Nerding out about conlangs

Okay so I was bored on a plane and decided I wanted to flesh a bit more out about the script for the Celestial language I am/have been constructing. The script ended up being something like an abjad crossed with the funky thing Korean's Hangeul script does for its vowels (because unlike a true Semitic language that can be fully represented with an abjad, the different vowels essentially provide different forms of the same word, so completely omitting them would not work). I actually sort of simulated the development of the letters from pictographs to make something that is consistent with how languages actually develop -- while it's not necessary that Celestial developed this way, this method still makes for a more well-thought-out script. For instance, the letter for "F" comes from the picture of a wing ( fayun ), the letter for "Sh" comes from a picture of two people facing different directions ( shen = to change -- for the Chinese speakers here this is the same as how the character 化 developed from oracle bone script), the letter for "N" comes from a picture of two hands holding one another ( na'ed = to join), and the letter for "L" comes from a picture of a dragon (unless the "L" sound comes before an "I" vowel sound, in which case a different letter is used that comes from a drawing of a gathering of people doing things because "Li-" is the most common prefix before a verb). Vowel sounds are then "tacked on" to the consonants. Vowels that come before the consonant and vowels that come after are written differently. There are also the following oddities to consider: w can represent a "v" consonant sound, or an "o" or "u" vowel sound, but not "vo" or "vu" -- the sound "w" does not actually exist natively; b phonetically changes to a "v" sound if the vowel attached to it is an "o" or "u" and can generally be read as "v" anyway in certain dialects; sh can sometimes phonetically change to s or j depending on the dialect; kh and k as well as f and p are occasionally interchanged in a similar manner, but either way the letter does not change; t can change to th at the end of a word; this change, which normally only happens when inflecting verbs, is grammatical, and therefore is represented with a different letter; a and e represent standalone vowels (i.e. vowels that are always present without a consonant; essentially, they are places in words where two consonants will never be adjacent) with e specifically never representing an "o" or "u" vowel sound; Words native to other scripts are enclosed [in braces] to distinguish them; Words separated by a dot (not a period, but a center line dot) instead of a space are part of a list rather than a sentence; Roots and abbreviations are written using special versions of letters called miskalim or "unvoiced letters" -- these feature dots where vowels would otherwise be located in order to indicate that the text is spelling out an abbreviation or word root, and that pronouncing them is a bit like phonetically sounding out an acronym like "ASCII" or "PNG" (I say "ping" for the latter). As a better example than what is given in the above photo, here's the text of Avariel's commemorative plaque in Celestial:

Sorry about the extra ping, but my phone decided when I clicked on the edit button (to edit in the photos) that actually I had hit the delete button, and instead of being able to restore the post I had to create it again. Anyway.

Neat, consider me inspired.

Oh, I also forgot to mention -- The sound "kh" is a little bit like the -ch in "Bach" but a tad more pronounced. "Sz" is almost like what you'd expect, being somewhere between an "s" and a "z" sound, and in some words it is phonetically equivalent. I also have the "L(y)" sound as a separate letter for another reason, which is that in some dialects it retains the pronunciation as a fricative -- specifically it sounds like the "ll" sound in Welsh. To an English speaker it is rather difficult to describe via text alone, so it might be best to google "voiceless lateral fricative" if you want to understand what I mean. I know some of the letters don't resemble what they are modeled after, but that's sort of the point: nobody looks at the letter "q" and thinks of a monkey, but that is what it originally represented (it was the drawing of a monkey's butt. I am not joking). Similarly, the fact that G and D look similar is in spite of the fact that they are not related -- D derakh means path and comes from a drawing of a road with travelers moving in the same direction, where G gatya means animal comes from the picture of a generic animal, likely a feline. And would you believe I drew a house at the start and somehow ended up with that B letter? ...goodness I am nerdy.

Sounds like Archeology basis with nerdom flavour. This kind of work as job potential; Probably the kind of career a guy like you would enjoy. The most i did on this was a elven language puzzle for a D&D secret door or study ancient Persian for 3 weeks.

This is some excellent work! I like the idea of consonants that can be altered by replacing their components with vowel symbols. Perhaps there are slightly different versions depending on the ethical alignment of the upper plane, too? Like Ysgard has many different dialects that are rife with slang and pronunciation exceptions, while Celestia's is very rigid and archaic. Take 60 bonus xp for Avariel, too.

Yus notice the way vowels are handled — a few words could theoretically be written in more than one way. I would imagine they could care less about which way you do it on Arvandor, but in Venya or Arcadia they’ll politely correct you if you try to write “eshiran” the way I did here (I actually spelled it wrong —it’s spelled a-s-r-n and not sh-r-n — a but that’s because I wanted to showcase how vowels can attach to either side of a consonant). Similarly, in highly chaotic places like Ysgard you won’t even see letters like e, s, or ly used because they’re about as redundant as English letters like c or q. This leads to funny debates as well like whether avar “guide” comes from the root awr “light” or its own root (generally ewr “to lead”) — an archon would probably spell it ewr but an eladrin would spell it awr I think I showcased this if you look carefully, but I also “borrowed” a bit of the consonant vowel weirdness from Pinyin — “u” is actually “wu” and “ya” is actually “yia” (in pinyin it’s just “ia” but the idea is the same). Iif you wanted to write a word like kiryan “cut a vegetable” you would spell it “kir yian” because ki rian “because I can see it” is not the same word as it is missing a letter. Less lawful celestials might not care because it’s easy enough to infer from context.