Constructed script
Encyclopedia
A constructed script is a new writing system
specifically created by an individual or group, rather than having evolved as part of a language or culture like a natural script. Some are designed for use with constructed language
s, although several of them are used in linguistic
experimentation or for other more practical ends in existing languages.
The most prominent of constructed scripts may be the International Phonetic Alphabet
and the Korean Hangul
script. Some, such as the Shavian alphabet
, Quikscript
, Alphabet 26, and the Deseret alphabet
, were devised as English spelling reform
s. Others, including Alexander Melville Bell
's Visible Speech
and John Malone's Unifon
were developed for pedagogical
use. Blissymbols
were developed as a written international auxiliary language
. Shorthand
systems may be considered conscripts. On the other hand, specific-purpose writing systems such as Braille
and Morse
are code
s, not conscripts.
and j
added to the Latin alphabet
over time). Construction of a script entails that the author is aware of at least one writing system already. Otherwise, the invention would not just comprise a script, but the concept of writing
itself. Therefore, a constructed script is nearly always informed by at least one older writing system (the exception being Cherokee
, since Sequoyah
was illiterate at the time of its invention), making it difficult in some cases to decide whether a new script is simply an adoption or a new creation (for example the Cyrillic and the Gothic
alphabets, which are nearly identical to the Greek alphabet but were nevertheless designed by individual authors).
In the rare cases where a script evolved not out of a previous script, but out of proto-writing (the only known cases being the Cuneiform script
, Egyptian hieroglyphs
, the Chinese script and arguably the Mayan script), the process was nevertheless a gradual evolution of a system of symbols, not a creation by design.
, Cherokee
, N'Ko, Fraser
, and Pollard
scripts, were invented to allow certain spoken natural languages that did not have adequate writing systems to be written. Armenian
, Georgian
, and Glagolitic may fit in this category, though their origin is not known. The Elder Futhark
and Ogham
are likewise assumed to have been designed by a single individual each.
The best-known constructed scripts dedicated to fictional language
s are J. R. R. Tolkien
's elaborate Tengwar
and Cirth
, but many others exist, such as the Klingon
script, Aurebesh from the Star Wars
films, and D'ni from the Myst
series of video games.
(IPA), used by linguists to describe the sounds of human language in exhaustive detail. While based on the Latin alphabet
, IPA also contains invented letters, Greek letters, and numerous diacritics.
, in particular the Shavian alphabet
and the Deseret alphabet
. A proposal for Klingon pIqaD was turned down because most users of the Klingon language wrote it using the Latin alphabet
, but both Tengwar
and Cirth
are still under consideration. An unofficial project exists to coordinate the encoding of many conscripts in specific places in the Unicode Private Use Areas ( to U+F8FF and U+000F0000 to U+0010FFFF), known as the ConScript Unicode Registry
.
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
specifically created by an individual or group, rather than having evolved as part of a language or culture like a natural script. Some are designed for use with constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
s, although several of them are used in linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
experimentation or for other more practical ends in existing languages.
The most prominent of constructed scripts may be the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
and the Korean Hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
script. Some, such as the Shavian alphabet
Shavian alphabet
The Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
, Quikscript
Quikscript
Quikscript is an alphabet specifically designed for the English language. Quikscript replaces traditional English orthography, which uses the Latin alphabet, with completely new letters. It is phonemically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly written...
, Alphabet 26, and the Deseret alphabet
Deseret alphabet
The Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In public statements, Young claimed the...
, were devised as English spelling reform
Spelling reform
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....
s. Others, including Alexander Melville Bell
Alexander Melville Bell
Alexander Melville Bell was a teacher and researcher of physiological phonetics and was the author of numerous works on orthoepy and elocution....
's Visible Speech
Visible Speech
Visible speech is the writing system used by Alexander Melville Bell, who was known internationally as a teacher of speech and proper elocution and an author of books on the subject. The system is composed of symbols that show the position and movement of the throat, tongue, and lips as they...
and John Malone's Unifon
Unifon
Unifon is a phonemic orthography for English designed in the mid-1950s by Dr. John R. Malone, a Chicago economist and newspaper equipment consultant. It was developed into a teaching aid to help children acquire reading and writing skills. Like the pronunciation key in a dictionary, Unifon matches...
were developed for pedagogical
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
use. Blissymbols
Blissymbols
Blissymbols or Blissymbolics was conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts...
were developed as a written international auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
. Shorthand
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...
systems may be considered conscripts. On the other hand, specific-purpose writing systems such as Braille
Braille
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write, and was the first digital form of writing.Braille was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character, or cell, is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two...
and Morse
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
are code
Code
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....
s, not conscripts.
