#writing system

Overview

The Ancestral writing system is the main and only writing system used to write the Ancestral language, as well as many daughter languages like Pushmari. It is a logo-syllabic system, employing use of both logographic symbols and a phonemic syllabary. It is the oldest writing system on record, originating from proto-writing used by various communities in the forests of the Ancestral Homeland, and being brought over to the Pushmar Valley by Ruby the Ambitious and his caravan as they established the Kingdom of Pushmar. Over time the language, and thus the writing system, became treated as a sacred liturgical language and resisted change, leading to a high degree of standardization. As of the Golden Age of the Empire of Pushmar, the Ancestral writing system is primarily used to write the Ancestral language, as writing in the local vernaculars is fairly uncommon. It's learned mainly by the elite through years of rigorous training, and is used for religious writing, steles and reliefs, and in the academic and administrative fields. It employs two popular writing styles: Old style (which is the more traditional way to write), and New style (which is starting to gain popularity in much of the Empire for its compact nature.) There is also a handwritten cursive version used for notes, letters, or any kind of quick throwaway writing. I'll primarily be showing the Old style.

The Ancestral writing system can be divided into two kinds of glyphs: logograms and syllabic glyphs. Logograms are pictoral representations of words or concepts. They're usually highly detailed, and display very little abstraction, making them easily identifiable compared to what they represent. They can be written by themselves, or make a phono-semantic compound by the addition of an attached syllable glyph. Most logograms, when used without an initial syllabic glyph are used for their primary meaning and represent a single word or concept.

Often times, more abstractive concepts won't have a designated logogram, and instead will use a logogram to give a hint to the semantic meaning of a word. In these cases, the logogram will be written with a syllabic glyph in the prefix spaces to give an indication of the word's pronunciation. Usually only the initial syllable is written, but sometimes, especially if the syllable starts with a consonant cluster or if there's another more common word that uses the same logogram-syllabic combination, it will use two syllabic glyphs instead of one. Determinatives are always written in the root space, as they're the primary focus of the word. As an example, the logogram for ñāon "to say" can be used semantically to write the verbs myāen "to speak, talk" and ñūmwoñ "to answer, respond", or the nouns wëñ "story, tale" and ñėñëu "language". Despite being different words, they all share a meaning related to speech and talking, so they share the same determinative. They're all differentiated by the syllabic glyphs; mi-yo for myāen, ñu for ñūmwoñ, wė for wëñ, and ñė for ñėñëu.

However, certain logograms have been grammaticalized, and thus when written by themself they represent grammar features instead of their original semantic meaning, and are usually read as such. Though they can still be used as determinatives. For example, the logogram that originally meant "to come" is now used to indicate the agent voice, and the verb tāoc "to come" is now written with the COME glyph and the syllabic prefix tė.

The grammar logograms are usually written after the word they modify, to give additional hints to the declension of the word, although certain glyphs, like the person agreement and tense glyphs are written before the main word glyph, and some glyphs which specify a name or position (such as foreign names, names of rulers, or names of foreign gods) will have the NAME, LEADER, and GOD glyphs precede the main word as the main word is usually written only in syllabics (since pronunciation can't be easily implied). The majority of writing study is through memorization of words and their determinatives.

The Ancestral writing system uses special syllabic glyphs to encode pronunciation. The syllabic glyphs are highly simplified forms of logograms that were mainly monosyllabic in Proto/Old Ancestral. Proto-Ancestral had only open syllables, so using a syllabary was ideal, although pronunciation writing wasn't regularly used until Old Ancestral, which at that point had developed coda consonants. But the method of using a syllabary was maintained for convenience and tradition. There are a total of 56 glyphs (14 consonants and four vowels), and each of them will take different forms depending on their position in the glyph. There are specific spelling rules used for the glyphs:

Glyphs do not differentiate between voiced and voiceless pairs, both written with the same glyph.

They also do not differentiate between pitch and unpitched vowels.

Due to recent sound changes, a-vowel glyphs are written with either o-vowel or ė-vowel glyphs, and deciding which to use is based on etymology/history.

Similarly, e-vowel glyphs are written with i-vowel glyphs.

u-vowels will sometimes change to o-vowels and vice versa.

Coda consonants are written with echo vowels (the glyph's vowel matches the glyph it is following.)

Palatalized consonants (such as my-, py-, or cy-) are written as a pair with the i-vowel of the first consonant and an adjoining y-glyph. For example; myo is written as mi-yo, pyo is written as pi-yo, and cyo is written as ci-yo.

Labialized consonants (such as mw-, pw-, or cw-) are written as a pair but with the u-vowel of the first consonant, and an adjoining w-glyph. For example; mwi is written as mu-wi, pwi is written as pu-wi, and cwi is written as cu-wi.

Consonant clusters of a consonant and ř (such as mř-, př-, or cř-) are written as a pair with the o-vowel of the first consonant, and an adjoing ř-glyph. For example; mřė is written as mo-řė, přė is written as po-řė, and cřė is written as co-řė.

Affricates (pp/bb-, tt/dd-, cc/jj-, and dl-) are written with the same singular glyph twice. For example; ppu is written as pu-pu, ttu is written as tu-tu, ccu is written as cu-cu, and dlu is written as lu-lu.

So you would write pijēx "coast" as pi-ji-xi, tëmwap "forehead" as tė-mu-wė-pė, and řōdda "evil" as řo-tė-tė.

(Red glyphs are root space forms, green are prefix space forms, and blue are suffix space forms.)

Each glyph is usually written in a square or rectangular cell. The cell can be divided in many different ways, but the main positions consist of the root space (central), prefix space (top), suffix space (right), superscript space (left) and subscript space (bottom). The order of reading always goes superscript=>prefix=>root=>suffix=>subscript.

These spaces can be further subdivided to incorporate consonant clusters/coda consonants. The prefix, root, and suffix spaces are the ones used most often and are seen as the default to use. The root space is the space used for the determinative in phono-semantic characters, with all other glyphs building around it. The prefix space is mainly used to give the lexical pronunciation of a phono-semantic character, usually the first syllable of the word. If present, it is always written. The suffix space is used in phono-semantic characters when they are inflected, giving the pronunciation of the last syllable of the inflected word as a sort of additional hint to the word's overall pronunciation and meaning.

The superscript and subscript space are rarely used in the Old Style, being much more common in the New Style.

Writing direction is primarily left-to-right, and top to bottom. Cells are written in rows two glyphs wide, writing the first glyph at the top, and the second glyph below that, then alternating to the right of the pair of glyphs and repeating until reaching the end of the page in a zigzagging motion. The process is repeated on the next line down. Writing will follow this pattern as a default, only changing to writing cells in single lines in order to accommodate space or the shape of the writing surface.