. I might me wrong or skip details in some parts, but i except an even worse bias from those who will disagree, like "latin has no irregularity and is perfect", "japanese kanji is beautiful and perfect", "redundancy/conjugation/declination gives information",...
Imagine a symbol that represents every single letter in the language, but it is rotated by a slightly different degrees to represent each letter individually.
This may be extremely confusing, but maybe to help create this kind of language you should allow yourself to flip the letter as well to effectively make more rotations (assuming the symbol is assymetrical)
@@kingslayer2239 Or possibly have the entire language be like a clock? With two arms on the clock, and a range from 1-12 on the clock, that's... i think 144 possible combinations? I could be wrong, but it's still a wide range!
I remember I used to slightly change letters as a kid to make my own secret language, you can't imagine my shock when I handed my mom a text written in that language and she read it so fluently and easily. She said it was cause she was very smart...
Or you could pick a writing system that doesn't fit your language at all. Then you can tack on an extremely complicated extra rules or even extra writing systems to make it sort of fit. Then you can add in bizarre extremely culturally specific rules and idiosyncrasies just to fuck with people trying to learn the language. Once you do that, you basically have Japanese.
@@elibeth8399 To be fair, at least the English language uses a single alphabet, with only 26 letters and a few digraphs, and the fact that its written form can be thoroughly expressed in a single foreign script is actually a point in its favour. The problem is that English favours etymological preservation over phonological accuracy in its orthography. If its spellings were adjusted to reflect how its words are pronounced in a way that kept homophones distinguishable, English would be significantly less challenging to master.
The script at 3:43 is the Tamil script, but the language using it in the video is not Tamil; it's English using the Tamil script phonetically, and it says "Ya sal nōṭ pās," or "You shall not pass."
Cantonese and Mandarin are spoken languages. Proper Chinese and simplified Chinese (Chinese degraded by officials {KMT and CCP}* who think its somehow easier for the illiterate to read) are writing systems, also used in Japanese, and dated in Korea and Vietnam. Spoken languages, like Cantonese, in particular Cantonese in Hong Kong, influenced by English, (and all of that not infrequently used in conjunction with English),** have words, in particular verbs, that are considered informal in writing, and only written for very, very, informal situations. Thus, the spoken language's words have their distinctly differently written and spoken (but never spoken as it would sound awkward) character counterparts used in the written Chinese script. Essentially, there's the Han script/Kenji, that could be in proper/traditional form or simplified form. Words in that script could be spoken. (Hong Kong Cantonese only: In real-life, these words are switched to other words which are then spoken. These spoken words can be written as is, rendering the text informal). These spoken words can be part of the Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese languages. *KMT: Nationalist Party, ruling party of the Republic of China, which ruled China proper, Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria, and other surrounding regions in 1910s to 1940s CCP: Chinese Communist Party. People's Rep. of CN, currently ruling China proper, parts of Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkestan, and other surrounding regions. Controlling Hong Kong via proxies. **British Imperial territory 1840s - 1997; See: Hong Kong English
I gave my writing system three cases instead of just upper and lower. A letter is made second case by a diacritic, and a different diacritic at the beginning of a word makes the whole word third case. Second case is used for nouns, beginning a sentence, or acronyms similar to the way we would in English, but third case is used for proper names of individuals, places and events. Here's the cultural implication, though: in a casual situation one may be forgiven for not bothering to put third case on someone's name; if you want to show them disrespect, write their name in first case in formal writing (but that has the effect of making the writer look uncultured, too); and if you really want to insult them, put every letter of their name in second case. Since third case applies to the whole word, what this says is "I'm going to go to all the trouble of marking every letter of your name incorrectly because you don't deserve a capital."
Taneth You gave me an idea for my writing system; Use uppercase letters to determine which direction the writing is going, because mine alternates, left to right, then right to left.
A few friends of mine are having a contest - they each get exactly 365 days to build a language These rats all went with their own ridiculous ways of writing Guy A is diacritic-heavy. Not all diacritics are necessary - only a few to distinguish otherwise equal glyphs - but the rest make pronunciation exactly obvious with how much, say, "freedom" he's exercising with stress and slight variation in vowels Guy B is making use of characters from over 30 different languages, solely to be confusing and - I kid you not - to piss me off. Me specifically... Guy C is the crazy one here. His words will be written... as electrical diagrams
You could also go the Artemis Fowl fairy writing system of starting in the center of the page and writing outward in a spiral. They use logographic characters.
THE WHEEL OF TIME TURNS, AND AGES COME AND PASS, MEMORY FADES TO LEGEND, LEGEND FADES TO MYTH, AND EVEN MYTH IS LONG FORGOTON WHEN THE AGE THAT GAVE IT BIRTH COMES AGAIN, IN ONE AGE, CALLED THE THIRD AGE BY SOME, AN AGE LONG FORGOTTON, AN AGE YET TO PASS, A WIND ROSE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MIST, THE WIND WAS NOT THE BEGINNING, FOR THERE ARE NO BEGINNINGS, NOR ENDS TO THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL OF TIME, BUT IT WAS a BEGINNING. Off the top of the head, how did I do?
5:58 this is why I love your videos, there is always something I hadn't thought about, now I feel sad that we do not write alternating direction, which might be good for reading speed, I always find myself struggling to find the next line after finishing a line.
As someone who knows both Arabic and English (they have different directions) this can lead to confusion at the start. I remember back in school I'd be reading an English book and flipping the wrong paper and then wonder why I'm back two pages. Now though, it's extremely easy. يمكنني ببساطة الانتقال بين اللغتين بدون مشاكل.
A design rule that helped me come up with a writing system that I felt was easier to write is making the symbols easy to compact horizontally. Oh yeah, and the "Make the symbol an oversimplified version of a common object" trick does help make the symbols distinct.
4:00 If the colors carry meaning, are the colorblind dyslexic? This might depend on the color oppositions within your writing system, but this is an issue to watch out for.
There doesn't have to be dyslexia in a world/language that's been built for dyslexic people and If it isn't mentioned then I suppose not,afterall… It'd be taken into the account.
He meant like how purple symbolises wealth and royalty because of how costly purple dye was made. Reason why he placed some blue with currency below it a few seconds later. Like how limited the color of purple was and how it carried meaning to it.
I would suppose that the only way to tackle that would be to create alternatives such as braile and asl for the blind and deaf that stick to a word by word representaion
I think it would be cool to make a language where vowels are the base, and consonants are used as the decoration. Since almost every word requires at least one vowel they could hold more importance in the writing. I keep on seeing vowels being used like decoration, so I think it would be a pretty fun break from the norm
Damn, I cannot even make up any letters! How could I even make my own writing system, let alone language? Actually, that might be a neat idea for a video. "How to create your own letter system?" Please, make a video on it, I really need it. Especially on some fituristic sci-fi alphabets, like in Star Wars. And some alien and advanced-ancient ones.
They did. Saying how you should make it easy to replicate and fit the style of what you're writing on and such. I personally for a Korean style writing system with only 17 characters for the sake of making it easy to learn
Nevermind. Dumb idea I suppose. I already have a language I speak fluently and an alphabet that I'm going to be revising anyways. I'll just rely on my Jehovah's Witness style advertising of it
I'm thinking about a script derived from ancient people pressing broken bits of human rib bone into wet clay. Im justifying this as only the priests of the ancient civilization had access to bones of the dead and knowledge of writing. By breaking and sharpening the tips of cross sections of these stylus you could get many interesting shapes. Arches ∩,angles∧, lines ∣, points ∴, ovals (albeit angular ovals later simplified to circles.) I'm thinking each ancient characters would be combinations of no more than two imprints from a rib stylus and a writing kit had four two ended ribs. The trouble for me is I'm having trouble constructing the modified handwriting descendant of this cuneiform into non-Roman alphabet letters that can easily be written in cursive. Thoughts?
Jefferson Rose you should literally use "tails" in every letter and simplify the script so that the "tails" look fluid. For example, Im trying to make a cursive version of the Celtiberian script. With the letter "a", that is symbolized with a inverted triangle I do just maintained the triangle, but pushed a descending line and a curve to connect it to other letter. It looks like a closed "y".
