2L Monumental Style Conscript: Vines

[Anguipes]

hjv̀rg - Bears*


hrr̀jn - Sea Lion (Kinesis)
Represented by a Sea Lion, includes all the eared seals.


hrr̄vg - Anteater (Metamorphosis)
Represented by a Giant Anteater, includes the silky anteater, tamandua, and aardvark. Attributed to Metamorphosis for association with insects.


hrj́vg - Walrus (Crisis)
Represented by a Walrus, includes the walrus and the elephant seal. Attributed to Crisis for bulk and agression.


hjj̄rg - Bear (Anthesis)
Represented by a Brown Bear, includes all bears (Ursidae). Attributed to Anthesis for maternal instinct and association with the sun.


hjv́g - Manatee (Genesis)
Represented by a Manatee, includes manatees and dugongs.


hr̀g - Badger (Nemesis)
Represented by a European Badger. Attributed to Nemesis for being nocturnal.


hj̄g - Otter (Synthesis)
Represented by a European Otter, includes all otters.


hv́q - Dolphin (Telesis)


ʔvr̀q - Wolverine (Analysis)**
Attributed to Analysis as a scavenger.


ʔvj̄q - Skunk (Ascesis)**
Represented by a Striped Skunk, includes skunks, stink badgers and the honey badger. Attributed to Ascesis as solitary.


ʔvv́p - Seal (Physis)
Includes all true (earless) seals except the elephant seal. Attributed to Physis for social behaviour.


ʔrr̀p - Koala (Noesis)


ʔrj̄p - Whale (Gnosis)
Represented by a Sperm Whale. Attributed to Gnosis for association with fish.


ʔrv́rp - Sloth (Stasis)
Attributed to Stasis for slowness.



*Not the best name, but I can't think of anything better. This is probably the least scientific grouping, but I hope it makes a sort of sense. The logic is that it contains heavily built, stocky mammals (bear, wolverine, badger, anteater), which then branches out to the seals (sea lion, walrus, seal), and then to aquatic mammals generally.

** I accidentally swapped the order of these two in the image. The Skunk is 3rd row, second and the Wolverine is 3rd row, third.

[Anguipes]

gŕʔ - Insects


gr̀jʔ - Dragonfly (Kinesis)
Dragonflies and damselflies. Attributed to Kinesis for speed.


gv̄ʔ - Beetle (Metamorphosis)
Beetles (coleoptera), excluding fireflies (lampyridae). Attributed to Metamorphosis for variety.


qvj̀ʔ - Earwig (Crisis)
Attributed to Crisis for armament.


qvv̄v - Butterfly (Anthesis)
Diurnal lepidoptera. Attributed to Anthesis for beauty.


qvŕv - Cockroach (Genesis)
Attributed to Genesis for tenacious life.


qrj̀v - Mosquito (Nemesis)
Includes fleas, bedbugs and other blood parasitic insects. Attributed to Nemesis as parasitic.


qrv̄r - Wasp (Synthesis)
Includes wasps and bees. Attributed to Synthesis as builders.


qrŕr - Grasshopper (Telesis)
Grasshoppers, crickets and katydids.


qjj̀r - Fly (Analysis)
Most Diptera. Attributed to Analysis for association with decay.


qjv̄j - Moth (Ascesis)
Nocturnal lepidoptera. Attributed to Ascesis as lunar.


qjŕj - Ant (Physis)
Attributed to Physis for social behaviour.


qj̀j - Firefly (Noesis)


xv́n - Cranefly (Gnosis)
Log-legged insects, including pondskaters. Attributed to Gnosis for association with water.


hvr̀n - Mantis (Stasis)
Mantids and Phasmids. Attributed to Stasis for stillness.


Unlike most of the previous sets, which I referenced as much as possible from pictures of the actual animal, these are mostly taken from more generalised anatomical drawings. There might be a bit too much detail on some of these, but insects have so many... bits. I kept the side-on, outsize-head style rather than switch to a top-down view because the top-down view felt too anthropocentric.