Constructed scripts and traditional "natural" writing systems
All scripts, including traditional scripts such as the Chinese or the Arabic script are human creations. However, scripts usually evolve out of other scripts rather than being designed by an individual. In most cases, alphabets are adopted, i.e. a language is written in another language's script at first, and gradually develops peculiarities specific to its new environment over the centuries (such as the letters wW
W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...
and j
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
added to the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
over time). Construction of a script entails that the author is aware of at least one writing system already. Otherwise, the invention would not just comprise a script, but the concept of writing
History of writing
The history of writing records the development of expressing language by letters or other marks. In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of...
itself. Therefore, a constructed script is nearly always informed by at least one older writing system (the exception being Cherokee
Cherokee syllabary
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in the late 1810s and early 1820s. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. He first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed...
, since Sequoyah
Sequoyah
Sequoyah , named in English George Gist or George Guess, was a Cherokee silversmith. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible...
was illiterate at the time of its invention), making it difficult in some cases to decide whether a new script is simply an adoption or a new creation (for example the Cyrillic and the Gothic
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas for the purpose of translating the Christian Bible....
alphabets, which are nearly identical to the Greek alphabet but were nevertheless designed by individual authors).
In the rare cases where a script evolved not out of a previous script, but out of proto-writing (the only known cases being the Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
, Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
, the Chinese script and arguably the Mayan script), the process was nevertheless a gradual evolution of a system of symbols, not a creation by design.
For previously unwritten languages
Some, like the HangulHangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
, Cherokee
Cherokee language
Cherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken. Cherokee is a polysynthetic language.-North American etymology:...
, N'Ko, Fraser
Fraser alphabet
The Fraser alphabet or Old Lisu Alphabet is an artificial script invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar, and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a single-case alphabet....
, and Pollard
Pollard script
The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao, is an abugida loosely based on the Latin alphabet and invented by Methodist missionary Sam Pollard. Pollard invented the script for use with A-Hmao, one of several dialects of the Hmong language. The script underwent a series of revisions until 1936,...
scripts, were invented to allow certain spoken natural languages that did not have adequate writing systems to be written. Armenian
Armenian alphabet
The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. It was devised by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and contained originally 36 letters. Two more letters, օ and ֆ, were added in the Middle Ages...
, Georgian
Georgian alphabet
The Georgian alphabet is the writing system used to write the Georgian language and other Kartvelian languages , and occasionally other languages of the Caucasus such as Ossetic and Abkhaz during the 1940s...
, and Glagolitic may fit in this category, though their origin is not known. The Elder Futhark
Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark is the oldest form of the runic alphabet, used by Germanic tribes for Northwest Germanic and Migration period Germanic dialects of the 2nd to 8th centuries for inscriptions on artifacts such as jewellery, amulets, tools, weapons and runestones...
and Ogham
Ogham
Ogham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
are likewise assumed to have been designed by a single individual each.
For fictional languages
Fictional language
Fictional languages are by far the largest group of artistic languages. Fictional languages are intended to be the languages of a fictional world and are often designed with the intent of giving more depth and an appearance of plausibility to the fictional worlds with which they are associated, and...
s are J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
's elaborate Tengwar
Tengwar
The Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...
and Cirth
Cirth
The Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....
, but many others exist, such as the Klingon
Klingon language
The Klingon language is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe....
script, Aurebesh from the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
films, and D'ni from the Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
series of video games.
For technical purposes
Several writing systems have been devised for technical purposes by specialists in various fields. One of the most prominent of these is the International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
(IPA), used by linguists to describe the sounds of human language in exhaustive detail. While based on the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, IPA also contains invented letters, Greek letters, and numerous diacritics.
Unicode
Some neographies have been encoded in UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, in particular the Shavian alphabet
Shavian alphabet
The Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
and the Deseret alphabet
Deseret alphabet
The Deseret alphabet is a phonemic English spelling reform developed in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the direction of Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In public statements, Young claimed the...
. A proposal for Klingon pIqaD was turned down because most users of the Klingon language wrote it using the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, but both Tengwar
Tengwar
The Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...
and Cirth
Cirth
The Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....
are still under consideration. An unofficial project exists to coordinate the encoding of many conscripts in specific places in the Unicode Private Use Areas ( to U+F8FF and U+000F0000 to U+0010FFFF), known as the ConScript Unicode Registry
ConScript Unicode Registry
The ConScript Unicode Registry is a volunteer project to coordinate the assignment of code points in the Unicode Private Use Area for the encoding of artificial scripts. It was founded by and is maintained by John Cowan and Michael Everson...
.
See also
- List of constructed scripts
- Asemic writingAsemic writingAsemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content". With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would...
- Voynich ManuscriptVoynich manuscriptThe Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912....
- Fictional alphabet