Here's something to play around with. In the handwriting, arches = half circles, lines and points stay the same, angles could stay the same or become X's or +'s, and ovals are circles. In cursive, lines=lines(but connected), points=small loops, circles=large loops, x's maybe just pick up your writing tool. Just a thought, it might not work.
I'd like to point out that you can also make writing systems that doesn't make use of "writing" or glyphs, like tying knots on a string where the type of knot and distance between each knot infer their meaning (you can also add different colors to change the subject of the message which means it is very easy to see what the message is about before even reading it, or adding beads to the string to get further variations). It's quite hard to even realize that you can have writing systems without using any glyphs if you haven't already heard of the idea but it can be quite a fun exercise, if anyone can think of any other ways to have a non glyph based writing system I'd love to hear it (that can be transported and not just arranging rocks in your garden to tell people to stay out xD).
Variation of coins on a chain around ones neck. Imagine if spies or a guild or old merchants started a whole language structure by having an array of different value coins tied to them that held secret messages such as a 1, 2,4 and 8 coin in a particular order having a meaning but a 2, 4, 8 and 1 having a different meaning.
Beads on a string with different colours, materials, shapes and sizes to create meaning. Something large and elaborate like a bead work tapestry could be the equivalent of a book. Apart from the colour it could also work for blind people. Colour is another, if every colour had it's own meaning whether that's phonetic or take it further to individual concepts. Then also use those colours to make shapes to create even more intricate concepts. That one's an idea from cuttlefish and their use of colour on their mantle for communication and camouflage. Touch stuff like braille used for blind people and haptics used for both blind and deaf people is another.
3:28 BTW, Groote shorthand and it's descendants, like the German Standard Shorthand, are kinda like Abjads - vowels are inferred by the connection between the consonant symbols. At the most basic form of most shorthand, you're just changing the writing script from greek alphabet to the shorthand one. Then comes the fun part: The higher levels of shorthand focus on eliminating as much as possible, and introducing contractions and shorthand symbols for the rest. In the end, whole phrases are compressed to a few strokes, and almost anything that's not an important verb or noun gets left out or is implied. The truly high-end stuff is utterly incomprehensible even for an advanced writer of the system and are true pieces of workmanship and art when you've seen a court or parliament stenographer at work.
yup, this is what I spend most of my team in school doing. I drew for hours random symbols until I had a cool one then I would replace a letter with that symbol. now I finally have the entire alphabet and I have to say it looks really cool, its like some magical writing
Not quite, the ancient greeks used letters to represent numbers. Although the ancient greeks also apparently saw numbers in math as secondary to geometric construction.
That's actually quite a modern thing, if you go back, a lot of cultures didn't have specific glyphs for numbers. Take Ancient Greek for example, they didn't have specific numbers but instead each letter had a numeric value. That used to be quite a common system.
Infinite glyphs, one for every number. Challenge accepted. Coming up with an infinite amount of glyphs isn't that hard though. Take 781487 for example, in this hypothetical system the whole number with all digits can be thought of as a single unique symbol that represents the number. My point is that what you need is a system with simple rules for everyone to be able to construct the symbol for any number without learning all infinite symbols one by one.
I love making these. I have a bunch of old ones I’m proud of from a few years ago, most of a different system. I’d love to publish some of them one day or something like that
There was one type of writing system you left out(which is between logographs and syllabaries). It is morphological scripts, when each letter means a grammatical unit.
Only just joined the Wheel of Time fandom thanks to the show. When I saw Moiraine's name in this video I did a double take and then noticed the others haha
@@JainaSoloB312 You have probably heard that a billion times, but I really recommend to read the books (even though they can be quite boring and long in some passages) the only thing, the show and the books have in common are the names. The show is really only loosely inspired by the books and tells a complete different story.
I made my own language too! I called it Etheri (derived from a fantasy series in my country). It was mixed of Arabic, English, German, Russian, Hebrew and some self made words. Example; I love you = Gouwen Vanah Ciavan (Read as Guven Vana Sziyavan). Another Example; Beautiful is Behati (Most Beautiful is Tegenbehati). Last one; Thank you is Zochrentag (Read as ZoKHrentag) I also made my own alphabet I also called Etherial Alphabet! Hope I can share it with you 🙏🏼
This is SO INSPIRING for my writing!!!! Thanks a lot!!! I'm going to make a new playlist!! I don't know if I'm the type of author to go THIS in-depth, but I'll definitely use this for inspiration!! Thank you so much!!!
I translated it xD It reads, "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act to wards one another in a spirit of brotherhood"
I just wanted to say thank you Artifexian. Your videos are helping me in writing my book, which will involve a few different cultures, languages, and writing systems.
@@drFocak "sorry about the whole slaughtering your village and stealing your most beloved possessions and using them for an unholy crusade. We cool now?"
Gift? That's not what Egyptian Thamus would say. Thoth showed him his wonderful invention of writing and here's what he had to say: _"this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."_
+Artifexian Iterate iterating the iteration technique which includes iteration upon the fact that iterating iterate (as in the word iterate) will implant the iterating thought of iteration into the reader's now iterating mind.
Just a little clarification: not all kanji are logographical (a few dozens are at best). Most of them are _ideophonograms_, meaning they have one ideographical or logographical part that determines what semantic category they belong to, and another part that is a kanji used to infer how the overall symbol is pronounced.
MatA57 Which is further complicated by the fact that different kanji were borrowed from different chinese languages (depending on what dynasty was in command of China) at different time periods. Some were even borrowed _multiple times_, adding new on-readings to the mix every time.
That "borrowed from different chinese languages" thing is why there was a rash of bad translation software having tourettes syndrome in the nineties and aughties. There was a word with 14 meanings and the first one was the word fuck. Cheap translation software defaulted to the first meaning for any word, so stuff like "fuck the cabbage softly" would be written on things as the english translation (the intended meaning was "crispy" I think).
I've an species that's able to make 3 sounds at the same time, and their language basically works by stacking words, like for example they could use the word "boy" then add the word "run" on a different tone on top of it and then add the sound for "past" and that single stack of sounds said at the same time would be a full sentence, "the boy was running", it's a little more complext than that but you get the idea. I've been thinking a lot about a writting system for it but I don't really like any of the ideas I've come up with, suggestions?
victoria adelaida Have a simple mark for each tence. Past tence has a mark, & so does future, while present can be implied. You can have verbs and nouns have different styles maybe. I was thinking blocky vs curvy. Blocky alphabet vs curvy alphabet!
Another note: if your imagined civilization has a script, make sure it evoles and changes, but also make sure it can "revert" to older forms (like how we reverted to carolingian miniscule or old roman majuscule, which we use today)
Really, really like your chanel! Since I think this is the first video I found from your chanel (a month ago?), I decided to post my message here. I've embarked on a mission watching every video on your chanel, from the very first one till your cryogenically freezing one (although I've sneeked around some younger videos before, like your fantasy maps video). I came here for conlang and you've taught me a lot about that topic. But also about dwarf planets, celestial rock stars and a very funny, nice, precise and creative Irish man. Thank you so much for making these interesting and creative videos! I'll be patiently waiting for new ones.
Creating a language is about creating a set of rules for scripts so that a writer and a reader can have an understanding. Evolving a language, however, is about bending the rules, sometimes even breaking them, as the people who use it misunderstand each other and eventually come up with new ways to either help understand each other better (adding rules of grammar and writing techniques) or worse (creating cyphers or just trying to be overly fancy)
These videos are really helping me to create a writing system! I've tried before, and knowing nothing of how language works wasn't successful. Keep it up! (I also caught the Mistborn glyph at the beginning!)
ive made my own. for the novel im writting. its based on germanic runic alphabets. but i modified most of them. lol. and so far. ive only made like 10 words from it. lol.
