Conlangs
“I was wondering if you'd done any more with that. Also such things as could the 'smaller' words be written alone, or only as part of a larger glyph, which would also lead into how it's spoken, and yeah... probably don't need to get into all that. Anyway, I couldn't comment on the other journal, or find the image here, hence this. Thanks!”
Hi! Thanks so much for being interested in my little conlang babble! Orignal conlang post is here and alas, I haven’t really done much of anything else with it since then. I’m probably going to adopt some of the ideas here for an original thing I’m working on, but leave the glyphs as presented here for the TF fandom.
In answer to your questions, the smaller glyphs (base level ideogram) can absolutely be spoken/written by themselves. The way I’ve constructed it here, Cybertronian is a language formed of base glyphs that are endlessly combined into compound advanced level glyphs. These compound glyphs have, over time, become their own words - regularly recognized sets of symbols which mean new word Q, composed of the base meanings of words X, Y, and Z.
Their writing system is either very linear - for formal recording of fact - or very nonlinear, for things like interpersonal casual communication or on the extreme side language arts such as poetry. Written linearly, it is scribed in straight lines, top to bottom, though whether the flow is left to right or right to left tends to be somewhat arbitrary. Nonlinear, it may be written in curves, circles, or knots, with glphys given emphasis by size and context conveyed via placement and connection. (I’ve included two very rudimentary examples in the graphic below - opening line of a military report in both modern and handwritten, and scrawled basic poetry form similar to a haiku.)
When writing fic I’ve frequently described a Cybertronian conveying glyphs via comm with something more like emoticons “underscoring” the glyph - this refers to glyph placement, where the facts of what is said have attached sub-glyphs in smaller size indicating tone. Alternatively, if the Cybertronian is speaking, the underscored glyphs are part of the multi-tonal verbalization, “whispered” beneath the primary notes of the main glyphs, or conveyed by EM field to other Cybertronians standing near them.
I’m sorry I don’t have any more, but this is the general gist. Please always feel free to ask me questions!
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. ::
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