Good morning, Interweb. Let's Worldbuild!
So, inspired by the epicness of Artifexian viewer TehSarcassicCanadian, links in the
doobly-doo, and my recent trip to South Korea, I decided to create a writing system for Oa.
And here it is! Awesome! Video done. See you all next time. Edgar out!
Oh, you're still here. Right, well here's a picture of the human food hole: nasal cavity,
roof and floor of the mouth, lips, teeth, tongue, and glottis - all graphically abstracted.
/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ are all nasal sounds, right. /m/'s place of articulation is the lips,
/n/ the middle of the mouth, and /ŋ/ the back of the mouth. /m/, /n/, /ŋ/.
/p/, /t/, and /k/ are exactly the same as the previous three, just minus the nasality.
/p/, /t/, /k/.
The glottal stop - a circle and a line - the windpipe and vocal chords. Easy.
/f/ and /v/ involve the teeth and the bottom lip. /s/ and /z/'s place of articulation are
again the middle of the of the mouth - so they look like variations on /t/.
/x/ is like /k/, but with extra air. /h/ windpipe plus air. /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /x/, /h/.
/ʍ/ is the labio-velar approximant. Lips, back of the mouth, and extra air. /ʍ/.
/ʙ/ uses the lips but in a wobbly fashion, and it seems only fitting then to have /ʀ/
be it's reflection. /ʙ/, /ʀ/.
And finally the approximants proper. Liquid-y sounds get glyphs with more organic lines.
/j/, /r/, /l/. Again noting that the place of articulation in each case is somewhere
in the middle of the mouth. /j/, /r/, /l/.
The vowels, /o/, /a/, /i/ and /ə/, are pictures of the food hole seen face on. /o/, /a/, /i/,
....Ok, so /ə/ isn't exactly a perfect pictorial representing of what going on but I wanted
the schwa to have a symbol the eye can easily scan over when reading. Minimal attention
should be paid to unstressed syllables.
Oh, and diphthongs they're just two vowels shrunk and squashed together: /ai/, /ia/, /oi/,
/io/, /oa/, and /ao/.
And that's it! 19 consonants, 4 vowels, and 6 Diphthongs. Done!
So, this type of system is known as a featural system. In featural systems, the glyphs aren't
random, they're designed to encode phonological information. In this case, I've created little
diagrams demonstrating how the sound is produced. Linguistic IKEA instructions, if you will.
Now, these glyphs form words via syllable blocks. That is, Oa glyphs don't string out
horizontally but rather cluster together by syllable, like so.
They stack in a tower of three, onset, nucleus, and coda, written, and read, in the order.
If any segment is missing, the initial glyph will stretch vertically to fill the space.
Thus, the main syllable blocks are V, CV, VC, and CVC. Just like the diphthongs, consonant
clusters shrink and squish together and are read left to right. Any glyphs that are hard
to stretch vertically will be rotated 90 degrees clockwise and then stretched.
Now, given that the syllables are read top-to-bottom left-to-right, it seems only fitting to have directionality
of block text be the same. Logical, although perhaps a bit boring.
Finally, a couple of meta points. The decision to have all horizontal lines be thicker than
vertical lines is deliberate - my little nod to Hebrew. The glyphs in isolation are in
a 1 to phi ratio and the syllable blocks are in a phi² to phi ratio. And lastly, I am working
on a punctuation system (a more streamlined version of English punctuation) and a Mayan
inspired number system. So expect updates on this topic sometime soon. And, yes,
the number system will be in base 12. Why? 'Cause 12 is jolly, 10 is folly.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Man, Oa is just a cheap knock-off of Hangul." And
you would be totally right! I wanted my system to be was logical, rigorous, and above all else,
easy to learn. Hangul is all of these things and much, much more. Just ask Xidnaf. So there
was always going to be parallels between Oa and Hangul, and I'm totally cool with that.
Even though Hangul is WAAAY more elegant than Oa and and less fugly!
Good morning, Interweb.
So, two points here. Point number one, Hangul is an amazing writing system,
and if you're in any way intersted in coming up with your own writing system,
Hangul is pretty much recommended reading.
As such, I've left some links in the doobly-doo. Go check 'em out.
Point number two, I realize that my language is very much like Hangul, and like I said in the video,
that was totally deliberate. But, aside from that, let me know what you thought.
Likes, dislikes, anything you think doesn't work anything you think does work, all that sort of stuff.
Leave 'em in the comments. I cannot wait to hear from you guys.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the video, and thank you so much for watching.
It really means a lot. Click the links on-screen or in the description for more Artifexian content,
like, and if you think I earned it, hit the subscribe button.
Thank you all so much for watching! Edgar out.