Pamrelfya a'Eoio

[MIPP]

And the tsä with the shorter middle stem...what does lere'o mean?

EDIT: Lenition! Of course! =.= oe lu skxawng...

EDIT EDIT: Wait...that can't be right...

EDIT EDIT EDIT: okay, Tirea explained it to me. -.-

I also need an explanation, I haven't understood it also.

[Tirea Aean]

Prrton has said:

The «lere'o» variants are the ones used for consonant clusters when Fä, Sä, or Tsä proceeds a standard onset.

the Lere'o versions of f s and ts and such are for when the f s or ts is the first half of a consonant cluster. examples:

fpom
sngä'i
tstunwi

etc.

in above examples:
in fp consonant cluster, f is lere'o Fä glyph.
in sng consonant cluster, s is lere'o Sä glyph.
in tst consonant cluster, ts is lere'o tsä glyph.

make sense?

[Ngawng]

Uh huuuuuuuuuuh ma Tirea....I think I understand

[Tirea Aean]

The first word is «oel»

isnt oel stressed as oél? sounds like wél? <or at least i was pretty sure it wasnt óel>

[MIPP]

The first word is «oel»

isnt oel stressed as oél? sounds like wél? <or at least i was pretty sure it wasnt óel>

I think he said it was a bit formal, ceremonial.

[Tirea Aean]

why then didnt he transcribe óhel ngengáti kámeie etc there is a glyph for H. he didnt use it. he just literally transcribed this letter by replacing the romanized letters with these new ones.

[Kemaweyan]

The first word is «oel»

isnt oel stressed as oél? sounds like wél? <or at least i was pretty sure it wasnt óel>

Tse.. I heard only oel... In movie and from Pawl

[Payä Tìrol]

O-el (as opposed to "wel") would be more ceremonial, no?... but the only time they speak that way in the movie, Oe gets replaced by Ohe

[Kemaweyan]

Oe zene tivìng mikyun nìmun, ngaytxoa. Nìngay pxiset ke zerok oe. Ke tsun oe set pivlltxe nì'ìnglìsì, oeru txoa livu

[Tirea Aean]

O-el (as opposed to "wel") would be more ceremonial, no?... but the only time they speak that way in the movie, Oe gets replaced by Ohe

we knew that ohe was 'eoio form of oe for a while...if hes gonna do this as an 'eoio pamrelfya, then why isnt it ohe? i can only imagine because what he did here as the exmple was transcribe a canonical message, which contained no 'ohe' <i feel like i said this already>

[Prrton]

O-el (as opposed to "wel") would be more ceremonial, no?... but the only time they speak that way in the movie, Oe gets replaced by Ohe

we knew that ohe was 'eoio form of oe for a while...if hes gonna do this as an 'eoio pamrelfya, then why isnt it ohe? i can only imagine because what he did here as the exmple was transcribe a canonical message, which contained no 'ohe' <i feel like i said this already>

A few things...

Sorry that I haven't been answering questions here. I've been preparing the glyph data in three different font weights for tsmukan Kemaweyan. I miss the fact that someone had responded (with questions), and so I haven't been here to check. Ngaytxoa!!

It seems that most things have been answered, but let me clarify two things.

I did this MONTHS ago and just put it away. It's fun, (to me), but it's not very important in the big picture of things that need to happen for the good of Na'vi (in my opinion). So there are probably several things wrong about stress marking. If pronouncing «oel» as [wel], I do think it's better to mark the «e» instead of the «o», if anything is going to be marked, but in that case, actually, the word doesn't need any marking. I do believe that when the word is just two syllables, it's stressed as «oe».

After 2 to 3 days of really working with all of this as a system, I think that stress marking should be optional. I think I'm feeling the same way about the stacked infixes. They seem like a good LEARNING TOOL (perhaps like the niqqud of Hebrew), but it seems dubious to me that adults would take the time to carefully write them out by hand. So I don't know... I created them for Kemaweyan and they are very handy for figuring out the verb roots quickly (through the process of elimination). In the note I wrote in the new script to him I included «ngOLATSop» for "seem to have created" and having the infixes visually distinguished really did make it easier to SEE the «ngop».

   

But, for 'monumental' or 'ceremonial' purposes, I don't think they'd actually be necessary (or more importantly), important.

The general order for reading the compounds is top to bottom (left side) and then top to bottom (right side (if there are sides)), but it's not a hard and fast rule. Here are some of the more complex compounds from the set I sent him today:

   

You'll see that for «srane» (upper right-hand corner) you have to back track a tiny bit for the «a». Another tricky thing is that sometimes a stroke of one part overlaps with a stroke of another. You'll see that with «alu» and «alo» (horizontal merger between the bottom of A and the top of LeL) and «sìk» (beside those two, where the right wing of Sä merges vertically with the left wing of Kek).

For those of you who like these, please don't get your hopes up. Kemaweyan may choose to NOT implement these for multiple reasons (technical, time, who knows...). I would consider all of these "optional" at all times even if he does build them into the font. But for me, they do make things easier to read (once they're learned, which is not hard, because they're all alphabetic).

One thing I'm quite pleased with is the promise of legibility at smaller point sizes. It works very well out of my laser printer at home at a size that's roughly the equivalent of 12 pt. Of course, it's not as legible as the roman alphabet or even Japanese or Chinese, but they have been optimized by centuries (if not millennia) of kaizen (改善, "improvement for the better (and benefit of society)").

   

Finally, here are the «lere'o» forms (the consonant cluster 'heads'). Again, if Kemaweyan chooses to opt out of tackling the font implementation of these, you can have them for "by hand" purposes if you choose to.

   

This is the ku'up weight for bold vs. the syo (light) weight in which most of the text above appears. Whether these terms can actually extend to these semantic ranges or not really hasn't been answered yet, but 'oh well...' this is all a work in process. We can consider the labels 'transitional' if necessary.

PS: My "back story" for where this might have come from on Pandora is that it would be ceremonial (and therefore not used in day-to-day life among the Na'vi). But, that doesn't mean that you can't write a grocery list in it (without formal pronouns and -uy-s on every other line.) It would be a good idea to make special compounds for the polite pronouns, though.

   

PPS: I just found a grammatical error in line 3 of the 'tiny' type. Anybody else see it?

[Prrton]

And I have question. Is there junction between symbols? For example as here:

Yes. LOTS of conjunctions...

   

Presumably these would be typed with:

   Fp, Fpx, Ft, Ftx...
   Sp, Spx, St, Stx...
   Cp, Cpx, Ct, Ctx...

   It seems they would likely be set up/registered as DLIGs within the OpenType format. More on that below.

BUT, of course you don't need to implement all these if they are too much trouble for you.

Regarding the issue of OpenType not supporting complex ligatures in Roman-based character sets; at least several designers have solved the problems, because these commercial products (fonts) are broadly available and they are all targeted at standard Roman systems that run software that is able to interpret this coding within the OpenType file format. Even the basic TextEdit free app that comes with all Macs can do this. The Adobe products do as well. I believe it's also all supported in modern versions of the MS Office apps. The price point per typeface ranges up from $19-ish to under $200. Most are quite inexpensive.

     Sad but likely true (at least a little bit).

       The 'interlock' display is triggered by the typing of ALL CAPS for this face and I assume the following ones work the same way.

     

     

     

     

It seems that the technical areas to investigate within the OpenType standard are the coding setup for:

   GSUB (glyph substitution)
   LIGA (ligatures)
   SALT (stylistic alternatives)
   DLIG (discretionary ligatures)

Of all of these, DLIG seems closest to what I believe you'll want/need.

Here is a discussion of the feature set from another app: Fontlab.

Sorry that I don't actually know the answers.

     

If you want me to try to contact some of the type designers, I'm happy to do that, but I certainly can't promise that they'll be willing to "hold our hands" to work through the oddities of our particular challenge. They're used to be ing able to READ the letters they are "interlocking".

     

[Rain]

Okay, call me a dork or a skxawng or whatever you want, but this new system is FREAKIN AMAZING. I can forsee using an old-fashioned quill pen for this because of the downward strokes. Yup, this has much intrinsic artisctic value. Hardcore Na'vi enthusiasts (such as myself) are probably squeee'ing in joy. I know I am.

[Plumps]

Hardcore Na'vi enthusiasts (such as myself) are probably squeee'ing in joy.

And that's the magic word here... Sorry, I don't want to be the spoil sport here—I think these glyphs look amazing, I thought so when I first saw them a while back—but learning the language is hard enough for people... at least that's the impression I get. Having to learn yet another ›obstacle‹ for an apporach to the language could actually be a hindrance to the cause...
Just my 2c

Personally, I also think they look great ... and they work in calligraphy

[Tirea Aean]

srane, ma plumps, that is the lun a we are not going to replace roman with these. personally i think not only are they epic looking, and actually give the language a LOOK as alien as it sounds, they are very easy to learn. the system just makes sense. yeah so its a few extra days or hours or whatever. It adds more excitement...for me at least. I wouldnt complain at all if this method were perfected and approved as the official writing system. but going back to post 1, this is not the real intention.

[Prrton]

Hardcore Na'vi enthusiasts (such as myself) are probably squeee'ing in joy.

And that's the magic word here... Sorry, I don't want to be the spoil sport here—I think these glyphs look amazing, I thought so when I first saw them a while back—but learning the language is hard enough for people... at least that's the impression I get. Having to learn yet another ›obstacle‹ for an apporach to the language could actually be a hindrance to the cause...
Just my 2c

Personally, I also think they look great ... and they work in calligraphy

I agree with this 100%!!

However, I want to tell a brief personal story. When I was probably 10 or 11 years old I remember being at my grandmother's home when she received something in the mail that she ordered from a catalog. It came in a normal brown box, but the packing material was old Chinese (probably) newspapers. I knew what "Chinese Characters" were conceptually, but being from a rural farming town in South Carolina I had never actually seen them. Used. Meaningfully. The rest, as one says, is history. If it were not for that alternative writing system on a bunch of crumpled up newspapers destined for a wastebasket, my life and career may have taken a very different turn. I didn't begin learning Japanese until I was 14 or so, but I did so, in part, because of those old newspapers in my grandmother's living room. Sometimes things that are different and exotic are just the spark to ignite interest in someone with just the right personality to be receptive to the weirdness of it. And, if Lance hand not made his Tengwar mode for Na'vi, I may not have ever pulled these letters out of their "drawer".

I still agree with the sentiment above 100%. There is nothing about this system that is relevant to the franchise and I'm sure so it will remain. But, if even a few folks are drawn to learning Na'vi because there is a funky way to write it, then... wivìntxu ulte peng ziva'u!

[wm.annis]

You know, for all that I've been a language creator for a long, long time, I've rarely dabbled in the creation of new writing systems.  My own efforts are often rather unattractive, and lack a certain vitality and naturalness.  This is a problem, I find, with a lot of invented writing systems.  I have to say, ma Prrton, this one looks pretty darned good.

Another tendency of invented scripts is to give in to the siren song of featuralism — making related sounds based off similar shapes.  The worst offender in this is Tolkien's tengwar (I know, I know, we're supposed to revere Tolkien's language works, but tengwar, while pretty, is an absolute nightmare to read — too many characters are too similar).  You gave in, too, but the letter shapes are distinct enough that the relationship isn't a dyslexic's nightmare.  Thanks to lenition, such featuralism makes a certain sense, too.

More than Chinese, for some reason this makes me think of Yi.

[Txur’Itan]

Are you using these symbols/glyphs for any other languages or Just Na'vi?

Some symbols they look very very similar to Kanji symbols. With some of those radicals, and stroke lengths, I find my self seeing Japanese.

[Prrton]

Are you using these symbols/glyphs for any other languages or Just Na'vi?

Some symbols they look very very similar to Kanji symbols. With some of those radicals, and stroke lengths, I find my self seeing Japanese.

