Frintha Scripts and Maps

[clawgrip]

Thanks for the suggestion. For other scripts I have used the technique of giving characters 0 width values with character forms that appear on the previous character, especially for diacritics and so on. Unfortunately the ligatures for Gondel script are just not quite regular enough for this to work, I think. I suppose I could experiment a little more with it though. Surely at least some of them could work that way.

[Nortaneous]

Interesting; these all come from deformations, right?

When I write in English, which is not that common, I spell "the" as thorn and "that" as thorn-t; but that counts as abbreviation.

the ligatures are from deformations -- and i've actually seen ng > yogh-looking thing a few times before -- but the abbreviations are conscious changes, except for 'is' and 'of'/'if'.

[clawgrip]

I have some handwritten abbreviations in my own handwriting for things I don't really intend others to read. The 'ion' of tion/sion/etc. looks like an oversized tilde with a dot over it, and 'ing' at the end of a word often looks like, again, an oversized tilde with a dot over it, but this time with a descending, backwards C attached to it.
I notice also that while I write in print, lower case e almost without fail will form a ligature with the previous letter.

[clawgrip]

Gondel (2012)
This is the most recent script I have created in this family. I think I was messing around the Beeba script, making it a little more angular and varying the thickness of the lines using a pencil that had acquired a sharp, horizontal edge from writing normally. I liked what I ended up with and created the script and a language to go with it.



As I've mentioned before, Gondel script completely ignores word boundaries and has mandatory ligatures. I haven't yet designed all the ligatures and will have to watch out for potential duplicates.

I'm also not happy with some of the vowels, and it is likely I will change them around a bit. But those are the placeholder values for the time being.

[clawgrip]

I've been making some maps of the world by stitching together various real-world terrain maps and editing them to fit more or less what I have in mind. Here is one of the regions done:



I have tried to account for the formation of two lakes in such close proximity by making a relatively wide and flat valley with a lot of extra rivers feeding the second lake. Not sure if it works but I hope so, because I really don't want to get rid of either lake. However, since I deepened and widened the main valley, I'm not sure the valley south of the smaller lake looks convincing enough anymore as a drainage for the lake (which it is). I may have to make that valley deeper as well.


This is the region immediately to the east of the previous one. I want to increase the height of the hills in the southeast near the island. Also the origin point of the river where Kip is looks a little fishy I think. I'll have to readjust it.

There is a third lake here, formed at the confluence of two major rivers, one of which is the river that has the two lakes upstream. I'm considering turning this confluence area into a swamp. It has been suggested to me that having three lakes on one river is less than likely, but I'm hoping that the confluence of two major rivers in a low-lying area might result in something like this.

I realize that by using imagery from various different parts of the world I run the risk of making the terrain unrealistic, but I'm trying my best.

[clawgrip]

Two more maps:


Not too much to say about this one. pretty straightforward. It's directly north of Hwagak Region.




This region is a new political division that was chopped off the side of a larger tribal possession. It's directly to the south of Marag Region.

[clawgrip]

One more map:



Located West of Ashusk and north of Marag and Hwagak.

[WeepingElf]

The maps look nice.

[clawgrip]

Thank you WeepingElf! Here is one more, to the northwest of Marag:

[GrinningManiac]

Do these areas fit together like a puzzle or are there missing gaps?

Also - is this a giant island or are there other countries bordering these that you haven't created yet?

[clawgrip]

Do these areas fit together like a puzzle or are there missing gaps?

Also - is this a giant island or are there other countries bordering these that you haven't created yet?

They all fit together, but there are also missing maps. There are about 14 mainland regions, one island region, and several mountainous peripheral mainland regions where few people or no one is supposed to live. This area is a peninsula that is more or less the size of Cambodia, on the north end of a continent approximately the size of India or the Arabian peninsula. The country borders the country where they speak Himmaswa, the language I use most in the fluency thread in this forum.

I haven't done all the maps yet for a few reasons: 1) I haven't finished the base map for all regions yet; 2) I haven't developed all the languages yet, even to the level of naming languages, so I haven't really been able to come up with all the necessary place names.

I am presenting them as individual regions mainly because it is fun to do so, but here is an overview...you can see how I am stealing many maps and trying to stitch them together. It is more work than it sounds like to make them at least somewhat believable. I am also being very careful about the rivers. I have determined the drainage basins for all the rivers that exit into the ocean. There are no mistakes with that so far.



The backdrop is a map I made over 10 years ago.

[clawgrip]

Yet another map. This one is between the Krah and Qooyou regions.

[clawgrip]

Might as well do another...



This one is from the extreme southeast edge of the country.

[clawgrip]

Couldn't help making another. This is the Myoowag script. I created it recently. Originally the Myoowag language was going to be written in the Roojee script, but I decided to make another minimalist script that is related to Roojee but more suitable for the Myoowag language. This was the result. Voicing of consonants is allophonic only, and vowels have stressed and unstressed pronunciations. The transliteration differentiates between them, but the native script does not.

[masako]

What does the line above /g/ and /m/ mark? Labialization?

[clawgrip]

Yes, that's right. A bar indicates labialization, and a dot indicates palatalization. I forgot to include them in the script explanation.

[Lithray]

What did you use to make the script?

[clawgrip]

I make the glyphs in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 (1998!) and then import them to High-Logic Font Creator 6.0. I do this because I don't really like High-Logic Font Creator's design tools, but it is otherwise a good program.

[Infinity]

I have to say these scripts are all amazing! Very very amazing! especially the maps! if you have any more of this stuff i would absolutely love to check it all out. It greatly fascinates me. I visited your website on the vgfun.net and read what i could but a lot of the pages are unavailable due to server internal errors. If you have any more of this stuff please post it! I would love to see all of it!

[clawgrip]

Thanks. That website is old and out of date now. I have been redoing the map to indicate elevation to some degree as well, so the whole thing is still a big work in progress.