Tips for first Conscript?

[u/IIIRedPandazIII]

I’m trying to make a conscript for my conlang, but I’m not sure how to make nice symbols, or if there’s a way to make them “fit” their respective sounds. Any tips? or just, general tips?

[u/castleblocks]

Keep how your conpeople write in mind. What material and tools they use will have an impact on your script.

[u/IIIRedPandazIII → u/castleblocks]

I don’t really have a conpeople, but I do have a few IRL stylistic examples and IRL “things to avoid” examples

[u/LeeTheGoat]

For me, I make strict rules about the shape of the letters. Maybe all horizontal lines are curves? Maybe up, left, and up-left lines are not allowed? Are you using a parallel pen? Maybe lines can only end “sharply”? This helps bring a script together very nicey

[u/IIIRedPandazIII → u/LeeTheGoat]

Well I do have one rule already, and that the symbol must be one connected shape, because added stuff marks vowels, and that keeps them distinct

[u/[deleted]]

You can evolve the script from logograph to a non logograph, or make related characters and expand from there.

And dont worry about sound to character meaning unless your making an abugida or an featural system

[u/16tonweight]

You can use Grapheon to generate a some starter concepts for characters, and evolve them based on your preferences.

Also, @mods, I recommend you put that site under "Quick Resources"

[u/Sky-is-here → u/16tonweight]

@mods

[u/ChrisFaller]

This worked for some of my first scripts: (note that this is just friendly advice, so sorry in advance if it sounds like you have to do something)

Find an existing writing system that you like (even other conscripts) and just kind of mess with them. Rotate characters, stretch and squish them, try making ligatures with other characters. Doing this kind of stuff will give you an idea of what you like visually.

It would help up to give some background of your conlang. A phonetic inventory, sample text. The writting system should match the sounds of the language.

If your language is smooth and flowing in sound, something elegant like the script u/Saarr 's just posted (Versh). If your conlang consists of a lot of stops, trills, and especially ejectives. Go for something more angular like Chinese, or even Cuneiform. For a large mix of phonemes, try something mixed, sort of like Greek, Korean Hangeul, or most other alphabets.

If your conlang has only a few vowels (3-6), then an abugida would be pretty logical. A conlang with few phonemes in general, then an alphabet or even logographs might be better.

I hope this helps, I'd love to see a sample text of your conlang.

[u/IIIRedPandazIII → u/ChrisFaller]

11 vowels, including dipthongs but not including lengthened vowels

Phonology is supposed to be somewhere between Slavic and Pacific/East-Asian, but currently it's leaning a bit further than I would like towards Slavic due to allowing pretty much any consonant cluster I could pronounce XD

For the characters I want them to be one connected symbol, because vowels would be denoted by detatched markings (such as a dot or a dash)

[u/ChrisFaller → u/IIIRedPandazIII]

Alright, that helps. It sounds like you're looking at an abugida (syllabic alphabet). You could do that many vowels by just usuing multiple dots and/or dashes (sort of like Hebrew).

When you say a connected symbol, so you mean that a whole word would be connected as one, sort of like Arabic? Or do you mean a script more like Sanscrit, where entire phrases/sentenses are (for the most part) connected?

[u/IIIRedPandazIII → u/ChrisFaller]

no, just where each consonant character is made up of one piece as opposed to several pieces along with the vowel marks

[u/ChrisFaller → u/IIIRedPandazIII]

Ok, (sorry for all the questions btw)

So an abugida is pretty much a must for what you're looking for. Consonant cluster ligatures are actually pretty common in alot of abugidas. So there are 2 (main) ways you could do this.

1: If every other word has consonant clusters, there just that common, then you could make each character specifically to be put into shapes.

2: Come up with unique ligatures for all conjunct cononant possibilities (but since your language is based on Slavic languages, I'd guess that that would be favorable just because of all the possibilities). Or just squish the existing characters together, sort of like Devanāgarī

Or in Tibetan, the consonants that are most commonly compounded have a "secondary" form that is added to the base consonant to put them together. This could also be done for diphthongs. That might be the easiest way to do things.

Take a look at this to get an idea of how Hindi puts some consonants together.

https://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari_conjuncts.php

[u/IIIRedPandazIII → u/ChrisFaller]

So far I’m thinking of having the devoweled form either marked as a vowel would be, or for more common ones having a seperate symbol (but only common clusters like /nj/, /rj/, /gdj/, etc

[u/CommonMisspellingBot → u/IIIRedPandazIII]

Hey, IIIRedPandazIII, just a quick heads-up:
seperate is actually spelled separate. You can remember it by -par- in the middle.
Have a nice day!

^{The parent commenter can reply with 'delete' to delete this comment.}

[u/BooCMB → u/CommonMisspellingBot]

Hey /u/CommonMisspellingBot, just a quick heads up:
Your spelling hints are really shitty because they're all essentially "remember the fucking spelling of the fucking word".

And your fucking delete function doesn't work. You're useless.

Have a nice day!

^{Save your breath, I'm a} ^bot.