I was doing some tasks for my studies and I wanted something to play in the background. Now, I am sitting with a plan on how to create a writing system for my DnD campaign. Thank you very much, Sir 🤩
I don't even remember watching this video, but I already liked it. I evolved a lot since I discovered conlanging, and years after I'm happy so see that I get deeper content from what taught me in the first place. And that my new, spontaneous idea are any good under the criterias of what I've been told to be right. I'm currently developping my left out conlangs (and preparing for a massive commission, as I'm a proud conlanger for hire thanks to you amongst others). But my next project that is already on the tracks is an alien language that is partly spoken and partly signed, and the writing system reflects that in an unexpected way that, I think, wouldn't fit in any of the existing writing system. Consider : the main glyphs correspond to a root. It represents a sign that is executed, and a sound template that we apply three things onto : first is the inflection pattern that is represented by diacritics, or not represented at all, like vowels in an abjad (and you'll get that I've been influenced by semitic languages here). then additional sounds that are represented by a "letter" added onto the writing, with a different shape corresponding not only to the base glyph but also to the position in the template. And not last, the link between two glyphs represent the physical pattern and speed to switch from one sign to the next so that the core item of the sentence is not the word but the root. Not last because 6:12 gave me ideas about representing less of the pattern and something more instead (first idea on : root-bounded punctuation, like putting a question mark over the questioned word). And all that (if we consider that it's a good idea) is maybe not thanks to this very video but for a good part thanks to you !
I don't usually send comments but I was moved to here. Unlike so many videos on RUclips, this one was packed with top quality information, presented simply and clearly and above all absolutely no ego involved. Would that I could say the same about all the videos on RUclips. Quality.
0:42 I would like to point out that प् isn't a null vowel it just makes the pa sound otherwise alone प would make the pa sound so basically with प् it would be reap and with just प it would be reapa
Ive been working on a language called Jbrailic for about 4 years now. Used by Jbrailiens, i have primarily just made letters and used english words, only altered by my languages differences, like we have no C,Q, or X. Another important is something I like to call Linework, wher we put different lines over letters to change the sound, allowing multiple sounds per letter!
I've made my own writing system during my spare time unfortunately I don't know where the paper I wrote it on went, but I planned to adjust some things anyway. My writing system is similar to Japanese, "ta" will forever be "ta" and pronunciation never changes, only the tone, and yes it is a tonal language. The glyphs are based off Chinese characters and I rearranged the strokes or had inspiration from cursive Chinese characters. I merge like "k" and "o" to become a new letter ,"ko". I did notice a problem, a problem also encountered in Japanese, it's that it would be quite hard to read a word, but unlike Japanese that made 3 writing systems to solve it, I just added spaces. Also and consonants are never individual letters, they're like radicals in Chinese characters in a sentence, like "I eat apples" would be wā(I) cěkù(eat) pǖgo(apple), notice that after every consonant there is a vowel I also had an idea of the writing system going left to right and right to left, based on which is your dominant hand, if you're right handed you go left to right, if you're left handed you go right to left, and there is an arrow marking which way to read, which is always on the most left hand side
@@Eosinophyllis Other than that, haven't developed any other things, still working on words, adjusting some stuff and grammar, it's just something random I do when I have spare time from school
I figure it'd depend on the nature of the carving tools used to write your language. Angles would be easier to carve reliably, but curves would be possible if lines were carved rather than chiseled.
Korea’s Hangul might be the only featural system. That word was even invented to describe their writing system, as well as Pitman shorthand. But basically, the characters are written exactly how they’re spoken. Hangul’s characters represent the mouth movements you need in order to say it. Pittman Shorthand was made as a shorthand for the English alphabet
Also, its glyphs have a simple name. Vowels are named as same as their sound. (ㅏ[ah], ㅗ[Oh]) Consonants may have different sounds front and back of a syllable, so they have names that start and end with their sound. ( ㄴ [ni-eun], ㅅ[si-ot])
@@Dusticulous phonetic: representing each speech sound with a single symbol. Or in others words i am saying that finnish is also a language which is spoken exactly as it's written.
Some time ago, I did a phonemic script . It had initial, medial, and terminal cases. Initial started a thought, terminal ended every word, and there were a set of terminal diacriticals for emphasis, interrogative, and linked (basically ! ? ;). Consonant shapes were based on how deep in the mouth they formed and whether they were stops, fricatives, sibilants, or liquids. Then unvoiced had no modifications, voiced a terminal loop, and nasals a through slash. There was a single character for initial and another for terminal values, incorporating a diacritical denoting the value, which in medial was just placed above and between the adjacent consonants. Worked well enough I could write English with it, so I could fiddle around in meetings, and everyone thought I was writing in Arabic... backwards.
DulledMemory Yea I'm pretty sure all 6 of the languages on that slide are fictitious. I know the 3rd one for "evil" happens to be Daedric from the Elder Scrolls series
I'm so excited to see this. I am making a writing system for Drow in my story since undercommon is never really written down in campaigns. So I'm doing a slight difference in Elvish, with the words being different with a more harsh, Nordic accent. It's kind of like Italian versus Spanish, they sound similar and come from latin, but they're different.
I just got into this with a book I'm writing. The main characters are basically wolves, which throws anything that requires manual dexterity and/or anything beyond the simplest of tools out the window. Their writing system involves carefully gnawing logographic marks into bones (and occasionally scratching single words into the sides of trees, because it's sometimes useful to have a somewhat-permanent sign).
You don't necessarily need to pick one "type" of writing system. As you said, modern Hebrew and Arabic aren't perfect abjads, I'd argue most languages' use of the Roman alphabet aren't "perfect" alphabets by the definition you gave. I could imagine systems that combine two or more of these, or hell you could try and make something totally new.
I already made up 3 languages/writing systems all on my own and I'm very proud of myself because they're based on real-world languages. And by real-world languages I mean I mostly based it off of Korean since I can kind of read and speak it. The first one had 23 characters, each representing a word with a different random sound I just felt like using, then just combine stuff and bam, words (yes it's limited but at least blood literally translates to life water). The second is based on the first one, with words being just twisted versions of the original and the writing with phonetic letters. The third is just random scribbles and gibberish combined with Korean. Benefits of being sorta bilingual, I guess :) Edit: also the third language is very hard to write because just like Korean it has rules where you place certain letters under others to create a word and sound. But unlike Korean, all the letters are hard to write perfectly, like imagine the written language love child of Russian cursive and Arabic on drugs and that's what it looks like. (That was a really weird analogy but that really is the best way to describe it).
I noticed that one of my writing systems made it difficult to determine when one word started and another one ended, so I made a space character. I love it!
@Artifexian - You might want to do a video about the Celtic Ogham writing system and how it's different from Germanic Runes. -- And possibly a video on how the Latin alphabet was adapted to write Gaelic and how that developed into its own Irish specific script, and then how it's used in modern Ireland and Northern Ireland. (For example, showing people how to type the old dotted consonants and accented vowels in Unicode.) Most Americans don't know anything about that, or how to make sense of Irish spelling and pronunciation. So a few videos might be in order. :)
Why is there the allomantic symbol for iron shown at 0:18? I think we've found a Sanderson fan. Edit: I just got to 6:00. Yes, we've a Sanderson and Jordan fan. So very happy.
the idea of a written language that uses drawings, where the colors indicate stress, pauses, emotion, etc, and the shape indicates what concept the drawing is talking about because it could be used is so many different settings and time periods. totally snatching that one for myself
+Arthur Newlly Ba'alzamon is the Dark One (basically the Devil) in the Wheel Of Time series, but his true name is Shai'tan, but like naming the Devil, people have a lot of nicknames for him, Ba'alzamon and the Dark One being two very popular ones.
I master Latin Elvish (tengwar) My own system I created 5 years ago Futhark (runic system) Gotic (mid age language with alphabet) And I'm currently learning the amharique system (about 230 "letters")
The language listed under "elegant" is Vulcan. It says "pon-farr"which means "time of mating"
Username and profile picture check out :D
How elegant
Soooooo, shall we proceed?
@@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus Does the video contain any cognitohazards before I watch it?
I mean, it is indeed elegant, because they are considerate when it comes with time, unlike the animals, they mate anytime they want lol
makes me really appreciate how language evolved over time and some poor soul didn't have to sit down and think of it all
Hangul has entered the chat
@@pppppaaaaaccccchhh Thai writing system too
native americans: ._.
all the monks who invented alphabets: xd
Fantasy Authors are really poor if thats the case. Specifically those authors who are trying to invent a conlang without any team lmao. Im one of those Poor Fantasy Authors💀🔥
I just said “this is so complicated!” as if this wasn’t creating a language, that in real life took thousands of years to become what they are now
Unlike created languages, natural languages took thousands of years evolving in total anarchy without ever applying any rule of global coherency other than immediate comfort. This is why mosquitos are masculine in modern French, but flies are feminine.
@@justsomeonepassingby3838 I'm new to all this stuff I'd love an expanded explanation on the fly mosquito example and to generally just know more
@@onyxrin1946 i'm not a language expert either, but what i mean is that natural languages are not bound to the grammar rules (the grammar rules are just observations made to describe a language).
In French, non-human things are gendered, and there is no rule to describe it (there have been attempts to describe it, but there is no perfect rule on which thing should be male or female. There is even a one man show about good things being male and bad things being female). For french learners, this means they have to learn the gender of each and every noun for no reason other than "that's how it is".
===== (useless trivia)
To give another example, in Japanese, kanji have 2 main pronunciations. But some kanji have dozens of pronunciations, and japanese learners try to memorize everything as if the pronunciation was important for the kanji (and japanese classes also tend to give each and every possible reading for each kanji). They also think the kanji writing is supposed to be a definition of the word.
Historically, however, the kanji was taken from China, and were "patched" into the language to give kanji writings to japanese words.
In most cases, the rules they followed are:
-if the word has a single kanji (ex: cat, dog,...), just use the kanji and give it the japanese pronunciation (that's called the kun-yomi reading of a kanji)
-if the word cannot be written by a single kanji (ex: modern nouns like airplane and airport), let's try to find chinese (from a japanese point of view) pronunciations that kind of match the word and have a similar meaning (the supposedly chinese pronunciation of a kanji is called the on-yomi reading). Because these words are made of multiple kanji, the kun-yomi is used in words with a single kanji, and the on-yomi is used in words with more kanji
-if nothing works, let's take the simplest kanji in terms of meaning and just use the japanese word (ex: otona, meaning parent, is written as "big person"). In this case, there is clearly no reason to look for a link with the kun-yomi or on-yomi readings, but japanese books and courses consider "oto" and "na" valid pronunciations of the "big" and "person" kanji (which is technically true, but has no importance)
When learning the pronunciations for simple kanji like "big", the japanese learners also try to learn unique pronunciations like "oto", because they think this pronunciation is a part of the kanji they are trying to learn. Which make no sense, because they would better learn the 2 main pronunciations (kun-yomi and on-yomi) and that the word for parent is different rather than learning each and every possible reading of a kanji across the language.
Sometimes, the pronunciation just doesn't match the kanji because the kanji were not made for japanese.
There have been attempts to replace kanji with an other writing system. This gave the hiragana/katakana, which are now mixed with kanji (because they failed to replace the kanji completely)
That's why japanese people use 3 writing systems to write a sentence today.
On the contrary, koreans succeded in making a writing system to completely replace kanji, which is why they don't use chinese characters anymore.
======
Constructed languages, when they don't try to sound like natural languages, can just skip the irregularities and incoherencies.
They can also skip the redundancy of using plural on adjectives or declining nouns like some european languages.
(In case you recognised a pattern with european languages, that's because latin has almost all of it)
Esperanto, for instance, does not have both complex conjugation tables and irregular verbs.
==== more useless trivia
Most european languages do, but English simplifies everything by only having an "s" for he/she/it. In French, for instance, the verb "aller" (to go) at the present gives:
-je vais
-tu vas
-il va
-nous allons
-vous aller
-ils vont
In these 6 cases, 4 lines ("vais", "vas", "va", "vont") have nothing to do with "aller"
=====
There, i don't have anything to say anymore.
I might me wrong or skip details in some parts, but i except an even worse bias from those who will disagree, like "latin has no irregularity and is perfect", "japanese kanji is beautiful and perfect", "redundancy/conjugation/declination gives information",...
thats why its impossible to pronounce a persons name in kanji
Imagine a symbol that represents every single letter in the language, but it is rotated by a slightly different degrees to represent each letter individually.
Okay this would work as long as you had like a maximum of 10 characters
This may be extremely confusing, but maybe to help create this kind of language you should allow yourself to flip the letter as well to effectively make more rotations (assuming the symbol is assymetrical)
@@kingslayer2239 and then the symbol is a circle
That would translate into a puzzle very well
@@kingslayer2239 Or possibly have the entire language be like a clock? With two arms on the clock, and a range from 1-12 on the clock, that's... i think 144 possible combinations? I could be wrong, but it's still a wide range!
"Go forth and iterate until you can iterate no more." Until I am ill - iterate?
You win. That's it. You win.
Cute
*clap fucking clap*
recursion is better. fite me
kolobite yes make up a language untill your exposed to it so much that you forget how to speak English.
I remember I used to slightly change letters as a kid to make my own secret language, you can't imagine my shock when I handed my mom a text written in that language and she read it so fluently and easily. She said it was cause she was very smart...
So you just made a font XD? That's adorable! Would like to have you as my kid haha.
@@uatcgfhdhu You would like to have them as a kid 🤨🤨🤨
@@omransaeed1988
Sus.
@@omransaeed1988AW cmon don't be so dirty minded 💀☠
@@breafd you're right I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have done that, it was uncalled for 😅
Or you could pick a writing system that doesn't fit your language at all. Then you can tack on an extremely complicated extra rules or even extra writing systems to make it sort of fit. Then you can add in bizarre extremely culturally specific rules and idiosyncrasies just to fuck with people trying to learn the language. Once you do that, you basically have Japanese.
Haha. Sometimes real languages break al the rules of conlanging
LOL.
Dude that description sounds like English too lol
@@elibeth8399 To be fair, at least the English language uses a single alphabet, with only 26 letters and a few digraphs, and the fact that its written form can be thoroughly expressed in a single foreign script is actually a point in its favour. The problem is that English favours etymological preservation over phonological accuracy in its orthography. If its spellings were adjusted to reflect how its words are pronounced in a way that kept homophones distinguishable, English would be significantly less challenging to master.
As someone learning Japanese, I can't even begin to explain how accurate this is.
The script at 3:43 is the Tamil script, but the language using it in the video is not Tamil; it's English using the Tamil script phonetically, and it says "Ya sal nōṭ pās," or "You shall not pass."
The language of the merchants probably who have spices
@@littleconnormcd who would like to buy the spices?
I'm trying to create a new script for my native language Tamil by watching this video
I was thinking ‘you sal note boss’🤦♂️
@Jaeden Vaithianathan to the rest of the world hey china put itself back together again with good morals as their main philosophy
"Can you distinguish them from afar?"
*Looks at Mandarin
*YES*
Cantonese: ...
Did u ever print Chinese
Cantonese and Mandarin are spoken languages. Proper Chinese and simplified Chinese (Chinese degraded by officials {KMT and CCP}* who think its somehow easier for the illiterate to read) are writing systems, also used in Japanese, and dated in Korea and Vietnam. Spoken languages, like Cantonese, in particular Cantonese in Hong Kong, influenced by English, (and all of that not infrequently used in conjunction with English),** have words, in particular verbs, that are considered informal in writing, and only written for very, very, informal situations. Thus, the spoken language's words have their distinctly differently written and spoken (but never spoken as it would sound awkward) character counterparts used in the written Chinese script.
Essentially, there's the Han script/Kenji, that could be in proper/traditional form or simplified form. Words in that script could be spoken. (Hong Kong Cantonese only: In real-life, these words are switched to other words which are then spoken. These spoken words can be written as is, rendering the text informal). These spoken words can be part of the Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese languages.
*KMT: Nationalist Party, ruling party of the Republic of China, which ruled China proper, Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria, and other surrounding regions in 1910s to 1940s
CCP: Chinese Communist Party. People's Rep. of CN, currently ruling China proper, parts of Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkestan, and other surrounding regions. Controlling Hong Kong via proxies.
