(I took the header picture of a Common Loon resting on a pond in Utah on its way north in June of 2015. It was in transition from winter to summer plumage.)

Translate - I dare you. Then make a comment on the funny errors the translator made.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Typecast: fun with scripts




First, Reformed Gothic. Roman equivalents are below, with IPA symbols in brackets. And you can see the source for this script here.


And here, a 19-letter version of a Counterfactual Roman alphabet.

I reserve no copyrights for these. I want people to write with them.

4 comments:

deek said...

Quite interesting.

This reminds me of when I was studying Japanese a few years ago (on my own as a hobby as well). I was fascinated with the Japanese phonetic alphbets: Hiragana for native words and Katakana for foreign and borrowed words.

The cool thing was that I could basically write english phonetically using Katakana and nobody would be able to read it, well, unless you knew Japanese english and could sound out my choice of sounds.

I used to use bits of it at work to take notes...

Syphax said...

When it came time for me to decide what foreign language I wanted to take for my undergraduate degree, it was the script of Arabic that drew me to the language. I refused to let it stay a mysterious black box I wasn't allowed to peer into.

The actual language was very difficult for me to learn, but I think it was the sheer ground-up difference between their script and ours that really gave me a buzz. I still think it's absolutely beautiful. Have you ever experimented with a right-left connected script instead of left-right individual letters?

Anonymous said...

Sweet, now I know how to decipher your journal should I ever come upon it.

(Hey, nice to see you post something again.)

D. Loon said...

deek: that's what I'm talkin' about!

Syphax: I've experimented with Hebrew, Syriac and Manichaean scripts for English and Spanish, and I've invented some right-left scripts for conlangs too. But I've never quite had the nerve to tackle a connected one like Arabic. I really should.

snohomishwriter: thanks for the kind words.