I’m doing it. I’m making a language.
At eighteen, it is probably one of the greatest undertakings of my life. It may take some time, and the language may not even be complete by the time the series is over. But I will do my best, and I will try.
Why am I making a language, you might ask? I am a writer, so really, I do whatever I want. But if you really must know the reason, it will be one of the official languages in the book. It is known only as the “Original” for now. During the era of Dark Soldier, Book 1, it is a dead language. But a few of the characters, and me, being the writer, are going to be bringing it back.
And this is where you, the fans, come in. This is going to be the first of a few collaborative projects between me and my future and growing fanbase – we are going to make the language together! You get to help construct one of the most epic languages since elvish, and it will be awesome!
Ok, so maybe it’s not quite that awesome, but it is interesting. It is a mix of a European letter-based alphabet and a Egyptian-style hieroglypic system. Basically, certain sounds are represented by different style lines and shapes, and together they create a symbol. Ideas, like movement, can also be represented. In the case of movement, it is represented by a wavy line, like in the very first letter of this system, shown below (apologies, I am no photo-manipulation master):
This is only the beginning of the “Original” system, but with your guys help, I think we can make a complex, understandable, and beautiful language. This language will feature both uvular and rolling sounds, so it’s also quite varied in its sounds that can be made.
Can’t wait to begin working with you guys on this, and seeing your ideas for how to better the language!
Gabriel to Earth 
This is an interesting concept, and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition. I had thought of approaching a language with a semanto-phonetic writing system. I gave up after a while because it was a lot more than I was willing to invest, and in any case I had as much fun with my abjad-type language anyhow. My Gravitar is actually the phonetic representation of my name ‘Dave’ in one of those writing systems. In any case I’ve spent about ten years off and on tinkering with the language. Just this fall I spent about a month of creative time messing about with conjugation, which is so complex I’ve got it stored in a database. It looks like your system is more like how I understand the ancient Egyptians used their hieroglyphs. They symbols can be either words or letters, depending on context.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this site: http://www.omniglot.org, if you haven’t, check it out. It was an invaluable resource in understanding how written language works – which is super important because once you know the rules, it’s much easier to go along your merry way to breaking those rules as you please. It’s also a very simple and easy to use resource for an outrageously complex topic. I don’t know if I could offer much in the way of recommendations, except to reiterate my comments from my post yesterday. Make sure your transliteration to English is intuitive, or at least consistent – as a reader this is important to me. The Klingon to English dictionary deals with some of these phonetic concepts you’ve mentioned, you might give that a look, assuming you haven’t already.
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Wow. Bookmarking that site. Excellent stuff, this. Thank you very much!!
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