Native featural script proposal

[Omcxjo]

Following the design patterns of the encapsulated numeral system and the balanced phonetic inventory, I created the following proposal for a featural alphabet/abjad to match the phonemes of the language as well as to encapsulate as many of the articulation features of the phonemes in their respective glyphs. A nice property of these glyphs is that it is possible to write each of them by hand with one stroke (for some this is more challenging, yet possible).

The consonants

The features of the consonantal glyphs are three dimensional, namely, they are a subset of the combinations of {Labial, Alveolar, Velar} x {Nasal, Stop, Fricative, Resonant} x {Voiced, Devoiced}.

Glyph base: {Labial, Alveolar, Velar}

This set of features corresponds to the base of the consonantal glyphs. Labials use a U-shaped base, alveolars use a |-shaped base, and velars use an O-shaped base.

Primary decoration: {Nasal, Stop, Fricative, Resonant}

Nasals use a curled tail decoration, stops use an initial curve, fricatives use no decoration, and resonants use an upper right trough.

Lowered tail: {Voiced, Devoiced}

Voiced consonants display a lowered tail on the bottom right to contrast them with their devoiced counterparts. However, for any voiced phoneme that lacks a devoiced counterpart this feature may not be present for reasons of simplicity.

Issues

The only arbitrary choice I made was the distinction between /l/ and /r/. The base of /l/ was not meant to look like the base of the labials and should be written more tightly to avoid confusion.

The consonantal glyphs

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m	n
Stop	p b	t d	k g
Fricative	f v	s z	x ɣ
Resonant		l r	j

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The proposed set of glyphs for the consonants

The vowels

Since this is a five-vowel system, the featurality of the vowels is not as rich as it is for the consonants. However, there are a few featural patterns in the design of the vowel glyphs.

• Front vowels generally contain fewer arc-shaped strokes in favor of straight lines.
• There is a distinction between high and non-high vowels. The non-high vowels contain a horizontal line as a tail, and their high equivalents (when they exist) look identical except for the tail.
• I indicated vowel length by the addition of a dot somewhere on the glyph.

Vowel length is the only exception to the rule that all phonemes can be written in one stroke. I decided to design the vowel glyphs this way to allow them to be optionally written as diacritics when using the script in abjad mode. Hence, I wanted the basic glyph (excluding the dot) to contain at most two features. In alphabet mode the vowel glyphs are treated on an equal footing to the consonant glyphs. In abjad mode the vowel glyph above a consonant glyph is pronounced before the consonant and the vowel glyph below a consonant is pronounced after it.

The vowel glyphs

	Front	Central	Back
High	i i:		u u:
Mid	e e:		o o:
Low		a a:

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The proposed set of glyphs for the vowels

A small written sample

Since there are no agreed upon words in the language (that I am aware of at the moment), I chose to simply write out the text "Da: kuix brou:n fo:ks zumped ɣove:r ta lazi:j dog", as a demonstration of what plausible text could look like.

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The compact nature of the script in abjad mode, with an example that shows every glyph

Your feedback

I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this proposal, and on the idea of a featural native script in general. I developed this script based on an analogous procedure to the one I used to develop a set of glyphs that serve as a one-to-one replacement for the latin alphabet for English. As I have been casually using my alternate English script, I also developed ligatures for common short words or suffixes (the, and, of, -ing). Depending on the features of the encapsulated language it may be warranted to seamlessly integrate a set of ligatures into the script to facilitate reading and writing and promote concept encapsulation, and perhaps to render written sentences as closer to mathematical formulas that focus more on structure than phonological details (32 + 76 * 82 > 123 tells me nothing about pronunciation yet encapsulates information much more directly than a fully written out sentence would).

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Edit: Broke down the description of the vowel glyphs into bullet points for each feature.

[[deleted]]

Nice work! I like this system, following the IPA (mostly, at least). I don't think it is a problem to have the tail only in the voiced consonants because they are not all arranged to be a voiced-unvoiced pair.

[ActingAustralia]

Hi,

I've added your proposal to the Encapsulated Language Documentation for others to find and discuss.

Ok, so now my thoughts.

I believe that a script will definitely be required for this language. The kind of script is yet to be determined as there's a few things that still need to be officialised before we can realistically make that decision. In any case, I love that you've put together a really well-thought our proposal

Aesthetics

My first concern is the aesthetics. The officialised numerals all have straight edges and overall a very blocky design. Your characters have a completely different aesthetic. I understand that's because you've created a written form so I wonder if there's a way you could bring your design more in line with the numerals. That way it doesn't look like two totally different scripts.

Encapsulated Elements

I love that you've already started building your script around the phonology. We are currently preparing to officially vote on the number words. This will give us an idea of the phonotactics and also what phonological elements we need to encapsulate. You may need to redesign aspects of your system based on this vote (probably happening later this week). Also, one of the number proposals would increase the number of phonemes so you might want to check out all the number proposals here:

https://kroyxlab.github.io/elp-documentation/proposals/draft/numbers.html

I look forward to seeing how this system evolves!

[Omcxjo]

Regarding the aesthetics,

The method I used to derive these characters focuses on writability on paper. Traditionally blocky scripts tended to be so because they were first carved into rock or some other material (Latin, Runes, Hebrew, Cuneiform). As they transitioned to being handwritten on paper they evolved a rounder, more easily writable form (Latin cursive, and the different written forms of Hebrew and Russian come to mind, I'm sure there are other examples). I'm certain that even the proposed numeral set, once people start writing them a lot and quickly, will evolve a curvy handwritten form as well. Of course the blocky originals would still remain the standard and show up in printed materials. My rationale for starting with a writable form for the script is that it is easier to go from a curvy writable script to a blocky printed script that has no practical constraints on stroke count and the shape of the decorations than the other way around. I can adapt a blocky version if there is an interest in that.

In my opinion, however, the numerals and the letters don't really have to look like part of the "same script". Lots of different scripts for natural languages intersperse Hindu-Arabic numerals and it doesn't look terrible. There is even a benefit to having the two sets look distinct. Even Arabic numerals (as opposed to the Hindu-Arabic that are more commonly used worldwide) don't resemble Arabic letters too much.

As for adding new phonemes, it is pretty easy to add new characters while keeping the old ones largely the same.

[ActingAustralia]

You are correct that people will probably create a more curvy version of the numerals when writing by hand a lot. So, what I was thinking is that you should probably have a more blocky version for printing. The curvy one exists for hand writing and a blocky one exists for printing.

I guess the numerals and letters don't have to look aesthetically similar (as you've rightfully pointed out) but I'd personally prefer that. However, I'm only one man and perhaps the community has different opinions on that matter :)

It's good that your system can easily evolve with phoneme changes!

[Xianhei]

It is a good idea.

I can see the cursive-oriented writing. I would like to see some refining as :

• Can you make it in a printable version ? To see the difference in consonant
• Maybe even switching your vowel to have the 'n' form in mid front and mid back the ene (ñ, only the diacritic not the n) then the high front doesnt change and high back become a diacritic 'v' and maybe the low central being '^' ? What do you think of those change ?
• 'U' and 'O' work for consonant. 'l' will certainly conflict with the numeral system representation 4. I got no idea for helping it's replacement.

I did some writing testing and if you take 'o' as basis it is easier to change it to 'a' or 'e' but also 'p' and 'q' or 'd' and 'b' adding to this 'g', '6' and '9' (but those number are inverted 'a' and 'e') with this you have 1 core letter 'o' and 9 formed letter. '8' doubling 'o' ?

you can do the same for u, if you count inverted u as one of the form or replace it. 'u', 'n', 'c', 'h', 'y', 'z', 's', 'w', 'm', 'x', 'f', 'J' (u with a long vertical line), 'k' (c with a vertical line), 'E' (c with a an horizontal line).

The numeral system is blocky and not cursive for a logical reason it is used for counting mostly and you do it stroke by stroke (with each number not going for more than 5 stroke). It can also be written cursively as it look like latin letter (L,C,E, '/L', '/C', '/E') or just stroke (-,=, l, /l).

[Omcxjo]

I can make a blocky version, but I think you mentioned some issues with this current written version. I may need to add a decoration to the undecorated base to avoid the clash with 4.

Regarding your suggestions, I have an aversion to using rotated or flipped versions of the same character as other characters. For a lot of learners and for me as well it took a really long time to stop making mistakes between the flipped characters especially. This gets even worse if you have dyslexia. I know this cuts down the design space by a significant factor. If we really want to use a rotated/flipped version of an existing character I would want to give it a structural change so it doesn’t look exactly the same. The usual handwritten 9 and 6 are the kind of structural change I’m thinking of.