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Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 04:25
by clawgrip
It will be hard to achieve the balance of hiragana, because hiragana is in a sense the culmination of a very complex and long-standing tradition of calligraphy: it is Chinese characters written in cursive to the highest degree.

Does your script capture the essence of hiragana? To me, no, because it does not follow rules of cursive kanji and is thus filled with strokes that would never appear in hiragana or cursive kanji. To someone else who is less familiar with that, it may, because it has some of the loops and disconnected elements as you mentioned you were trying to include.

I'm not sure exactly how much of a copy of hiragana you want to make your own script, but it may interest you to know that the inventory of hiragana was only relatively recently fixed (in 1900, actually). In the past there were many different ways to write each syllable, (these can sometimes even be seen today on purposely old-fashioned signs). The now-obsolete hiragana characters are collectively known as hentaigana. Perhaps browsing some hentaigana will give you more inspiration.

http://www10.plala.or.jp/koin/koinhentaigana.html

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 04:38
by DesEsseintes
Wow, I wish I had found that when I was teaching myself to read and write Japanese. [:'(] I so would've memorised them back then, but now I'm too lazy/bored of Asian languages.

I'll learn them when I finally move to Japan (at some imaginary dream-point-in-time far in the future...).

Thanks for the link, Clawgrip. [:D]

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 04:54
by clawgrip
You're welcome. Though I wonder why you want to move to Japan if you're bored with Asian languages.

And to be clear, Chagen, when I say it does not look like hiragana to me, all I mean is that it does not appear to fit within the calligraphic tradition of Chinese characters, which hiragana to me clearly does. I don't know how much like hiragana you're trying to make your script, i.e. if you're trying to develop something that looks like it genuinely fits within this calligraphic tradition, or just something vaguely inspired by hiragana.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 04:58
by Chagen
I'm going for something vaguely like it.

Thank you for the comments. I think I need to get an actual brush or something (as this script is supposed to be written, at least traditionally, with a brush and ink).

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 05:16
by DesEsseintes
You're welcome. Though I wonder why you want to move to Japan if you're bored with Asian languages.
There are many things I like about Japan besides the language! [:D] And living there would force me to learn it properly. I do like the language - very much so - but I'm too lazy to study it now, because I only spend a couple of weeks a year there.

Thinking about it, I'm just bored of China, I guess...
Edit: Pardon the totally off-topic personal rant. [:|]

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 15:04
by Ossicone
Chagen wrote:I think I need to get an actual brush or something (as this script is supposed to be written, at least traditionally, with a brush and ink).
Definitely. If you're strapped for cash a cheapo watercolor set and brush should do.

Looking at your previous examples, there are bits which wouldn't make sense for a brush. Like the tilde like bit on some characters.
Also using a brush will help you avoid copying your on handwriting like you do with a pencil. (I have a very hard time with this when conscripting.)

Also keep posting examples of your progress.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 17:09
by clawgrip
I was messing around with your script and hiragana-ized the first row in your image. If you like it, then with time I can probably do the entire thing for you. Actually it's kind of fun to do it.

Image

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 17:31
by Chagen
Thanks--unfotunately I'm at school sand cannot see the picture but I'll check it out when class ends. Feek free to do the rest of the glyphs, but I want the final product to be my own creation so I wont just take your ideas.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 20:57
by Xing
Chagen wrote:
Anyway: Sunbyaku's native Sunkirnahashi is a syllabary much like Japanese's native kana. Indeed, the entire thing is supposed to be asthetically like Hiragana--lots of flowy lines combined with straight strokes. However, Hiragana was formed from simplifying a bunch of chosen kanji. Sunkirnahashi, on the other hand, was completely home-made in Sunzaku and thus came from nothing before. Thus, I'm finding it hard to come up with a suitable history for each letter even if the actual syllabary itself has a history (it was devised by a monk as his lord asked him to come up with a suitable writing system that was easy to learn and logical, based off proto-writing found in said lord's lands).
Could you tell more about the historical situation in which the script was created? What kind of writing systems existed in neighbouring civilisations? It seem like if the script was consciously designed by a single individual - rather than gradually evolved out of practical needs - the culture must have reached a certain level of linguistic awareness. (Maybe you have written about this in some thread??)

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 22:03
by Thrice Xandvii
clawgrip wrote:I was messing around with your script and hiragana-ized the first row in your image. If you like it, then with time I can probably do the entire thing for you. Actually it's kind of fun to do it.

Image
Holy carp is that gorgeous!