**British Imperial territory 1840s - 1997; See: Hong Kong English
Oh really？
人 入
Josh Sebastian Ang OH MY GOD, these characters are infuriating, I’m now rusty but one is “ren” meaning people and the other is fire?
A written language that uses gifs as characters would be incredibly interesting.
Imagine having to wait for the internet to buffer to know what character you're looking at.
XD
Imagine writing gifs
You mean humans are interesting.
This guy gets it ^
I gave my writing system three cases instead of just upper and lower. A letter is made second case by a diacritic, and a different diacritic at the beginning of a word makes the whole word third case. Second case is used for nouns, beginning a sentence, or acronyms similar to the way we would in English, but third case is used for proper names of individuals, places and events. Here's the cultural implication, though: in a casual situation one may be forgiven for not bothering to put third case on someone's name; if you want to show them disrespect, write their name in first case in formal writing (but that has the effect of making the writer look uncultured, too); and if you really want to insult them, put every letter of their name in second case. Since third case applies to the whole word, what this says is "I'm going to go to all the trouble of marking every letter of your name incorrectly because you don't deserve a capital."
* Stands up
* Slow claps
I really like what you've done there. Super stuff.
+
while I'm still trying to figure out how to discern names lol.
Taneth You gave me an idea for my writing system; Use uppercase letters to determine which direction the writing is going, because mine alternates, left to right, then right to left.
@@EmTreasure88 That's wacky and seems weird--but fun. Is there a cultural backstory to it or just for fun?
no one:
8 years old me with a diary:
I HAVE A LIL SNOWMAN AS A PART OF MY ALPHABET. IT MAKES THE "chikachika" SOUND
LMAO HAHAHAHA I ACTUALLY SEARCHED THIS BEACUSE IM WRITING A DIARY TOO (im in 7th grade : ) HSHAHAHAH)
@rétro yas my fam has awoken
I was eleven, but yeah!
@rétro I’m in seventh grade and turn off the caps please
I'm already a pro at this. Everytime I stub my toe I invent a new curse language.
lol.
Is it like, you would shout *SHAALATERI!* when you stub your toe?
GĀH
Kyujomoahshd !
TENNO SKOOM
A few friends of mine are having a contest - they each get exactly 365 days to build a language
These rats all went with their own ridiculous ways of writing
Guy A is diacritic-heavy. Not all diacritics are necessary - only a few to distinguish otherwise equal glyphs - but the rest make pronunciation exactly obvious with how much, say, "freedom" he's exercising with stress and slight variation in vowels
Guy B is making use of characters from over 30 different languages, solely to be confusing and - I kid you not - to piss me off. Me specifically...
Guy C is the crazy one here. His words will be written... as electrical diagrams
That sounds cool XD especially the last one!
I’m interested :D
@@AshtonSnapp i regret to inform you that nothing ever came of this
wundrweapon Aw.
wundrweapon aww. Tell your friends to get back at it!
You could also go the Artemis Fowl fairy writing system of starting in the center of the page and writing outward in a spiral. They use logographic characters.
THE WHEEL OF TIME TURNS,
AND AGES COME AND PASS.
WHAT WAS, WHAT WILL BE,
AND WHAT IS, MAY YET FALL
UNDER SHADOW.
My thoughts exactly
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed.
THE WHEEL OF TIME TURNS, AND AGES COME AND PASS, MEMORY FADES TO LEGEND, LEGEND FADES TO MYTH, AND EVEN MYTH IS LONG FORGOTON WHEN THE AGE THAT GAVE IT BIRTH COMES AGAIN, IN ONE AGE, CALLED THE THIRD AGE BY SOME, AN AGE LONG FORGOTTON, AN AGE YET TO PASS, A WIND ROSE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF MIST, THE WIND WAS NOT THE BEGINNING, FOR THERE ARE NO BEGINNINGS, NOR ENDS TO THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL OF TIME, BUT IT WAS a BEGINNING.
Off the top of the head, how did I do?
From were is that?
@@WildArtistsl the wheel of time, is a book
I like how you used Daedric for an example of evil.
The rest are all fictional scripts as well
4:45 I believe he also used a picture with the dragon language as well.
Hebrew was also displayed
@@hirokatsuvictor8755 That is correct. That is Dovahzul from TES V: Skyrim
Omg, Hermann! Long time no see buddy!
5:58 this is why I love your videos, there is always something I hadn't thought about, now I feel sad that we do not write alternating direction, which might be good for reading speed, I always find myself struggling to find the next line after finishing a line.
Ancient languages used it. It got phased out of use for a reason though, imagine learning to write in both directions.
Wait I thought I was the only one to get confused
As someone who knows both Arabic and English (they have different directions) this can lead to confusion at the start.
I remember back in school I'd be reading an English book and flipping the wrong paper and then wonder why I'm back two pages.
Now though, it's extremely easy.
يمكنني ببساطة الانتقال بين اللغتين بدون مشاكل.
When I was learning to write (at about five years old) I wrote like that. Made perfect sense to me. Not so much to my parents... xD
it might be because of ink smearing
A design rule that helped me come up with a writing system that I felt was easier to write is making the symbols easy to compact horizontally.
Oh yeah, and the "Make the symbol an oversimplified version of a common object" trick does help make the symbols distinct.
what does compact horizontally means ?
4:00
If the colors carry meaning, are the colorblind dyslexic? This might depend on the color oppositions within your writing system, but this is an issue to watch out for.
He probably just used it to highlight the symbols
There doesn't have to be dyslexia in a world/language that's been built for dyslexic people and If it isn't mentioned then I suppose not,afterall… It'd be taken into the account.
He meant like how purple symbolises wealth and royalty because of how costly purple dye was made. Reason why he placed some blue with currency below it a few seconds later. Like how limited the color of purple was and how it carried meaning to it.
I would suppose that the only way to tackle that would be to create alternatives such as braile and asl for the blind and deaf that stick to a word by word representaion
Your race could not have colorblindness, or maybe there is a separate writing system (like brails) but they add little color marks
I think it would be cool to make a language where vowels are the base, and consonants are used as the decoration. Since almost every word requires at least one vowel they could hold more importance in the writing. I keep on seeing vowels being used like decoration, so I think it would be a pretty fun break from the norm
tunic
@@Stdvwrshirt
5:06 "Ambiguity is never a good thing"
Armenian and Georgian: *"Allow us to introduce ourselves"*
Ambiguity has its own charms.
Japanese be like: ツシ and ソン
@@johnclever8813 wHy
@@johnclever8813 カ／力 and ロ／口
Elvish: You forgot me!
*Shows Tengwar* "Peaceful"
Ah yes. The famous "peacefulness" of the Noldor.
Ferrell Manes
*Kinslaying Intensifies*
Well... In the end its kind of all Feanors fault.
or Morgoths... or they were all assholes for starting the first kinsaying in Aquallonde
@@hase3008 yeah but he's the one who invented tengwar so
More like *_Piece-ful_*
"Are you going to create upper case and lower case, and if so.. Why?" that had me dying
5:06: "Ambiguity is never a good thing." Try learning Traditional Mongolian Script and you'll see exactly how true this is.
Damn, I cannot even make up any letters! How could I even make my own writing system, let alone language?
Actually, that might be a neat idea for a video. "How to create your own letter system?" Please, make a video on it, I really need it. Especially on some fituristic sci-fi alphabets, like in Star Wars. And some alien and advanced-ancient ones.
They did. Saying how you should make it easy to replicate and fit the style of what you're writing on and such. I personally for a Korean style writing system with only 17 characters for the sake of making it easy to learn
tell me how you want it to look
@@official-obama oh crap. We making a language and alphabet boys? I'll make a discord and post the link here so anyone can join
Any names?
Nevermind. Dumb idea I suppose. I already have a language I speak fluently and an alphabet that I'm going to be revising anyways. I'll just rely on my Jehovah's Witness style advertising of it
I came here with question … left with more questions.
0:34 it says artifexian. well done.
You mean rtfxn
Storm Mechmesteren I get what you mean but no, it says Artyfksyan
Man i Got a like
יותם ענבר hello, Google is doing weird things
I wish I knew how to read Arabic, then I would have noticed that.
