Naduta language and script

[Risla]

The allomorphy gods have summoned me to this thread to voice approval of this conlang!

Aside from appreciating the script a great deal (of course!), I must say that I quite like the phonological aesthetic you've come up with. It's quite nice---it manages to be relatively unique without seeming unrealistic, which is really not something I can say for a lot of conlangs.

[clawgrip]

Thanks. The phonology was the only thing I originally spent a significant amount of time considering. I kind of shot myself in the foot with this language, because I intended it only to be a placeholder language that I could base the script on, so that I could later awkwardly adapt it to an unrelated language to create an orthographic nightmare (which was originally my main goal). To that end I just based a bunch of stuff on Japanese. Unfortunately, I grew attached to this language, so I have made a fair amount of effort to differentiate it from Japanese. Now it has significant differences, but also significant similarities that I can't get rid of.

I am considering making basic instructions to make sense of the script. Since I have designed the script myself, I'm not at all clear if it is relatively easy for others to understand, or if it's totally opaque to people other than me.

[sangi39]

Thanks. The phonology was the only thing I originally spent a significant amount of time considering. I kind of shot myself in the foot with this language, because I intended it only to be a placeholder language that I could base the script on, so that I could later awkwardly adapt it to an unrelated language to create an orthographic nightmare (which was originally my main goal). To that end I just based a bunch of stuff on Japanese. Unfortunately, I grew attached to this language, so I have made a fair amount of effort to differentiate it from Japanese. Now it has significant differences, but also significant similarities that I can't get rid of.

I am considering making basic instructions to make sense of the script. Since I have designed the script myself, I'm not at all clear if it is relatively easy for others to understand, or if it's totally opaque to people other than me.

I'm just wondering if you're still working on Himmaswa and its script. A well done complex script is special enough, but 2 from the same user? That's just impressive

[clawgrip]

I have been building vocabulary for Himmaswa, but haven't created too many new characters because it seems like most of the time I already have the characters I need. I need to write about new topics so I will be forced to use new vocabulary. Thanks for the comments.

[clawgrip]

Anyone who knows about font development, can you help me out? In my Naduta font, all the glyphs are stored in the CJK range. This works well because it is easy for me to keep track of them and make sense of the arrangement. However, CJK characters are all of uniform width, but Naduta glyphs are all different widths. Some programs, such as MS Word, ignores the advance width settings I have set in the font. It identifies the glyphs as CJK and accordingly sets them all to a uniform width, which results in lots of ugly overlap and other spacing problems. Surprisingly, Excel does not have this problem. Does anyone have any idea how I can force Word to recognize my advance width settings?

I wonder if this is typical in all releases of Word, or if it is some extra setting that my Japanese IME has taken over.

[clawgrip]

I just noticed something weird about this font problem:



The font dialogue box displays the font with proper spacing, but the actual document messes it up. So what's the deal with this! Can anyone help!

[WanderlustKoko]

Your script is very pleasant on the eyes. It has a really surreal feel about it while seeming realistic at the same time! It's quite inspiring! Maybe I'll have to create a script for one of my conlangs ....someday.

[clawgrip]

Thanks by the way. I appreciate it.

[clawgrip]

I have completed the Naduta common script, a fully phonetic syllabary derived from the Naduta full script. The idea is that mastery of the entire full script was generally an indicator of prestige, and as literacy spread, many were unable to learn it entirely. However, since the full script already had a lot of phonetic elements in it, it was relatively easy to use phonetic complements in place of glyphs that the writer didn't know. This eventually led to the development of mostly or fully phonetic scripts that were used by the common people. This particular one was endorsed by the government of a major settlement and because of this legitimization, it became the most common of the common scripts.

I intend to derive daughter scripts from it as well at some point.

Full chart:


Here are the characters they derive from:



This is the Gilgamesh text from earlier in this thread, written in common script: