#historical scripts

[Mild spoilers ahead. Chants of Sennaar is AMAZING, please try it if you're interested in puzzles and/or linguistics!]

I was watching a playthrough of Chants of Sennaar, today. I was doing pretty good at understanding that the couple weren't linguists, and had no interest in historical scripts, so they were going to figure things out in different ways than I did. But then they got up to the "Scientists" level, saw the Scientists' script, and didn't IMMEDIATELY say, "Oh, they're ALCHEMISTS!"

Baffling.

Alchemical symbols aren't common knowledge???? The conventions are so distinct! Like, the first non-number they showed clued me in! The symbols used aren't actual alchemical symbols, but ... the inspiration is really obvious.

And then they ALSO didn't immediately jump from "Alchemist" to "transmuting lead into gold" when they DID learn their name? Like, that isn't the ANSWER, but it definitely gets you on the right path in short order. And they just never seemed to think anything about why they were named the way they were.

Apparently, casually reading about alchemy ISN'T a universal experience. Not everyone wants to find out why the planets have weird symbols, and then spends several days getting deeper into the ridiculous and cool beginnings of modern science.

As for the writing, pre-hispanic Philippine scripts are usually collectively described as suyat or surat- alphasyllabries which allowed entire islands to be literate. The script itself is descended from Kawi, a brahmic system one used my most Southeast Asian languages before diverging into scripts like Old Javanese and Sumatran.

I wrote Baboy Dano in the precolonial form of Baybayin (Tagalog Script) which drops final consonants and does not have characters for introduced words

Kabang Binaw I wrote in Suwat Bisaya, the specifically bisaya script using the post-colonial panantang pantingog to kill the final vowel.

You can write in Modern Khmer. You can write in several older scripts. (~sorta~ The characters exist, but there aren't really fonts or keyboards.) But, writing in any form of Angkorian Khmer is impossible.

I can make keyboard layouts pretty fast, these days. Fonts are a lot harder, but I've had a bit of success. The problem is that there is no perfect block of unicode to attach these things to, and a WHOLE BUNCH of equally imperfect ones. All in different ways.

Do I want to be able to write 'ṛ'* after a consonant, and numbers over 9? Can't just make an alternate font for modern Khmer.

Do I want to be able to make proper consonant clusters? Can't use Devanagari, which has the widest variety of special Sanskrit characters. Or Brahmi, the ancestor to most of these scripts, which actually has support for the numbers I need.

Do I want to be able to write 'au' after a consonant, and numbers over 9? Can't use Kawi (Old Javanese), a closely related script from the same period, that works in very similar ways.

-

Which unsatisfactory option should I choose? Or should I wait another decade, hoping academia will finally do it for me?

Annoying!

-

I’ve finished my direction cards!

(Images described in alt-text.)

Cards showing how 17 different cultures chose and organized cardinal directions in the early medieval period. These are some of the more well known cultures - I'll link the whole set (in much better quality) in a reblog.

Version 3 of the Early Medieval Tree Alphabets is going well! Here's two pages of Classical Maya, and 1 of Middle Irish.

Translations and descriptions on my deviantArt (it's a lot of words).

https://www.deviantart.com/geckobot/gallery/75862377/language

I did a thing! A language thing!

I love my grandparents, and my grandma mentioned she liked the cards I’m making. So I wrote ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’ in a bunch of languages.

The description is a bit much for Tumblr, so I’m linking to my deviantArt, where I’m able to go into some depth. Here: https://www.deviantart.com/geckobot/art/Grandfather-and-Grandmother-in-the-10th-Century-803166117

Short version:

Grandmother

Classical Maya: Mim

Classical Arabic: Sittī

Angkorian Khmer: Kaṃtvan

Sanskrit: Pitamāhī

Middle Irish: Senmáthair

Middle Japanese: Obaasan

Grandfather

Classical Maya: Saku’n

Classical Arabic: Sīdī

Angkorian Khmer: 'Tā

Sanskrit: Pitamāha

Middle Irish: Senathair

I did a thing! I love my grandparents, and my grandma said she liked the cards I’m making. So I wrote ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa’ in a bunch of languages.

[Visual transcription of the calligraphy, actual transcription through link.]