I really really wanna mess around with some of the glyphs found in Hentaigana. Might I enquire as to how you produced your samples there?

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 22:07
by Chagen
I have not done much in this respect but here you go:

Sunzaku lies about where Japan is on Earth. Below it lie the two civilizations that dominate the continent of Eastern Dorissadma; Hecizuotys, home to the Heocg and a coastal country and Azehar, an island country of well over 3000 islands (9 of which make up 98% of the land-area), home to the Azen. In terms of influence, Hecizuotys lies below Azehar, which basically dominated the entire continent in terms of influence (think Ancient China, kind of).

The three countries are the ones who made the three most important scripts of Dorissadma, Azenti's Surdhjan, Heocg's Sterbų, and Sunbyaku's Sungirnahashi. The first was Sterbų. Throughout all of Dorissadma, linguistic principles have been a matter of interest--the beginnings of Linguistics on Thōselqat as a whole started there. By the time Sterbų was made, the Heocg and Azen already had a theory of phonetics going, distinguishing consonants by their POA and MOA and vowels by their height and roundedness (Azenti has phonemic front rounded vowels and back unrounded vowels). Sterbų was an alphabet and collated its letters by POA and MOA, being arranged in the order <p b bh f t d dh ð....> and so on. It was developed by one woman, an epic poet named Wedhwas, for writing down her poems. It spread beyond her very quickly.

Sterbų, through Heocg traders (Hecizuotys was a trading nation), quickly spread to Azehar, where the Azen took it and modified it a little to fit their language's phonology (such as using the glyph for /ð/ for /ç/, and making new letters for sounds that weren't in Heocg like /ø/). The look also changed dramatically; Sterbų was built for being written with leaden pencils on tough wood imported from more forested regions, but the Azen wrote with delicate styli and ink on filmy paper stretched taut over wood, and thus didn't want to pierce the film. As of then, the Sun still had no writing system. They had a rudimentary idiographical system used for some minor records and stuff, but nothing considered true writing. A little more remote from Heocg (travelling from there to Sunzaku meant going through thick jungle and lands the Heocg didn't control), Sunzaku remained isolated from the advances in linguistics going on underneath.

However, a war ended up opening the country to the Heocg, who quickly came and seized the opportunity to peddle usless junk things to the Sun. The Sun took to this quite well, and noticed that the people trading with them had this wood with funny scribbles on them. When a Sun lord named Ondagatsu inquired about this, the Heocg trader dealing with him (a woman named Snowṛðayas) said "It's writing. We record words down for later with it". Ondagatsu instantly demanded that Snowṛðayas teach him this writing.

The Sun quickly took up Sterbų but something felt off. They were prospering like never before, taking in the linguistic progress of Azehar and Hecizuotys, and trading very heavily, but their writing felt off. First of all, the lines of Sterbų were very poorly fitted to the brushes and ink the Sun used, resulting in writing looking like a huge amount of indiscriminate scribbles. This was fixed by simply modifying the shapes to fit brushes. But it wasn't from them. It was foreign.

However, one monk (named Shiovatta), was annoyed at this development. He reasoned that if the Sun were going to simply alter the shapes into their own kind, which looked almost nothing like the original glpyhs, why not just make a homegrown script? And what's the point of an alphabet built to write words like Wṛðtom and Strųgdhwal for a language like Sunbyaku, which simply possessed a simple (C)(y,v)V(n,r,l,m) syllable structure? He theorized the idea for a syllabary but had no way to actually develop it being too focused on monk duties.

Well, the lord of his lands, Rakunachi, found some of the old proto-writing in his lands and brought it to Shiovatta, interested in what he could do with it. Rakunachi then requested that the monk make a script based off of that, that would be easy to learn and effective for writing the language. Shiovatta did and ended up, using the ideographs and traditional Sun abstract art as inspiration, creating the syllabary. Use of it quickly spread.

Shiovatta after creating it spent most of his time writing Linguistic papers, his most treasured one being an functional grammar for Azenti.

And there, that's the story.
Spoiler:
I actually made up a bunch of that, but good thing I know how spin a yarn on the fly

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 23:47
by Chagen
clawgrip wrote:I was messing around with your script and hiragana-ized the first row in your image. If you like it, then with time I can probably do the entire thing for you. Actually it's kind of fun to do it.

Image
Finally got to see this. Wow, this is REALLY cool. This definitely gives me some inspiration.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 02:02
by Lambuzhao
@ clawgrip -

Very nicely done! I am sooo jealous. [xP]

@ Chagen -

Chagen,

I think I mentioned a Chinese Calligraphy viewer, which I used to brody caoshu Chinese characters for my Paspalum Yauchuan.
I found the link:

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/calligraphy.html

I used mostly the last two styles
In box #3.