I'm thinking about a script derived from ancient people pressing broken bits of human rib bone into wet clay. Im justifying this as only the priests of the ancient civilization had access to bones of the dead and knowledge of writing. By breaking and sharpening the tips of cross sections of these stylus you could get many interesting shapes. Arches ∩,angles∧, lines ∣, points ∴, ovals (albeit angular ovals later simplified to circles.) I'm thinking each ancient characters would be combinations of no more than two imprints from a rib stylus and a writing kit had four two ended ribs.
The trouble for me is I'm having trouble constructing the modified handwriting descendant of this cuneiform into non-Roman alphabet letters that can easily be written in cursive.
Thoughts?
Jefferson Rose you should literally use "tails" in every letter and simplify the script so that the "tails" look fluid.
For example, Im trying to make a cursive version of the Celtiberian script. With the letter "a", that is symbolized with a inverted triangle I do just maintained the triangle, but pushed a descending line and a curve to connect it to other letter. It looks like a closed "y".
That sounds REALLY cool to me!! I love it!!!!
Fuck cursive.
Here's something to play around with. In the handwriting, arches = half circles, lines and points stay the same, angles could stay the same or become X's or +'s, and ovals are circles. In cursive, lines=lines(but connected), points=small loops, circles=large loops, x's maybe just pick up your writing tool. Just a thought, it might not work.
ooo i had a similar idea , cool!
I'd like to point out that you can also make writing systems that doesn't make use of "writing" or glyphs, like tying knots on a string where the type of knot and distance between each knot infer their meaning (you can also add different colors to change the subject of the message which means it is very easy to see what the message is about before even reading it, or adding beads to the string to get further variations). It's quite hard to even realize that you can have writing systems without using any glyphs if you haven't already heard of the idea but it can be quite a fun exercise, if anyone can think of any other ways to have a non glyph based writing system I'd love to hear it (that can be transported and not just arranging rocks in your garden to tell people to stay out xD).
Variation of coins on a chain around ones neck. Imagine if spies or a guild or old merchants started a whole language structure by having an array of different value coins tied to them that held secret messages such as a 1, 2,4 and 8 coin in a particular order having a meaning but a 2, 4, 8 and 1 having a different meaning.
Beads on a string with different colours, materials, shapes and sizes to create meaning. Something large and elaborate like a bead work tapestry could be the equivalent of a book.
Apart from the colour it could also work for blind people.
Colour is another, if every colour had it's own meaning whether that's phonetic or take it further to individual concepts. Then also use those colours to make shapes to create even more intricate concepts.
That one's an idea from cuttlefish and their use of colour on their mantle for communication and camouflage.
Touch stuff like braille used for blind people and haptics used for both blind and deaf people is another.
3:28 BTW, Groote shorthand and it's descendants, like the German Standard Shorthand, are kinda like Abjads - vowels are inferred by the connection between the consonant symbols.
At the most basic form of most shorthand, you're just changing the writing script from greek alphabet to the shorthand one. Then comes the fun part: The higher levels of shorthand focus on eliminating as much as possible, and introducing contractions and shorthand symbols for the rest. In the end, whole phrases are compressed to a few strokes, and almost anything that's not an important verb or noun gets left out or is implied. The truly high-end stuff is utterly incomprehensible even for an advanced writer of the system and are true pieces of workmanship and art when you've seen a court or parliament stenographer at work.
did you just put the names of people in the Wheel of Time series to describe fonts? Instant subscription.
What?
Does Ba'alzamon count as a person? :P
yes read the further books or spoil yourself on the wiki (sorry didnt realise this was a old video or wouldnt of commented)
It made me want to see Ogier script. :( I've found no representation of it so far.
I literally thought the exact same thing. You dont see wheel of time references often but when you do, you instantly like that person xD
yup, this is what I spend most of my team in school doing.
I drew for hours random symbols until I had a cool one
then I would replace a letter with that symbol.
now I finally have the entire alphabet and I have to say it looks really cool, its like some magical writing
nice!
i should totally try that for when i'm bored
I think any civilization which uses math probably has individual glyphs for numbers, for convenience sake.
Not quite, the ancient greeks used letters to represent numbers. Although the ancient greeks also apparently saw numbers in math as secondary to geometric construction.
That's actually quite a modern thing, if you go back, a lot of cultures didn't have specific glyphs for numbers. Take Ancient Greek for example, they didn't have specific numbers but instead each letter had a numeric value. That used to be quite a common system.
Individual glyphs for numbers? You'd have to come up with an infinite amount of glyphs.
numbers ≠ digits
Infinite glyphs, one for every number. Challenge accepted.
Coming up with an infinite amount of glyphs isn't that hard though. Take 781487 for example, in this hypothetical system the whole number with all digits can be thought of as a single unique symbol that represents the number. My point is that what you need is a system with simple rules for everyone to be able to construct the symbol for any number without learning all infinite symbols one by one.
In hebrew we have gematria, which is a way to represent numbers with letters, like roman numerals, only shitter.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria
"We don't speak with spaces... " William Shatner does. ..And magnificently!
I love making these. I have a bunch of old ones I’m proud of from a few years ago, most of a different system. I’d love to publish some of them one day or something like that
Cool
Thats really cool!
Nice
Dude the dragon language is amazing in Skyrim, it follows the rule of having jagged uneven letters because it was carved on rock
Χεβ ιυ χερδ οβ θε Χαι Ελβζ?;
There was one type of writing system you left out(which is between logographs and syllabaries). It is morphological scripts, when each letter means a grammatical unit.
Love all the Wheel of Time easter eggs you've put in this video.
Made me quite happy while learning.
I am so happy to see so many fans of The Wheel of Time
Only just joined the Wheel of Time fandom thanks to the show.
When I saw Moiraine's name in this video I did a double take and then noticed the others haha
@@JainaSoloB312 You have probably heard that a billion times, but I really recommend to read the books (even though they can be quite boring and long in some passages) the only thing, the show and the books have in common are the names. The show is really only loosely inspired by the books and tells a complete different story.
I made my own language too! I called it Etheri (derived from a fantasy series in my country). It was mixed of Arabic, English, German, Russian, Hebrew and some self made words. Example; I love you = Gouwen Vanah Ciavan (Read as Guven Vana Sziyavan). Another Example; Beautiful is Behati (Most Beautiful is Tegenbehati). Last one; Thank you is Zochrentag (Read as ZoKHrentag)
I also made my own alphabet I also called Etherial Alphabet! Hope I can share it with you 🙏🏼
Ok
Why arabic?
Always remember to use the IPA to define your pronunciations
OMG THIS SOUNDS COOL
This is SO INSPIRING for my writing!!!! Thanks a lot!!! I'm going to make a new playlist!! I don't know if I'm the type of author to go THIS in-depth, but I'll definitely use this for inspiration!! Thank you so much!!!
I love how your example for the Advanced culture's writing system was lantean text. I friggin' love Stargate.
I translated it xD It reads,
"all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights
they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act to
wards one another in a spirit of brotherhood"
@@Trakeso Very cool!
Russian cursive happens.
Oh, boy...what a train wreck.
How the hell do Russians read that? Please tell me some people print Cyrillic.
Artifexian
I find that underlining ш and overlining т make Russian cursive much more easily legible.
@@ilikeceral3 Only doctors do this
@@sweetberries4611 😂
I just wanted to say thank you Artifexian. Your videos are helping me in writing my book, which will involve a few different cultures, languages, and writing systems.
5:03 - "ensure that your glyphs look distinct"
In the distance one can hear the tortured cries of a dyslexic reader
Daedric and Dragon in the same video. This TES nerd is satisfied.
Haha. Glad you enjoyed, Josh. Thanks for watching.
This TES nerd is slightly less satisfied because 'dragon' is dovahzul lol
_oblivion masterrace you dovahzul peasant_
Wheel of Time character names!! Loved it tbh
> Peaceful
> shows Tengwar
glances at the quenta silmarillion and the Noldor. haha. hahaha. peaceful. yes. just the word.
