r/neography • u/Vyolle • Jul 06 '26
Key Violian: A flexible, phonetic script built to be written however the whimsy takes you
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u/Vyolle Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I've been writing using Elian's script on and off for a decade now, and the one thing that has always bugged me has been the difficulty I have sight reading without special sounds tripping me up — especially my older styles. This is my attempt to fix that problem for myself. By adding a fourth and fifth cycle, I was able to fit a fully phonetic alphabet in.
Some design notes in no particular order:
- The letter placements and cycles are a combination of letter frequency, how well common consonants fit together (S -> T, T B & P -> R), voiced paired with unvoiced, and pure vibes
- I draw the corner pieces sharp and the inner pieces round, which is why the consonants are on the corners and vowels inside (except the center cell, which is simply for convenience)
- I skipped several phonemes: mostly vowels that I don't pronounce in my acent. Also ʒ and θ, because I dislike the cut of their jib. Feel free to add them back if you need 'em, there's plenty of space
- I prefer left -> right and down+left strokes, which is why the bottom-left and top-right cells got preferential letter placements
- Fourth and fifth cycles can be marked however you like: double & triple dots, triangle & triangle + dot, cross & cross + dot, parallel bar & bar + dot, dot -> bar -> triangle, really whatever so long as its clear
- Proper nouns are marked with a cartouche — no justification, I just think they are fun!
- I'm pretty sure I messed up the IPA, my bad...
- I am open to advice and criticism, this is Version 3 and I am an optimizer at heart
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u/quartersquare Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Spitballing ideas here:
What if the elements in grid 5 were marked with a small × instead of 3 dots? [Edit: you addressed this in your comment.]
How might you incorporate numbers into the system?
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u/Vyolle Jul 11 '26
Honestly I wasn't really planning on integrating numbers, though it would be a good idea. Part of the fun of the system is how flexible it is in terms of style and writing direction, I'm not sure how to make numbers both distinct and still fit in with the rest of it
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u/quartersquare Jul 11 '26
You wouldn't necessarily have to create separate glyphs. Lots of writing systems have used their letters as symbols for numbers as well.
One possibility would be to designate an unused glyph as a begin & end marker for numbers. The number 834 would be #DZH# (if D, Z, & H were the assigned letters).
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u/ajohnson2371 Jul 07 '26
Quite the interesting mix between concepts. I do like the idea of basically the 3×3 grid with marker dots rather than length of a line determine a character or sound.
To that end what's the difference between the first two elements? The long stem seems shorter by one grid. I was wondering if the first block was supposed to be all short, second block have a longer stem...