#logograph

Tepatic glyphs originated in pre-Tepatic Milim times as images, such as those found in Milim rock paintings. Presumably, all of the glyphs used in Yuk Tepat originated as pictures - either depictions of things, or iconic representations of concepts. Although many glyphs have been stylized to the point that their appearance does not immediately suggest their meaning, they still continue the image of something, and in that sense are “representational.”

Some cases are metonymic - a picture of a part stands in for the whole. For example, the glyph for nap ‘man’ was originally just a stylized penis, the most important part of a man.

Sometimes the image is less clear because of cultural ideas of representation. For example, “sun” was typically imagined as having curved rays radiating from it, in a swastika-like pattern, hence producing a “sun” glyph very different from an English-speakers idea of what “sun” should look like, perhaps with spiky “rays.” Stars were little crosses (or asterisks).

Some glyphs are more abstract - not really representational, but iconic - but still in a sense show what they mean. For example. thôy ‘be located.’ It shows a circle (object) on a horizontal line (some surface), with a pointer under the line, marking the location of the object.

Then there are some glyphs that as yet have no “etymology.” They are used phonetically or for spelling abstract words. Although it is presumed they were originally representations of some object or other, the connection has been obscured by the millennia, and we still don’t know what they might have represented. Possibly, they represented words in the Milim language which no longer exist in Yuk Tepat.

Lexember 2023 Master Post

Lyak - Pay, Tûn - Swûl, Nôt - Tsaltep, Kyeng, Ngyûp - Ngôw, Lum, Lûn, Kôn - Klup - Lôy - Luke - Han - Neng, Mûl, Nôk, Lit - Swûq, Hyat - Xûl - Swim - Tsapay - Win, Wip - Kyuk, Mey, Ngan, Lin - Thung, Xhûp

Ive seen it many times used online as an entire response to convey confusion or to represent the exclamaition 'what?'.

Ive seen '?!' used as a response too, usually to something thats profound or alarming.

The 2017 Smiley Award is hereby presented to Idrani, an artlang created by Trent Pehrson. Idrani is a language with a long life which can be measured in terms of its orthographies, much like rings on a tree. If you’re unfamiliar with Idrani, check this out (a text in one of its many orthographies):

Follow the link to read my full writeup. To learn more about Trent’s Idrani, you can go to his website here.

Doubled Glyphs

Edited 9/8/25

More about glyph building. I’ve discussed base glyphs (here), and various kinds of “operators,” such as the pointer, direction, negator and partitive operators.

Another process operating on base glyphs (radicals) is repetition. Some base glyphs are doubled, or quadrupled, to produce new glyphs with new meanings. The new glyphs usually have something to do with plurality or collectivity. In the past in Lexember there have been several examples of this already. For example:

qok ‘swarm’ and ngôl ‘herd’ (https://yuk-tepat.tumblr.com/post/672404030335696896/2021-lexember-29-30-qok-ng%C3%B4l)

yat ‘people’ (part of hyat ‘reply’) (https://yuk-tepat.tumblr.com/post/737470953462824960/2023-lexember-21-22)

lum ‘litter’ (https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/735999649379385344/10-13-ng%C3%B4w-lum-l%C3%BBn-k%C3%B4n)

kul ‘follow’ and klup ‘tracks’ (https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/736298401352810496/2023-lexember-9-klup).

Previously: ‘Operator’ Glyphs: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

Another process for altering glyphs and making new ones is reversals - either rotating or flipping glyphs, often creating a new glyph with a contrary meaning. In previous Lexembers, we’ve already seen hûng ‘prostrate, upside down,’ formed by flipping the glyph khal ‘head’ on its side.

Another example is the glyph khang ‘go,’ which is rotated 180 degrees to write khiw ‘come’:

This rotation can be combined with other processes. Some glyphs combine a base glyph with its reversal. (More about doubled glyphs here.) For example, two opposite-facing versions of the glyph chôt ‘cart, carriage’ are combined to write tôl ‘turn’:

Some reversed glyphs combine a line, often a notched line, through the glyph. This is known as the ‘breaking’ transformation, and origines as a depiction of a fracture line. We’ve seen this before in Lexember in thung ‘topple’ and xhûp, ‘overthrow.’ Other examples include naq ‘break,’ xhwôl ‘death,’ and man ‘sleep’: