#tangut

So in 1036AD or so, Yeli Renrong, a Chinese official of the Western Xia Dynasty was tasked with developing a writing system for the Tangut language.

He made the wrong decision at every single step in the process.

So most people attempting to create a writing system will default to an alphabet, a syllabary (based on syllables or mora, as with two of Japanese’s system), or an abjad (based on consonants, as with the Arabic and Hebrew scripts). But the hero/villain of our story chose to go with a system of logographic characters. And this is perfectly understandable, as he was a Chinese scholar and the Tangut language is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family.

Using the Chinese ideogram script for Tangut would unify its literature and literate class with the wider Chinese sphere, allowing for readers of this minority language to easily adapt to the greatest body of literature in the world and heaven, albeit after learning the use of certain grammatical auxiliaries and syntax differences.

Yeli Renrong did not do this.

Instead, he developed an entirely new writing system, which looked like Chinese but fractal. Now, Chinese is famous for its complicated system of strokes, but actual characters are quite varied in their stroke count, with most sentences fluctuating in stroke count and form so it’s easier on the eyes and rather beautiful, particularly with the correct choice of calligraphy or font.

NOT TANGUT.

Tangut says fuck that noise and just jams about twenty strokes in every character, so every sentence is an assault on the senses.

-wa2 occurs in 11 characters -we2 occurs in 9 characters -wi2 occurs in 10 characters -wo2 occurs in 1 character (L6012) -wu2 occurs in 1 character (L6038) -wy2 occurs in 15 characters

-wu wasn’t prohibited; -wu1 is more common than any -wV2 rime. (I think so, at least. I didn’t count.)