writing systems

[sanctumsys]

so, one of my more recent hobbies is writing systems. i've learned about quite a few over the years and i'd like to know what your favorites are if you have any ("you" being whoever's out there listening)
to kick things off, here are a few selections from my current main writing system notebook (i have separate ones for video game things):

the cover page featuring my name in three different writing systems (top-down, left to right: a simple monogram inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's monogram, Runic-english cipher (specifically as it appears in The Hobbit), sitelen pona (images of good; one of two major writing systems for the toki pona constructed language. begins with a 'head noun' and the characters below use only the first phoneme in them, representing my name as a tokiponized loanword) and dscript (a compressed writing system primarily optimized for english that makes words into connected glyphs)

one of my favorite things about doing this is making my own reference material. i always write out full alphabets (for example, the above is dscript) and then practice on the same page, then keep writing for a few pages until the reference material is out of reach and i feel comfortable reading what i've written

something i've been particularly enjoying is taking notes of the systems that show up throughout the lord of the rings in the hope of figuring out what some words mean and perhaps how to write them properly. transcribing elvish script is really difficult, as it turns out; runes are much easier, but i have no idea how to properly read either right now (these runes aren't a cipher for english; they represent an actual language, as does elvish)

i've even had a go at making my own writing systems for numbers that could represent them visually a month or so ago before finding out from a youtube recommendation that there actually already exist several systems for that; my favorite now is the Kaktovic system invented by the Iñupiat Indigenous people of Alaska. vertical lines represent ones and horizontal lines represent fives, so it's almost self-deterministic in a way that reminds me a lot of uscript. i found out about these systems from the video below, which i paused watching to write this post because i was so excited about it

i largely owe my interest in this subject to a good friend who initially introduced me to the concept of constructed languages and to dscript, and to J.R.R. Tolkien who's been fueling a consistent interest and an instinctual reaction to make a new note whenever something that seems like it'd be helpful for solving his world's languages appears in his books

end note: i found it a genuinely fun and engaging challenge editing together these images to fit them both under the four-attachment limit and below two total megabytes. don't even think about raising that, RT; it made this post feel way more high-effort than it would have been, in a good way
now i open the floor. any cool writing systems you know about?

[sanctumsys]

oh yeah, addendum: did you know that there's a unicode block for runes?
ᚦᛖ᛫ᚻᚩᛒᛒᛁᛏ
᛫ᚩᚱ᛫
ᚦᛖᚱᛖ᛫ᚫᚾᛞ᛫ᛒᚫᚳᛣ᛫ᚩᚷᚩᛁᚾ
i'm going to be so annoying about this you have no idea

[RT-55J]

Awww yeah. Conscripts babey.

I saw somebody share this resource a few days ago. It's cool:

https://neography.info/

Remind me to post more here later.

[sanctumsys]

sending that to everyone i know immediately

[sanctumsys]

new addition to the notebook: standard galactic from commander keen and minecraft

[RT-55J]

I like it when videogames make their own silly fonts for in-game flavor text. It's very cool, especially when folks make fonts that you can just download and use.

Attached below are 4 such fonts.

1. The square Chozo font from Metroid. The letterforms were made as random background greeblings in Zero Mission, given mappings to English in Other M (despite the lack of Chozo content there), and then used again as asemic nonsense in Samus Returns. I think it's okay, but the font I downloaded has too much space between individual letters.

2. The triangluar "Mawkin" Chozo font from Metroid Dread. The alternating up and down look of the font is extremely neat. Add in the fact that it's used to encode an English relex rather than English itself and, uh, hoo boy this is great stuff. (Note: the sample text here is just English.)

3. Kirby and the Forgotten Land has its own font. The letterforms tend to just be stylized/rotated versions of english letters, but I like them well enough. The usage of dots makes things look suitably silly though, with some letters looking like smiles.

4. Wingdings, invented by Toblerone Foxworth for Underground Talltales. Perhaps the silliest font of all time.

[RT-55J]

Back in 6th grade a made an english<->fake-runic cipher for a creative writing assignment, but i'm pretty sure it qualifies as being "long lost"

[sanctumsys]

I like it when videogames make their own silly fonts for in-game flavor text. It's very cool, especially when folks make fonts that you can just download and use.

was aware of these but they're very cool. i can think of quite a few more games that have something like that but revealing which games those are would funny enough be massive spoilers kind of

[RT-55J]

Apparently Lewis Carroll designed a writing system so that he could jot notes in the dead of night without turning on a lamp:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctography

It looks a lot like the Pigpen cipher or Palm OS Graffiti. (I used to mess with the pigpen cipher as a youngun.)

[sanctumsys]

that's really cool, actually. my wife's been experimenting with PalmOS graffiti; i'll show her this

[RT-55J]

yeah. i've been going down some wikipedia rabbit holes, and tbh it's actually pretty annoying that their List of constructed scripts actively excludes simple ciphers. it makes it unnecessarily hard to find stuff like this.

[sanctumsys]

i wonder if there's a central resource that compiles ciphers specifically. i recall the conscript unicode registry has a few including tengwar

[sanctumsys]

so hey it turns out i've always been a writing system nerd and have only just now rediscovered something i did as part of the worldbuilding for Aerolite, my as yet unannounced animated series i've been building the world of for almost half my life
and honestly, trying out actually writing in it? it's pretty good. flows well for the most part even though i designed it to be readable on a segmented display

[RT-55J]

aw yeah those are some juicy trapezoidal letterforms

[sanctumsys]

had a bit of an idea for further development of what i'm still calling the aerolite cipher (seen above) into a writing system i can really be proud of, both on the worldbuilding side and on the ease of writing side since for the most part i find it actually very fun to write in
on the worldbuilding side, it was originally created to be drawn on a segmented display in the shape of a hexagon (i think. i'm bad at remembering which one is six sides) so i wanted to build on that by making that feel a bit more contextual: it's used mainly for those segmented displays, but people also write in it with physical writing implements specifically because the segmented display tech has become so universal that most people are raised on it. this parallels the real-world phenomenon of many english readers being able to recognize and developing habits of writing words written with or without serifs and other embellishments ("n" or "u" written without the line on the left or right for example) and also is a good opportunity to revise some of the glyphs for better readability. i think i initially developed the entire alphabet in order and then basically didn't make any revisions at all, so a lot of the earlier glyphs in the alphabet look the same as opposed to the later ones
then i want to implement something i've seen in other writing systems in general, from tolkien runes to dscript: combined glyphs. the main point of this system is still for english for the moment, but as it turns out it's incredibly efficient to combine common things like "th" and "ng", and since the system was initially developed for segmented displays it makes total sense that it would combine glyphs to save space for longer words and sentences
and since this system is, again, made for a segmented display, a lot of the glyphs are written in ways where the existing versions of them could be very easily combined to still fit in the confines of a hexagonal display with segments across the internal angles of it
it's an interesting addition to the worldbuilding, it makes complete sense for both the displays and for the handwritten style it inspires and it makes for a writing system that would be a little less tedious to actually use
though to some extent it being tedious would still make worldbuilding sense, if it's made for the displays. it wasn't really meant for physical writing; it was adapted into it