Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Ninety Letters

Some time between the ages of 15 and 21, I made up a fantasy world and wrote a novel and some other stories about it. I made up part of its language, too.

This is the alphabet:


It has 90 letters. I was obsessed with the belief that every sound had to have its own symbol. Not just sounds like sh and ch, but sh + m? That can't be represented by two characters, oh no, it has to have its own.

That's how you end up with 90 characters in your alphabet. And what a bunch of silly shapes it is, too. Now that I know what goes into designing fonts, and how much harder it is to work with shapes that didn't evolve through use, I feel sorry for anyone who would have to design typefaces for my alphabet.

Though I do still like the "s" letter pretty well.

1 comment:

Gina said...

Where's the novel now?