Very very peacefull, why, just ask their Teleri neighbors in alqualonde
@@drFocak "sorry about the whole slaughtering your village and stealing your most beloved possessions and using them for an unholy crusade. We cool now?"
Hahaa
Ive always love the Ancient writing ( 4:58 bottom left )... its so simple and not bound by weird rules as it is a derived of medieval Latin.
What's this from? "Ancient" is pretty ungoogleable haha
@@satiric_ Stargate.... The language is called, Well...Ancient
@@duvaul4821 ah ok thanks.
bro how about the right one?
The legends were true... Artifexian has returned at last! And he brings the gift of writing!
Huzzah!
Gift? That's not what Egyptian Thamus would say. Thoth showed him his wonderful invention of writing and here's what he had to say:
_"this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."_
+Artifexian Iterate iterating the iteration technique which includes iteration upon the fact that iterating iterate (as in the word iterate) will implant the iterating thought of iteration into the reader's now iterating mind.
Let me guess... NativLang fan.
Flaming Obsidian very yes
Watching this, I realised that Alternian is just Daedric but upside down. :/
W h a t
yup.
Yes
Finally found a homestuck in the comments
@David Soto wdym? It's practically an ancient text in Internet years.
Can’t wait to rewatch this fifty times before I finally manage to account for everything
This is the first time I’ve seen a LOTR reference in Tamil 😂😂😂
Kannan Chandra, this the first time I seen anything referencing pop culture in Tamil!
Absolutely great, anyone who actually creates a new language, I’ll be happy to learn and create a new superior class. *All hail the superiors*
I would like to see the detailed tutorial about influence of writing material on the script
Great, this gives me some ideas for my various races in my sci-fi setting
I'm starting on my second attempt at a new language, and honestly the best thing I could ever hope for is that it's used by people other than me
You can teach me
This was my favorite style of Artifexian. It just looks so responsive!
Just a little clarification: not all kanji are logographical (a few dozens are at best). Most of them are _ideophonograms_, meaning they have one ideographical or logographical part that determines what semantic category they belong to, and another part that is a kanji used to infer how the overall symbol is pronounced.
MatA57
Which is further complicated by the fact that different kanji were borrowed from different chinese languages (depending on what dynasty was in command of China) at different time periods.
Some were even borrowed _multiple times_, adding new on-readings to the mix every time.
+MatA57 Watch NativLang's videos on Kanji, they're really interesting.
That "borrowed from different chinese languages" thing is why there was a rash of bad translation software having tourettes syndrome in the nineties and aughties. There was a word with 14 meanings and the first one was the word fuck. Cheap translation software defaulted to the first meaning for any word, so stuff like "fuck the cabbage softly" would be written on things as the english translation (the intended meaning was "crispy" I think).
I've an species that's able to make 3 sounds at the same time, and their language basically works by stacking words, like for example they could use the word "boy" then add the word "run" on a different tone on top of it and then add the sound for "past" and that single stack of sounds said at the same time would be a full sentence, "the boy was running", it's a little more complext than that but you get the idea. I've been thinking a lot about a writting system for it but I don't really like any of the ideas I've come up with, suggestions?
victoria adelaida Have a simple mark for each tence. Past tence has a mark, & so does future, while present can be implied. You can have verbs and nouns have different styles maybe. I was thinking blocky vs curvy. Blocky alphabet vs curvy alphabet!
Another note: if your imagined civilization has a script, make sure it evoles and changes, but also make sure it can "revert" to older forms (like how we reverted to carolingian miniscule or old roman majuscule, which we use today)
Syllabaries like Japanese kana are my favorite, especially because each character usually has one set pronunciation with very few exceptions.
Really, really like your chanel! Since I think this is the first video I found from your chanel (a month ago?), I decided to post my message here. I've embarked on a mission watching every video on your chanel, from the very first one till your cryogenically freezing one (although I've sneeked around some younger videos before, like your fantasy maps video). I came here for conlang and you've taught me a lot about that topic. But also about dwarf planets, celestial rock stars and a very funny, nice, precise and creative Irish man. Thank you so much for making these interesting and creative videos! I'll be patiently waiting for new ones.
My parents found my book, that I used to write my secrets in my language...
Now I'm going to church.
What language is it?
@@sonetagu1337
I bet it's the Wicca alphabet.😀😁😂
Minecraft enchanting table, eh? 🤣
me too, my friends think I'm Satanist...
Oof
I saw that Nail and Gear, Tim. Slightly unrelated, I'd kinda like to hear Brady and Grey talk about language sometime. Could be interesting
{{clears throat}}
let me sing you a song of my people
{{filthy homestuck muttering}}
I have no idea what this comment is about but it made me laugh.
LET ME TEL-
Creating a language is about creating a set of rules for scripts so that a writer and a reader can have an understanding. Evolving a language, however, is about bending the rules, sometimes even breaking them, as the people who use it misunderstand each other and eventually come up with new ways to either help understand each other better (adding rules of grammar and writing techniques) or worse (creating cyphers or just trying to be overly fancy)
These videos are really helping me to create a writing system! I've tried before, and knowing nothing of how language works wasn't successful. Keep it up! (I also caught the Mistborn glyph at the beginning!)
ive made my own. for the novel im writting. its based on germanic runic alphabets. but i modified most of them. lol. and so far. ive only made like 10 words from it. lol.
lol.
Lol.
Ⲱⲯϣ ϫ⳥ⲫϭⳉ
I'm glad that I'm not alone xd
You could use a ipa dictionary maker
I was doing some tasks for my studies and I wanted something to play in the background. Now, I am sitting with a plan on how to create a writing system for my DnD campaign. Thank you very much, Sir 🤩
I don't even remember watching this video, but I already liked it.
I evolved a lot since I discovered conlanging, and years after I'm happy so see that I get deeper content from what taught me in the first place. And that my new, spontaneous idea are any good under the criterias of what I've been told to be right.
I'm currently developping my left out conlangs (and preparing for a massive commission, as I'm a proud conlanger for hire thanks to you amongst others). But my next project that is already on the tracks is an alien language that is partly spoken and partly signed, and the writing system reflects that in an unexpected way that, I think, wouldn't fit in any of the existing writing system. Consider : the main glyphs correspond to a root. It represents a sign that is executed, and a sound template that we apply three things onto : first is the inflection pattern that is represented by diacritics, or not represented at all, like vowels in an abjad (and you'll get that I've been influenced by semitic languages here). then additional sounds that are represented by a "letter" added onto the writing, with a different shape corresponding not only to the base glyph but also to the position in the template. And not last, the link between two glyphs represent the physical pattern and speed to switch from one sign to the next so that the core item of the sentence is not the word but the root. Not last because 6:12 gave me ideas about representing less of the pattern and something more instead (first idea on : root-bounded punctuation, like putting a question mark over the questioned word).
And all that (if we consider that it's a good idea) is maybe not thanks to this very video but for a good part thanks to you !
Cool! How did you become a conlanger for hire perchance?
4:46 nail and gear flag :D
VIVE LA FLAGGY FLAG!
+Samuel Melcher Did I play too much FTL recently, or did you?
Welcome Tim.
VIVE LE FLAGGY FLAG!
We don't negotiate with terrorists.
I don't usually send comments but I was moved to here. Unlike so many videos on RUclips, this one was packed with top quality information, presented simply and clearly and above all absolutely no ego involved. Would that I could say the same about all the videos on RUclips. Quality.
0:42 I would like to point out that प् isn't a null vowel it just makes the pa sound otherwise alone प would make the pa sound so basically with प् it would be reap and with just प it would be reapa
I like how you were using Wheel of Time names in the video.
Ive been working on a language called Jbrailic for about 4 years now. Used by Jbrailiens, i have primarily just made letters and used english words, only altered by my languages differences, like we have no C,Q, or X. Another important is something I like to call Linework, wher we put different lines over letters to change the sound, allowing multiple sounds per letter!