Some of them do look like kanji. MeM is like 口. NeM is like 日. But, those are not intentional. MeM is the lips. NeN is the tongue cutting across the cavity of the mouth. NgeNg shows the nostrils of the nose. Without an ontu, there could be no NgeNg. Hä also looks like a Roman H and I looks like Roman I. Coincidence, if you will.

They are very heavily influenced by Asian writing, but there are features of many different systems:

• They are alphabetic (not an abjad or an abugida)
• The characters 'hang' like Devanagari
• They are easy to mush into clay with a stylus (or two) like cuneiform
• They can be systematically compounded like Korean
• They can be rather easily calligraphically obfuscated as in the Tibetan word (b)lo for "mind" but still remain legible. (The 'b' is in the middle. The 'o' is on top. The 'l' is on the bottom. The 'b' is silent in modern Tibetan.)

So you may SEE Japanese in there, but there isn't a lot more of that than anything else, really.  

The system is designed specifically for "modern" Na'vi. If there were more information available on "ancient" Na'vi, then there would probably be some GHs or KNs or other oddities here and there. One of the things I like about Thai (but that makes is HARD to learn to spell) is like English or Tibetan, in that it clings to ancient orthographic traditions even though the language "moves on". Thai spelling is HEAVILY influenced by Sanskrit (Pali), even though the two languages could not be more different. Ultimately, (to me) this seems to be the influence of religious texts as a function of religious traditions institutionalized within society. We have no idea really about how that all works in Na'vi culture, so I don't have concrete ideas about how such influences might be reflected (or not) in this system. So. "It's just for Na'vi (of 02154)".

[Prrton]

You know, for all that I've been a language creator for a long, long time, I've rarely dabbled in the creation of new writing systems.  My own efforts are often rather unattractive, and lack a certain vitality and naturalness.  This is a problem, I find, with a lot of invented writing systems.  I have to say, ma Prrton, this one looks pretty darned good.

Another tendency of invented scripts is to give in to the siren song of featuralism — making related sounds based off similar shapes.  The worst offender in this is Tolkien's tengwar (I know, I know, we're supposed to revere Tolkien's language works, but tengwar, while pretty, is an absolute nightmare to read — too many characters are too similar).  You gave in, too, but the letter shapes are distinct enough that the relationship isn't a dyslexic's nightmare.  Thanks to lenition, such featuralism makes a certain sense, too.

More than Chinese, for some reason this makes me think of Yi.

For me, more like Tangut, Khitan or 'square' Tibetan Phags-pa than Yi, but I don't disagree about the "less than Chinese" factor. I'm also a fan of Ugaritic.

It's funny. I definitely see what you mean about the siren song of featuralism, but I had never thought about it very much. Now that I do, I even see a touch of it in good ol' Roman with P/B and M/N. Lenition is a factor that I thought deserved some kind of attention.

I've never spent a LOT of time on conscripts because many of them have been created for extremely complex/convoluted languages and MANY are quite unattractive (or just silly) to me. Although, part of that is probably just technical execution. A proper bezier curve can make almost anything look nice.

I've definitely intentionally made legibility trade-offs for LOOK. It would probably be more legible if most of the letterforms didn't touch each other, but I think the individual words look much nicer when their constituent parts are conjoined. That doesn't mean that we need many contextual ligatures for standard (non-stacked, non-compounded, straight line) writing though. They just all hang "shoulder to shoulder". Kem and I had an offline back an forth about what to do about I and Ì. (They don't have any shoulders. ;-)  In the end we decided to separate them from their siblings to the left and right and bump their heads up above the hang line. That also gives mì and mi a lot of spirit and individuality.

• I've also been fascinated by research on reading perception which points to the fact that we don't actually need to read every letter to understand what words mean.

Apparently we readers of the Roman alphabet pay as much attention to the first and last letter and the LENGTH (that is the overall form) of the word as we do to the individual pieces and parts and their order. We have a high tolerance for errors and strong ability to correct for them.

• I've aslo been fnatsiecad by rersceah on rediang pcreepiton which pniots to the fact that we don't atulcaly need to read every letter to usntredand what words mean.

I'm glad you don't hate it and thanks for joining the conversation.