Also, I took the liberty of
Attempting to hiragana-ize a few of your sungirna.
I transliterated the short
Sentence about the boy writing Sungirna-

http://i.imgur.com/aDhHrZi.jpg

I humbly submit for your perusal -
Image

Yeah, it's tategaki. Yeah, I think I mercilessly chopped a couple of words. And, yeah, these are fatter than clawgrip's. Still, I hope this keeps the aesthetic of what your after in your third eye's sight.
[:D]

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 02:08
by Lambuzhao
On making a conscript that doesn't suck [->]

On making a fairly decent ¿collabscript?
[;)]

*yeah, I read the part where Chagen-Hyugin-sama gets the last word *

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 03:02
by clawgrip
Chagen wrote:Finally got to see this. Wow, this is REALLY cool. This definitely gives me some inspiration.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it. Here's the first example sentence from your first image:

Image

Image

Shio ne Sukyo ma shirusu.
XXXVII wrote: Holy carp is that gorgeous!

I really really wanna mess around with some of the glyphs found in Hentaigana. Might I enquire as to how you produced your samples there?
First I came up with ideas in my head for how each glyph might work out to look more like hiragana, then I hunted through regular hiragana and hentaigana for elements that matched what I wanted (and occasionally found useful things I hadn't thought of). Then I just mashed them up in Photoshop.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 04:26
by Chagen
Amazing stuff guys...I almost want to take your stuff and use it as the beginning of the conscript, but I want to make everything "home-grown" too...

I'm gonna grab a brush soon and begin scrawling out characters.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 04:38
by clawgrip
If I can give you one more piece of advice, it's stroke order. Look at real hiragana, or the stuff I made here. You will notice that most of the time the end of a stroke anticipates the beginning of the next one either by aiming for it or actually connecting to it, partially or fully. Also, a series of small strokes are likely to get merged into one curved, straight, or zigzagging one (this is why I simplified your "mu" character so much). These ideas are important for capturing the aesthetic.

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 14:06
by clawgrip
I've thought of something to add to my previous post about stroke order.

The general direction of writing for hiragana and Chinese characters in general is top to bottom, left to right. If you look at characters, you can usually see this pattern. Characters will often be split left-right or top-bottom. This determines the flow of writing. Look at these examples:

Image

The exit stroke I've indicated at the bottom right occasionally occurs, but not always.

I'm simplifying a little, especially with basic characters, where I have just done a diagonal line when in reality it can be more complicated, but still this is the general pattern.

This pattern is also recursive, meaning that any box may be further subdivided left to right or top to bottom, leading to a large number of possibilities, but the top to bottom, left to right pattern is generally followed, with only a few exceptions (usually little dots in the top right).

Here are some examples of more complex ones:

Image

Look at any hiragana and you should usually be able to identify its pattern.

Some examples:

Image

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 15:01
by Thrice Xandvii
clawgrip wrote:First I came up with ideas in my head for how each glyph might work out to look more like hiragana, then I hunted through regular hiragana and hentaigana for elements that matched what I wanted (and occasionally found useful things I hadn't thought of). Then I just mashed them up in Photoshop.
I figured this was the method, but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't some seriously awesome custom brush in PS you were using or something. [:)]

Re: On making a conscript that doesn't suck.

Posted: 24 Apr 2014 16:10
by clawgrip
Lambuzhao wrote:@ clawgrip -

Very nicely done! I am sooo jealous. [xP]

@ Chagen -

Chagen,

I think I mentioned a Chinese Calligraphy viewer, which I used to brody caoshu Chinese characters for my Paspalum Yauchuan.
I found the link:

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/calligraphy.html

I used mostly the last two styles
In box #3.

Also, I took the liberty of
Attempting to hiragana-ize a few of your sungirna.
I transliterated the short
Sentence about the boy writing Sungirna-

http://i.imgur.com/aDhHrZi.jpg

I humbly submit for your perusal -
Image

Yeah, it's tategaki. Yeah, I think I mercilessly chopped a couple of words. And, yeah, these are fatter than clawgrip's. Still, I hope this keeps the aesthetic of what your after in your third eye's sight.
[:D]
Here's my take on that one, incorporating some of your ideas and some of my own:

Image

ま is copied completely unchanged, and か is the same minus the right stroke. Also the small r character is ripped off entirely unchanged from hentaigana as well.