I've made my own writing system during my spare time unfortunately I don't know where the paper I wrote it on went, but I planned to adjust some things anyway. My writing system is similar to Japanese, "ta" will forever be "ta" and pronunciation never changes, only the tone, and yes it is a tonal language. The glyphs are based off Chinese characters and I rearranged the strokes or had inspiration from cursive Chinese characters. I merge like "k" and "o" to become a new letter ,"ko". I did notice a problem, a problem also encountered in Japanese, it's that it would be quite hard to read a word, but unlike Japanese that made 3 writing systems to solve it, I just added spaces.
Also and consonants are never individual letters, they're like radicals in Chinese characters in a sentence, like "I eat apples" would be wā(I) cěkù(eat) pǖgo(apple), notice that after every consonant there is a vowel
I also had an idea of the writing system going left to right and right to left, based on which is your dominant hand, if you're right handed you go left to right, if you're left handed you go right to left, and there is an arrow marking which way to read, which is always on the most left hand side
tell me more.
@@Eosinophyllis Other than that, haven't developed any other things, still working on words, adjusting some stuff and grammar, it's just something random I do when I have spare time from school
So if one were to make a writing system where the writing is carved into ice, would the glyphs be angular as well?
Airmanon I would imagine it would be angular but there could be slight curves in it too
I figure it'd depend on the nature of the carving tools used to write your language. Angles would be easier to carve reliably, but curves would be possible if lines were carved rather than chiseled.
If you skate it on ice, it would be circular.
This is so freaking useful!!! Straight to the point, funny, a nice accent, examples with images, it has everything!
Korea’s Hangul might be the only featural system. That word was even invented to describe their writing system, as well as Pitman shorthand. But basically, the characters are written exactly how they’re spoken. Hangul’s characters represent the mouth movements you need in order to say it. Pittman Shorthand was made as a shorthand for the English alphabet
Also, its glyphs have a simple name. Vowels are named as same as their sound. (ㅏ[ah], ㅗ[Oh]) Consonants may have different sounds front and back of a syllable, so they have names that start and end with their sound. ( ㄴ [ni-eun], ㅅ[si-ot])
Finish is phonetic no?
@@tanjalukic7008What are you even talking about
@@Dusticulous phonetic: representing each speech sound with a single symbol.
Or in others words i am saying that finnish is also a language which is spoken exactly as it's written.
I’m a simple Earthican. I see Alienese, I click.
Speaking of which, I clicked because I was wondering why you wrote *Futurama Alie* in your thumbnail.
Normianese
Some time ago, I did a phonemic script . It had initial, medial, and terminal cases. Initial started a thought, terminal ended every word, and there were a set of terminal diacriticals for emphasis, interrogative, and linked (basically ! ? ;). Consonant shapes were based on how deep in the mouth they formed and whether they were stops, fricatives, sibilants, or liquids. Then unvoiced had no modifications, voiced a terminal loop, and nasals a through slash. There was a single character for initial and another for terminal values, incorporating a diacritical denoting the value, which in medial was just placed above and between the adjacent consonants. Worked well enough I could write English with it, so I could fiddle around in meetings, and everyone thought I was writing in Arabic... backwards.
question: what was the script that was listed under elegant? it's super pretty and i'd love to know it's name :0
It's the Vulcan writing system from Star Trek.
Jordan Berndt
ohh okay, thank you!
That was anti-climatic. I expected it to be some ancient extinct Chinese dialect...
:(
maligning_my_toenails Vulcan
DulledMemory Yea I'm pretty sure all 6 of the languages on that slide are fictitious. I know the 3rd one for "evil" happens to be Daedric from the Elder Scrolls series
I am creating my own language called Dasnati, or Daznati, and this video has helped me a lot, this channel is awesome
Did you create it?
@@Moonstar-i8k Oh shit, I forgot I was supposed to do that
idk why im ever going to need any of this, but i'm basically binging this guy's videos on making parts of languages
Are we all just adhd kids wanting to have ✨FANCY✨ diaries?
I'm so excited to see this. I am making a writing system for Drow in my story since undercommon is never really written down in campaigns. So I'm doing a slight difference in Elvish, with the words being different with a more harsh, Nordic accent. It's kind of like Italian versus Spanish, they sound similar and come from latin, but they're different.
I just got into this with a book I'm writing. The main characters are basically wolves, which throws anything that requires manual dexterity and/or anything beyond the simplest of tools out the window. Their writing system involves carefully gnawing logographic marks into bones (and occasionally scratching single words into the sides of trees, because it's sometimes useful to have a somewhat-permanent sign).
You don't necessarily need to pick one "type" of writing system. As you said, modern Hebrew and Arabic aren't perfect abjads, I'd argue most languages' use of the Roman alphabet aren't "perfect" alphabets by the definition you gave. I could imagine systems that combine two or more of these, or hell you could try and make something totally new.
Exactly. :)
How is english or Spanish or whatever not an alphabet? And I know bits of hebrew, and it is only technically an abrade.
abjad stupid autocorrect.
@@completeepicness5070 late reply but "sh" is a single sound that uses two letters
Don’t forget the silent letters or how much “-ough” varies in pronunciation across the words it’s in
I already made up 3 languages/writing systems all on my own and I'm very proud of myself because they're based on real-world languages. And by real-world languages I mean I mostly based it off of Korean since I can kind of read and speak it. The first one had 23 characters, each representing a word with a different random sound I just felt like using, then just combine stuff and bam, words (yes it's limited but at least blood literally translates to life water). The second is based on the first one, with words being just twisted versions of the original and the writing with phonetic letters. The third is just random scribbles and gibberish combined with Korean. Benefits of being sorta bilingual, I guess :) Edit: also the third language is very hard to write because just like Korean it has rules where you place certain letters under others to create a word and sound. But unlike Korean, all the letters are hard to write perfectly, like imagine the written language love child of Russian cursive and Arabic on drugs and that's what it looks like. (That was a really weird analogy but that really is the best way to describe it).
are you korean
I noticed that one of my writing systems made it difficult to determine when one word started and another one ended, so I made a space character. I love it!
@Artifexian - You might want to do a video about the Celtic Ogham writing system and how it's different from Germanic Runes. -- And possibly a video on how the Latin alphabet was adapted to write Gaelic and how that developed into its own Irish specific script, and then how it's used in modern Ireland and Northern Ireland. (For example, showing people how to type the old dotted consonants and accented vowels in Unicode.) Most Americans don't know anything about that, or how to make sense of Irish spelling and pronunciation. So a few videos might be in order. :)
Why is there the allomantic symbol for iron shown at 0:18? I think we've found a Sanderson fan.
Edit: I just got to 6:00. Yes, we've a Sanderson and Jordan fan. So very happy.
the idea of a written language that uses drawings, where the colors indicate stress, pauses, emotion, etc, and the shape indicates what concept the drawing is talking about because it could be used is so many different settings and time periods. totally snatching that one for myself
0:22 that “C” is lit
That’s from Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Mistborn’ series. It’s awesome, I hope you check it out.
Moi iss None of your business ok
The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul, bound by the Creator at the moment of Creation, bound until the end of time
This guy gets it.
And this video is the video, that caused me to fall down into the conlanging rabbit hole. damn. thank you artifexian.
Ba'alzamon? I think you mean... Shai'tan!
I didn't have the balls to type out his true name.
I don't get it. why is this ba'alzamon called something similar to devil in arabic?
+Arthur Newlly Ba'alzamon is the Dark One (basically the Devil) in the Wheel Of Time series, but his true name is Shai'tan, but like naming the Devil, people have a lot of nicknames for him, Ba'alzamon and the Dark One being two very popular ones.
+Edward Nutt yes, yes I did
+minimooster now I want to read the wheel of time. seems like it has lore
I master
Latin
Elvish (tengwar)
My own system I created 5 years ago
Futhark (runic system)
Gotic (mid age language with alphabet)
And I'm currently learning the amharique system (about 230 "letters")
how did you learn Elvish, throught websites or books? and which elvish language, Sinarin, Quenya or Telerin?
OMG!!! Vulcan is sooo fricking elegant!
*Ba'alzamon* huh, I didn't know that name existed outside-- *Egwene* well it could just be a coincide-- *Ishmael* waaaaaaiiiiiiit a minute
how did I not spot Aginor?
Right?