[Kereb]

This thing is badass. I'm eager to see where it goes, but I have a question about something you might not get to posting for a little while but you've probably given some thought to, so:

Once you've filled in the plants and animals that make up the basic characters, how would you go about using them to write other concepts like verbs and abstractions? would you be able to mock-up an example using "dummy" forms for glyphs you've not yet gotten to? I'm imagining Chinese-style composite characters ... is that how it's done?

[masako]

This thing is badass.

Simply agreeing with this sentiment seems insufficient.

This script - in all seriousness - is likely to surpass any other script displayed on this board thus far.

how would you go about using them to write other concepts like verbs and abstractions?

Not to presume to speak for Anguipes, but it seems possible that one could use birds, or certain insects for concepts like:
to fly / flight / hover / float / sky / up; above...etc

as for the mammals and others, concepts like:
dig / crawl / run / walk / stand / swallow / attack / care for young...etc

all seem conveyable.

I'm imagining Chinese-style composite characters ... is that how it's done?

I would like to know as well. Anything that maintains the style and detail of the current glyphs is bound to be amazing.

Kudos Anguipes. Kudos, indeed.

[Kereb]

Not to presume to speak for Anguipes, but it seems possible that one could use birds, or certain insects for concepts like:
to fly / flight / hover / float / sky / up; above...etc

as for the mammals and others, concepts like:
dig / crawl / run / walk / stand / swallow / attack / care for young...etc

all seem conveyable.

That's possible, and in Chinese there are some characters built only from "semantic" components. But there's also this:

The phonetic components will be based on the animal and plant vocabulary, which gives me something between 392 and 512 basic phonetic characters

... so I'm guessing that (as is also done in Chinese) if the word for say "sky" happened to sound like the word for "walrus", it might be written with a compound character that has a walrus in it

[Vuvuzela]

Absolutely gorgeous!

Here's a trial stylisation, more proof of concept than anything but it shows the types of lines I want to use - hooks and 3-shapes. I chose one of the more detail-heavy glyphs to start from, the civet. The second stage tried to capture as much of the components as possible in simple lines. The third starts to merge and regularise the lines. The fourth (final two glyphs) takes that process further, and looses some unnecessary detail. Gyph 4 shows the individual strokes in different colours, ten in total (maybe one or two more - the bright green and blue-green strokes might be split). Glyph 5 is a shrunk down, single colour version of 4. I imagine the process could go further, but for a detail-heavy original I don't think what I've got is too bad.

Wow. That's cool. I look forward to seeing more of the everyday script. Is glyph four supposed to be a theoretical abstraction of glyph five, or an actual stage in the development?
I'll be really impressed if you manage to keep all of your glyph simplifications distinct. I'm impressed now but, man, that's a lot of glyphs.

[masako]

... so I'm guessing that (as is also done in Chinese) if the word for say "sky" happened to sound like the word for "walrus", it might be written with a compound character that has a walrus in it

Makes sense to me.

And this can spiral out until the characters have almost no semantic relation as well.

Chinese example:

囗 wéi - enclosure + 木 mù - tree = 困 kùn - sleepy; tired; to trap; to surround; hard-pressed; stranded; destitute

Then;

with hand radical 捆 kǔn - bunch; to tie together; bundle; a bunch

with heart radical 悃 kǔn - sincere

...you get the idea.

[hwhatting]

Absolutely gorgeous! Badass!

I can only agree. I like both the idea and the aesthetics.

Here's a trial stylisation, more proof of concept than anything but it shows the types of lines I want to use - hooks and 3-shapes. I chose one of the more detail-heavy glyphs to start from, the civet. The second stage tried to capture as much of the components as possible in simple lines. The third starts to merge and regularise the lines. The fourth (final two glyphs) takes that process further, and looses some unnecessary detail. Gyph 4 shows the individual strokes in different colours, ten in total (maybe one or two more - the bright green and blue-green strokes might be split). Glyph 5 is a shrunk down, single colour version of 4. I imagine the process could go further, but for a detail-heavy original I don't think what I've got is too bad.

Even the reduced forms look like they take a long time to write. OTOH, I wouldn't know how to reduce them further and still to obtain distinctive letter forms.

