zia

...now on my laptop...

Monday, 2003-1-13

Invented Alphabets

As one might guess from the fact that I invented one and adapted another, I have an interest in "Invented Alphabets". (I know, they were all arguably "invented", but you probably know approximately what I'm talking about.)

Some time ago, I found this very cool "Origins of Writing" site. I had encountered Kingsley Read's winning entry in G.B. Shaw's posthumous competition before, but had mostly forgotten about it. Here's a hint of what the Shavian Alphabet looks like. This site has better writeups about it.

Next thing to do will be to make a "Mlang Box", so I can compare mlang, my tengwar translation, and the Shavian one. Maybe I'll just do that on paper and scan it. mlang and my tengwar match one another fairly closely, since both are based on my Southern California dialect of English. I'll have to guess a little to figure out which particular dialect of English English the Shavian stuff is best at denoting.

"Mlang" is the name I gave to the phonetic English alphabet that I designed when I was in high school. My rendition of tengwar did not follow Tolkien's Elvish-language version exactly. Instead, I took some of the letters from the sounds that were rarer in English, and reassigned them to more common sounds.

More details forthcoming, as I find^H^H^H^H make the time for them.

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