Tsyokx - the cursive Na'vi alphabet!

Irtaviš Ačankif · June 11, 2012, 09:47:47 PM

UPDATE 2: Ligatures added!!!! Now you can use standard Na'vi orthography, and the diphthongs are one letter. May not work on forum with some browsers.

Spoiler: Ligature test

UPDATE: Font updated to fix some glyph errors. All letters squished horizontally now and much bigger. 12 points now really does look like 12 points! You'll need to uninstall the old font first, because the filename is now different.

This time, I decided to make an alphabet, not an abugida. And it is a cursive alphabet! Perhaps this could be the best way to hand-write Na'vi

Famrel, FamrelaWin, and even 'Eoio often have features that are difficult to write quickly without missing.

The name, Tsyokx, meaning hand, is a very good fit

.

Spoiler: Rendered with font

Font is in attachment.

Yawne Zize’ite · June 12, 2012, 12:38:15 AM

The lines remind me of Mongolian tilted 90 degrees. Is that intentional?

There are a lot of dots and lines, and those slow down writing. Also, the bowls as presented in the font look annoying to write; I assume they're "cleaned up" and made symmetrical compared to handwriting?

You might want to take a look at ruq'ah script, typical Arabic handwriting. This picture shows neat Arabic handwriting: http://www.testiweb.com/images/jpg/digital_cameras/Sigma%20dp1/Jpg%20950x%20or%20lower/arabic8.jpg

The Arabic alphabet isn't a good model, because it only has 15 different shapes in non-final position for 29 letters, but it's very fast to write and, unlike Mongolian, a shape can be uniquely matched to one sequence of letters.

Irtaviš Ačankif · June 12, 2012, 09:24:42 AM

Vowel-notated Arabic also has a LOT of annoying lines and bars to write

أَبْجَدِيَّة عَرَبِيَّة‎
I don't know about people who learn Arabic writing when they are little, but that sure looks like a pain to write. Just the first word ('abjadiyya) looks like it needs at least three strokes for the long vowels and the consonants, plus 13 lifts of the pen for the pointing.

The (sound) equivalent in my alphabet would be
'abcadiyya 'arabiyya
which is longer but requires less lifting of the pen to write.

If I omit vowels, it becomes
'bcdyy 'rbyy

The main thing about my alphabet is that it is featural. Sounds with the same place of articulation have similar letters, and vowels all have the bar going through them.

About the hard-to-write bowls, yes, they are sort of computer-ized to look good on-screen. eiu are all supposed to be loops, not bowls with lines underneath them. The last one should be a line connected to an 8-type figure. Any word without b f v p should be able to be written without lifting the pen, minus the dots and slashes.

I will upload some samples of handwritten Tsyokx tomorrow, right from my notebook

Yawne Zize’ite · June 12, 2012, 10:32:28 AM

The secret of Arabic writing speed is that the vowels are rarely noted!

Normally "abjadiyya" would be written ابجديه, with three lifts of the pen, some reduction in forms, and double dots reduced to lines. The hamza (the hat on top of the first letter) would be used in printing, but not the tashdid (the w-shape) or the vowel marks.

I'd love to see the handwritten stuff; printing fonts are usually fancier than anyone normally writes. We've been spoiled for generations by the expectation of good scribal handwriting.

Irtaviš Ačankif · June 12, 2012, 12:17:46 PM

Font updated! See first post!

Preview:

Irtaviš Ačankif · June 12, 2012, 10:20:35 PM

Here is my handwritten Tsyokx:

Spoiler: The same poem with the font

Vawmataw · August 13, 2012, 06:14:06 AM

This alphabet is too difficult for me to read. I read only alphabets derivated from latin.

I prefer to write with the actual Na'vi alphabet.

Iaselar · September 30, 2012, 03:30:47 PM

It looks amazing (and perfect for my evil plans

), but is there a key map or a table somewhere to show how to write it both by hand and by keyboard?

Irtaviš Ačankif · September 30, 2012, 08:43:26 PM

Well, there's a font in the first post. Download and install it, and just type anything using the font.

Iaselar · October 01, 2012, 04:07:04 AM

I did download it, but is jumps a lot when I type, for example when I write Kaltxì it jumps after the dot in the T, and the ì gets quite a bit from the rest of the word. And right after Ts in Tsyokx. So I assumed that it was like a Tengwar font, where the letters are mapped to special keys and combinations. Other than that it looks great, and I'll start analyzing right away so I can write it by hand

Edit: It seems that it's only in Word that this occurs, I've tried it in Photoshop and Illustrator and it works perfectly fine.