Well, I've completed the Elkar?l ASCII transcription scheme, and I have to say it turned out to be harder than it looked. I've tried to stay as true as possible to the graphical nature of Elkar?l's writing system, but in a few places I've had to work with things a bit to get them to come out right. For instance, instead of trying to create an independent form for each of the "headgear," I instead created a general headgear template and then differentiated each from there. You'll see what I mean. Also, for ease of typing, every character used in this transcription is available right on your keyboard, without use of special characters or anything of the like.
So, on to the scheme! I'll present it in the same order as it is presented on the Elkar?l page itself, for ease of reference as well as for the reason that that's how I did it.
Consonants
Stops:
Code: Select all
p t ch k q 0
{ } ( ) E 3 <> [ ] (( ))
Insofar as it seemed possible, I strove for symmetry when the original writing system called for it. The
ch head-shape is one place where I gave up trying to do that--it was a hard enough shape to match once. Also, the
k shape isn't perfect, but it seemed the best based on my mission for this transcription.
Sonorants:
Code: Select all
m n ? ng l ly r
{| |} )| |( 3| |E >| |< &| |& (| |) ((| |))
As you can see, the general headgear template I referred to above was x| |x, so as to help distinguish them from everything else.
Vowels
Code: Select all
u ? i e ? a ? o ?
(:-( (:-| |:-| ):-( {:-( {:-> [:-( {:l-) {:-)
Again, the vowels were a tough match. I've tried to faithfully represent the actual expressions given. To double a vowel, 8 is used in place of : for the eyes, and to get more than double vowels, multiple 8's are used (or, if you feel like being mathematical, you could measure out exactly how many duplicate vowels you wanted with a combination of 8's and a possible extra :).
Voicing, implosives, and fricatives (shown on
tek)
Code: Select all
Voicing: (l):-(l>
Implosive: (ll):-(ll>
Fricative: ~():-(>~
Remember at this point that a lot of how these turn out depends on the font you're using. I designed the system using Verdana (the font this board is in), with the idea that that's the font it would most often be used in, so it looks best in that. However, I'm presenting it in Courier because that's the least ambiguous of the fonts. Trust me: in Verdana, those lower case L's look a lot more convincing as wrinkles.
Prefixes (shown on
tek when applicable)
Code: Select all
n- 8
ch- ():~(>
g- ():-$(>
t- ^
p- c
q- <
Note
ch- and
g-.
Suffixes
Code: Select all
-a .
-u C
-e <==|o
-sh #
-ch X
-m 8
-r )-)
-kh W M
-th -,
-d 88
-?l E
is probably the most awkward of this set of symbols, but it ironically does possibly the best job of actually representing what it is supposed to represent. Note that, with
-kh the <W> and <M> go on opposite sides of the face proper.
Object anaphora
Code: Select all
-r- > or P
-l- o
-n- :
-?b o==
-?d =o=
-?g ==o
-iph -l-
Note that the <>> goes after the mouth (if the mouth is a straight line, use <P> instead, in place of the mouth), <o> replaces the regular <-> nose, and <:> goes directly before the mouth.
Assignment anaphora
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u ? i e ? a ? o ?
*C *( *| *) *} *: *() *3 *{
Suffice it to say, some of these require an imagination.
Numbers
Code: Select all
l ll lll x
xl xll xlll xx
xxl xxll xxlll X
Everything's piled together in the order prefixes-face proper-suffixes-object anaphora-assignment anaphora, exactly in the order I've listed them.
And so you have what you might call &|)8-() (():o(>.)-)E, were you so inclined.
--you obviously put a lot of thought into this. 