[Anguipes]

The phonetic components will be based on the animal and plant vocabulary, which gives me something between 392 and 512 basic phonetic characters

... so I'm guessing that (as is also done in Chinese) if the word for say "sky" happened to sound like the word for "walrus", it might be written with a compound character that has a walrus in it

That's the plan, at least for now. I'm still not entirely fixed on how I'll handle determiners/radicals - add more signs, or rely on the symbolic meanings attached to the animal/plant set.

A possible example: take the word to fly, njr̄vk /nʲauk/. Like all Second Language words it's made up of four parts: onset <nj>, tone (mid, represented by the macron on the r), core <r>, coda <vk>. Onset and tone combine into an initial <2nj>, core and coda into a final <rvk>. (Cycles of these initials and finals go to determine what word is assigned to what meaning, following the overall order of the vocabulary structure, in a manner that's too complicated to go into right now. But if you look at the lists, keeping them in order you should start to see some patterns.)

So, going by a vaguely-similar-to-Chinese pattern, let's look for a phonetically similar sign. In this case, one with the same final and with a nasal initial. We get nr̀vk (owl), nr̄vk (wildcat), qrŕvk and qjr̀vk (both plants, not yet determined). The best choice of phonetic component is very clear here - owl. The determiner should be something to do with action or motion - that's Crisis or Kinesis (to fly is Crisis/Kinesis/Kinesis: to do/to move/to move Kinetically). As a bird the owl's already Kinetic, so a Critic determiner seems appropriate. Perhaps this will be an extra, more abstract sign. But working with what we've got, the most purely Critic sign is the walrus, the Critic animal of the Critic animals, so that can double up as a Critic determiner. So maybe:


A few notes on how I arrived at that (by no means finalised) stylisation: The owl has been reduced to the body/back of head sweep, beak/eye/horn merged into a perpendicular single line, and the wing (down/right stroke). The walrus has become the front flipper merged with the tusk, the bottom of the rear flippers merged with the back, and a line for the top of the head. This looks to be about the right level of complexity, though I'm not going to worry myself too much about ease of writing right now - partly because that will come when I start working on reducing the glyphs in earnest, partly because simplification comes with use, and partly because this is supposed to be a complicated, impenetrable and esoteric script, at least in its proper form. After all, what would happen to the social order if anyone could read anything?

[Jipí]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Awesome-looking graphics, though. I've been lurking (in? on? for?) this thread for a while now, and I'm impressed at the amount of thought that's gone into creating this script.

[Qwynegold]

Ah, I knew this was gonna be part of that project of yours with the religious and systematic phonology thingy. Here's what I guessed:
Eagle?, sparrow, hawk?
Hummingbird, parrot, owl, cockatoo (this is what you call it in English?!)
?, dodo, some kind of woodpecker?, puffin
Ostrich, swan, grebe?

[Chuma]

I guess it'll be a lot of work if you're going to make 4373 symbols, though.

What conlanging project isn't a lot of work?

I have a conscript with 8 symbols. But yeah, I see your point.

The bears are adorable.

The stylised symbols are pretty cool, but the originals are awesomer.

[Burke]

I saw this a while ago and was mildly impressed.

this has taken a turn.

May I take this time to say:

DAYUM DAYUM

[Anguipes]

qvr̀ʔ - Worms


grv̄rʔ - Squid (Kinesis)
Attributed to Kinesis for flying squid.


grj́rʔ - Bristle Worm (Metamorphosis)
"Worms with legs", or similar projections. Represented by a velvet worm. Attributed to Metamorphosis for epitoky.


gv̀jʔ - Octopus (Crisis)
Attributed to Crisis for bulk and predation.


gr̄jʔ - Starfish (Anthesis)


gv́ʔ - Annelid (Genesis)
Simple segmented worms. Represented by an earthworm.


qvj̄ʔ - Fluke (Nemesis)
Various parasitic worms. Represented by a blood fluke. Attributed to Nemesis as parasitic.


qvv́v - Cuttlefish (Synthesis)


qrr̀v - Seahorse (Telesis)


qrj̄v - Nematode (Analysis)
Unsegmented worms.


qrv́r - Snail (Ascesis)
Attributed to Ascesis for withdrawal.


qjr̀r - Jellyfish (Physis)
Attributed to Physis for swarming behaviour.


qjj̄r - Slug (Noesis)
Includes sea slugs, nudibranchs and sea cucumber.


qjv́j - Hagfish (Gnosis)
Jawless fish. Represented by a hagfish. Attributed to Gnosis for being fish-like.


qr̀j - Chiton (Stasis)
Attributed to Stasis as jointed-shelled.


