#glyphe

Une série sur des alphabets, des écritures… Musée du Quai Branly, expo “Mayas”

- 4 premiers : linteau daté - Yaxchilàn 

- glyphe calendaire d'un couronnement - Chinikijà, Chiapas

Oh boy thank you for asking this

Coming up with languages has always been a hobby of mine, something I love to do. So I hope you don’t mind if I get a little deep into it!

First things first: A language needs letters. Most languages have letters that originally come from the environment. For example, one many people know, the letter A came from oxen. How? let me show you!

Here’s an ox! But that doesn’t look anything like an A, unless you start simplifying.

This is a pretty simplified version of an ox, wouldn’t you say? All you have to do is flip it upside down, and it becomes an A. (Which is what actually happened. The Greek Alpha is just a flipped ox. That’s the weirdest sentence I’ve ever typed)

So for Glyphe specifically, I did the same sort of thing. 

There you have it, the Glyphe alphabet. (The origins, in case you can’t tell, are Bear, Deer, Bird, Fruit, Moon, Feather, Tree, Valley, Snake, Waves, Stick, Foot, Owl)

So that was the origin of the “letters”. Then, I decided that it was far more interesting, rather than just putting the letters in order to make words, to instead combine them together to create words. 

So the above words can be “romanized” into:

Balweg, Glyfvse (actually written in-canon as Glyph), Sowa

I make the words by combining letters with similar meanings. For example, the “bear” letter represents strength, the “owl” represents fear, the “stick” represents pain, and the “bird” represents wildness. Balweg is the Glyphe word for death, combining all of those letters.

So, like, I can make up a word right now. Let’s say I need a word for “Door”. I’ll probably combine “tree” (stability) “foot” (security) and “fruit” (openness). So Door would look something like this:

And it would be romanized sort of like this: “Mirich”.

Whenever I need a new word, I just make it up following these rules. It works pretty well for me! 

(Of course, that’s just Glyphe, which is the language I spent the most time and effort on. Other languages, for example those I just use english letters for, are much simpler)

(PS I’m not a linguist I just like languages)

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (né le 22 octobre 1783 à Galata, Turquie, Décédé le 18 septembre 1840 à Philadelphie, Pennsylvanie, États-Unis), naturaliste, voyageur et écrivain a apporté des contributions majeures et controversées à la botanique et à l'ichtyologie. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)