Pictographic writing system

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Alessio
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Location: Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Pictographic writing system

Post by Alessio »

Hi, everybody. I'm not sure if this is the correct section... I hope so!
Lately I've been working on a pictographic system, i.e. a writing system using symbols to describe words.
This system isn't designed for any language in particular; idelaly, it can suit any language.
This is an example:

Image

Woah, bigger than I thought. Also, ignore the watermark (from an Italian insurance company), it was on the other side of the sheet I wrote/drew this on.
Here's some sort of explanation about what's written (drawn?) in it:

-The parentheses actually represent shaking, and they enclose a hand. Thus, that symbol means "hello".
-The upside-down T has its flat part oriented towards who's speaking, thus it means "I" or "me".
-The <= indicates possession.
-The stickman is... well, a man, and the symbol next to it is supposed to represent an ID-card, so it means "identification for a man", or rather, "name".
-The equal sign means "equals" as well as "is"; it's only used when it's actual equivalence though (not when something is placed somewhere, for example).
What follows is a featural phonetic alphabet where a square with a dot in the middle represents a vowel, everything else is a consonant, and the signs below add further information about the symbols. Basically, I spelled my name, Alessio /a'lεssjo/. The 2 over the symbol for S indicates gemination; it can be a 3 for languages that use overlong consonants (or vowels).
-The plus sign means "and".
-What follows is then again "my", then you have a heart plus a building - thus, home.
-The part in the circle is quite interesting. Circling something has the same function of the prepositions "at" and "by", but what's in it is the real deal. The upper part represents a person near to a flag (representing a state), so that means "Republic". Below that, you have the symbols for "long" and for "shoe"... a boot. The Boot Republic... Italy.

I could go on forever, since this text is quite long, but why don't you try to figure out the meaning yourselves?
Here it is for those of you who don't feel like it:
Spoiler:
Hello, my name is Alessio and I live in Italy. (and) I'm 21 years old. (try to figure out how I expressed this...)
I study computer science in Modena, at uni, and I'm a third-year student.
I love computers. What about you?
I love this idea because it breaks the language wall - it's not really written in any language in particular, thus it will be intelligible to almost everybody.
I got the idea from an old iOS messaging app that was entirely based on pictograms/emojis, although I can't remember the name now.
If you have any suggestion, go ahead and write them!
:ita: :eng: [:D] | :fra: :esp: :rus: [:)] | :con: Hecathver, Hajás, Hedetsūrk, Darezh...

Tin't inameint ca tót a sàm stê żōv'n e un po' cajoun, mo s't'armâgn cajoun an vōl ménga dîr t'armâgn anc żōven...
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Man in Space
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Re: Pictographic writing system

Post by Man in Space »

Mark Rosenfelder, in one of his books (I want to say Advanced Language Construction?), states that all known pictographic scripts eventually end up using what he calls the "rebus principle". His yingzi illustrates what he means by this.
Alessio wrote:I love this idea because it breaks the language wall - it's not really written in any language in particular, thus it will be intelligible to almost everybody.
The problem with this is that you make implicit assumptions about, say, word and constituent order. Different languages will handle things differently and that may affect how someone interprets this. Same goes for cultural considerations, like your shaking hand symbol, or your upside-down "T" shape—I would've interpreted it as the point denoting who is speaking, not the flat part.
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CC = Common Caber
CK = Classical Khaya
CT = Classical Ĝare n Tim Ar
Kg = Kgáweq'
PB = Proto-Beheic
PO = Proto-O
PTa = Proto-Taltic
STK = Sisỏk Tlar Kyanà
Tm = Təmattwəspwaypksma
Alessio
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Re: Pictographic writing system

Post by Alessio »

The first part is true to an extent. Word order is substantially free, and many things have to be deduced by contest. This system is in no way designed to be accurate or precise (even if I try to use it in such a way that it ends up being somewhat precise), all it has to do is convey an idea. Furthermore, if a symbols is ambiguous, it can be replaced by another one; for example, the upside-down T can be replaced by a stickman pointing to himself, which unmistakably means "me".

Oh, also, the featural alphabet needs to be learnt by heart, and so the native numbers. No big deal though, you can replace those with any other writing system without making the whole thing useless.
:ita: :eng: [:D] | :fra: :esp: :rus: [:)] | :con: Hecathver, Hajás, Hedetsūrk, Darezh...

Tin't inameint ca tót a sàm stê żōv'n e un po' cajoun, mo s't'armâgn cajoun an vōl ménga dîr t'armâgn anc żōven...
MoonRightRomantic
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Re: Pictographic writing system

Post by MoonRightRomantic »

There are no real pictographic or ideographic writing systems. Logographic scripts assign semantic and phonetic meanings to graphemes and combine those to indicate words in the writer's own spoken language.

I can't find the page right now, but I recall someone writing a book using only emoji. The intent was to write a story that was understandable regardless of the reader's language. It was not structured into sentences but into stream of consciousness.
Edit: The book I was thinking of is Book from the Ground: from point to point by Xu Bing. And here is an explanation of logographic writing systems: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/I ... ic_systems
Edit: An article explains Xu Bing's book: http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/always ... itten-word
Last edited by MoonRightRomantic on 22 Mar 2017 16:24, edited 1 time in total.
MoonRightRomantic
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Re: Pictographic writing system

Post by MoonRightRomantic »

Sorry for the necromancy, but someone went to the trouble of devising emoji hieroglyphics for English.
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mira
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Re: Pictographic writing system

Post by mira »

MoonRightRomantic wrote:Sorry for the necromancy, but someone went to the trouble of devising emoji hieroglyphics for English.
It's a good idea, but everyone not on a phone will hate it.
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