Not much detail I could find to put on these, which is probably why they got done so quickly

[Qwynegold]

Here's a trial stylisation, more proof of concept than anything but it shows the types of lines I want to use - hooks and 3-shapes.

This got me thinking about a script I might possibly make in the future. I'm thinking circles, small loops and heart shapes. Maybe also U shapes. Lol, man and woman glyphs:

Male and female glyph.gif (3.24 KiB) Viewed 6104 times

[clawgrip]

Why are they so unhappy?

[clawgrip]

Also Anguipes, just want to reiterate that this is great work. Looking forward to seeing how it can be used to represent real sentences and so on, and how the simplification process will work out.

[Qwynegold]

Why are they so unhappy?

That's actually the contour of the upper lip. The lower lip is not drawn because there isn't a stroke type that fits well.

[Anguipes]

Bats are finally done. I can't hope to capture the diversity of real-world order chiroptera, especially since there's little correlation between differences in morphology and lifestyle. So while I've tried to get as broad a sampling as possible, this is more "collection of awesome bat species".



fjv̀rg - Bats


fr̀n - Free-Tailed (Kinesis)
Represented by Chapin's Free Tailed bat. Attributed to for speed.


fj̄n - Pipistrelle (Metamorphosis)
Generalised microbat.


fv́jn - Megadermatidae (Crisis)
The False Vampire Bats. Represented by the Ghost Bat (Macroderma gigas). Attributed to Crisis as specialised large predators.


frr̀jn - Horseshoe (Anthesis)
Bats with large, rounded nose leaves. Attributed to Anthesis because of the big, round, solar-disk noses, and to play a little with the Anthesis/beauty connection


frr̄vg - Tube-Nosed (Genesis)
Tube-Nosed fruit bats.


frj́vg - Vampire (Nemesis)
Vampire bats. Attributed to Nemesis as parasitic.


fjj̄rg - Tent-Making (Synthesis)
Tent making bats. Represented by Uroderma bilobatum. Attributed to Synthesis as building.


fjv́g - Hammer-headed (Telesis)


svr̀g - Mystacinidae (Analysis)


svj̄g - Big-Eared (Ascesis)
Attributed to Ascesis as solitary.


svv́q - Flying Fox (Physis)
Attributed to Physis for social behaviour.


sr̀q - Long-Nosed (Noesis)


sj̄q - Bulldog (Gnosis)
Bulldog or fishing bats. Attributed to Gnosis association with water/fish.


sv́p - Mouse-Tailed (Stasis)
Attributed to Stasis as desert-dwelling.

[masako]

damnit, Ang...I'm trying to do schoolwork...how can I when you post such things...

Nicely done. Again.

[Chuma]

So... they're supposed to be upside down? I mean, I know bats sleep upside down, but they're not always sleeping. It looks kind of odd.

[Anguipes]

So... they're supposed to be upside down? I mean, I know bats sleep upside down, but they're not always sleeping. It looks kind of odd.

Honestly, I can't decide. Varying the orientation will help make glyphs more immediately recognisable and probably will occur in more stylised phases, and not just with the bats. But for the full style I'm not sure.

[Chuma]

Not just the bats? So there would be other glyphs that are upside down too?

[Anguipes]

Probably not upside down, but facing left/right depending on... something (probably gender).

Sod it, I've had an idea. Prepare for bats, 2.0.

EDIT:
So, which is best? The last one is based on what I plan to do with the fish, which in turn is based on the heraldic dolphin uriant.

[Chuma]

I like the first one.

Left/right could be nice. I'd use that for boustrophedon, but gender or something might be useful too.