Artificial script
From Free net encyclopedia
An artificial or constructed script (also conscript or neography) 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. They are often designed for use with conlangs, although several of them are used in linguistic experimentation or for other more practical ends. The most prominent of these is the International Phonetic Alphabet. Some, such as the Shavian alphabet, Alphabet 26, and the Deseret alphabet, were devised as English spelling reforms. 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.
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Overview of constructed writing systems
Fictional
The best-known conscripts are J. R. R. Tolkien's elaborate Tengwar and Cirth, but many others exist, such as the Klingon script, Aurebesh, and D'ni. These were developed for the purpose of fictional worlds, and are often associated with constructed languages, also known as artificial languages.
For previously unwritten languages
Some, like Cherokee, N'Ko, the Fraser alphabet, and the Pollard script, were invented to allow certain spoken natural languages that did not already have writing systems to be written.
Traditional "natural" writing systems
While traditional scripts, such as the Chinese, runes, the Arabic script, are not commonly labeled as conscripts or constructed writing systems, they too have had one or more creators. However, due to their age, most of these have changed considerably since their creation, and their creation may have been more an adaptation of previous writing systems than a total reinvention.
However, the fact that traditional writing systems have "evolved" should not lead one to think of them as natural in the same sense as natural language, since they are not inherent to human beings, nor governed by the same set of rules. For example, the Korean Hangul writing system is a traditional writing system that is also clearly constructed, since the time, place, sponsor, and general conditions of its invention are well-known, even though the exact names of the people who developed it are not known. Not much is known about the inventors of other scripts, though Cyrillic was (according to myth) created by St. Cyril.
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 Alphabet (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.
Conscripts and Unicode
Some neographies have been encoded in Unicode, in particular the Shavian alphabet and the Deseret alphabet. A proposal for Klingon pIqaD was turned down due to the fact that 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 (Template:U to U+F8FF and U+000F0000 to U+0010FFFF), known as the ConScript Unicode Registry.
See also
- Constructed language
- Fictional language
- International Phonetic Alphabet
- List of constructed languages
- Voynich Manuscript
- Writing system