General note, which I think I also mentioned in J7: Omniglot.com is a good
place to start looking into writing systems.

On Sat, 8 May 2021 22:11:20 +0100, Timothy Collinson
<xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

>Thomas has beaten me to mentioning alphabetic vs ideographic and I'm afraid
>I'm so far past tired I can't face switching to the other computer to look
>up Jotting #7 to see if it was in that.

It was, briefly.

>The other thing I was going to suggest was: is there a place for mentioning
>the 'circular' (not spiral) writing found in the film _Arrival_?  (Of
>course, you may or may not wish to mention/expand upon the time aspects of
>the language!).

I've added a short paragraph about it in my master copy; certainly, there's
enough to make it worth mentioning it to the same level as Cherryh's T'ca.

>I suppose that makes me wonder if there mightn't be other alien approaches
>that aren't simply left/right or up/down which we've not seen on Earth.
>I'm not immediately thinking of any except for my attempt at aliens in the
>recent Amber Zone competition (
>https://amber.zone/2021/04/22/amber-zone-spindrift/) where I had
>cephalopods communicating via touch [1] and when needing to keeping records
>using seaweed quipu.

Fundamentally, the difference between quipu and any other writing system
discussed - besides the T'ca and the _Arrival_ heptapod languages - is one
of _medium_; it's still essentially one-dimensional.

(At some point, after that AZ competition, you should submit that adventure
to Freelance Traveller, unless you're going to expand it into a MHP
adventure. You should also develop the aliens a bit more and ditto.)

The problem with touch is that there's no real way to _record_ it for
posterity. The ink portion of their communication can be; recall that the
heptapod written language from _Arrival_ was actually what amounted to
squid ink on paper. In the case of your Eroctopi, I don't necessarily see
the _shape_ of the blob of ink mattering, as that would be difficult to
control in the aqueoous environment. This contrasts with the heptapod
written language, where the position on the circle, as well as the exact
shape of the blob, matters.

>That leads me onto thinking about how sign languages are written down
>(illustrated?) - I bought my wife a British Sign Language dictionary when
>she started learning - and how choreography is written down for posterity.
>I'm no expert but I *think* these would be separate from ideographic
>representations of language.  They don't just contain 'signs' but also
>movement and "placement" in 3d space which is important.  (as well as, in
>sign language at least, facial expressions).

They're not exactly ideographic, but they're also not exactly _not_
ideographic. But when you write them out, they're still essentially
one-dimensional and read in a more-or-less fixed sequence.

>How about aliens obsessed with cubes (or other polyhedrons) - I can't
>imagine what they might do with them!!  Perhaps they write on the surfaces
>of those with rules about order.

Again, that seems to be a difference of medium, rather than fundamental
system. OTOH, if you have a writing system where the same glyphs carry
different meaning depending on whether they're inscribed on a cube vs. an
octohedron, you might well be getting away from one-dimensionality of
"writing".

>How about crossed writing (not quite palimpsest)?  (
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossed_letter)

Not a difference of writing system; while difficult to read, it's still
using the underlying writing system according to its own normal rules -
that is, the crossing itself doesn't carry any meaning separate from the
text that is being crossed.

>How about flower/fan/etc language?  THough I appreciate we're getting away
>from 'writing systems' somewhat.

One might be able to argue these as "writing systems", but I'm fairly sure
that these are classed as "codes" instead. Though having them for
appropriate contexts is in fact a legitimate part of world-building.

>Ciphers where zigzags might be used?  (Or writing on cylinders like
>scytales)

The first word is key - they're ciphers, and in general, they're not really
separate writing systems from the language that they're a cipher for -
although they can be, such as using the Cyrillic alphabet or Arabic abjad
to write English.

>OK, must go to bed and I'm just rambling.
>
>HTH
>
>tc
>
>
>
>
>[1]  It was some weeks after submitting this that it occurred to me I'd
>come up with aliens communicating via touch (which may not be unique in
>Traveller but I can't think of other examples) after a year of
>lockdown/working-from-home!  I can't help feeling my subconscious may have
>been at work there!
>
>It's probably not worth the effort of clicking on the link but back in
>January I attempted this piece of {poetry} (for want of a better word):
>https://twitter.com/timpaa/status/1350358747265249281
>
>
>On Sat, 8 May 2021 at 11:25, Thomas Jones-Low <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry, hit send before completing the thoughts.
>>
>> You overlook the differences between the alphabetic languages vs the
>> ideographic
>> languages. The glyphs of several far east languages represent whole words
>> or
>> ideas at a time. So the (theoretical) more compact nature of the
>> ideographic
>> writing allow more flexibility of the layout of the scripts.
>>
>> And while most languages have a defined order of glyph layout (Left to
>> right or
>> right to left for example), there are many artistic uses of altering this.
>> Usually the intent of the artist is to challenge the assumptions of the
>> readers.
>> This shows up in some ConLang designs. The examples of the ConLang you
>> provide
>> an an excellent example of this.
>>
>> Which glyphs are used for writing and their ordering is, like the
>> languages
>> themselves, the subject to the history and evolution of the language. The
>> manner
>> of writing a language evolves as the language evolves. This may be the
>> subject
>> of another whole article.
>>
>>
>> On 5/7/2021 10:05 PM, Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
>> > Comments desired, please, plus any other ideas you think should be
>> > incorporated.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Jotting #12: Writing Systems II
>> >
>> > In Jotting #7, I discussed the various types of writing systems that a
>> > language could use, and mentioned some languages that used each, for
>> > illustrative purposes. When creating writing systems for world building,
>> > you might also want to consider how the glyphs from your writing system
>> go
>> > together on the page.
>> >
>> > Writing is, fundamentally, one-dimensional - that is, the glyphs are
>> > written and read in sequence, and the order in which they are read
>> > determines the words and their meanings that are communicated. But how
>> that
>> > sequence is placed on a two-dimensional surface can vary.
>> >
>> > Most languages known to be in use at present are read and written left to
>> > right and top to bottom. That is, one starts at the top of the page,
>> reads
>> > across along the first line of text from left to right, and then returns
>> to
>> > the left side of the page to read the second line, and so on. This
>> appears
>> > to be by far the most common way of doing things; languages that use all
>> of
>> > the types of writing systems mentioned in Jotting #7 are written this
>> way.
>> > Some languages, most notably languages written with variations on the
>> > Arabic and Hebrew abjads, are written right to left and top to bottom.
>> >
>> > Many of the languages of the Far East are classically written in vertical
>> > columns, read top to bottom and right to left. It is increasingly common
>> to
>> > see these languages written left to right and top to bottom, perhaps
>> under
>> > the influence of early computerization (modern computers can handle
>> > vertically-written text). An exception can be found in Mongolian; the
>> > classical script is written top to bottom and left to right.
>> >
>> > While comparatively rare, there are known examples - some in limited but
>> > current use - of languages that are traditionally written and read from
>> > bottom to top. It is common, however, for these languages to be written
>> > left to right and top to bottom.
>> >
>> > There are (historical) examples of scripts written as boustrophedons -
>> that
>> > is, alternate lines are left to right and right to left. In most, but not
>> > all, known examples, the individual glyphs are mirrored on alternate
>> lines.
>> >
>> > The text of the Phaistos Disc is undeciphered, but those who have studied
>> > it generally believe that it is written spiraling inward in a clockwise
>> > direction. (One notable thing about the Phaistos Disc is that it is the
>> > earliest known certain example of the use of movable type for printing.)
>> > The pre-European-contact Mayan language was written as pairs of
>> > side-by-side glyphs stacked vertically. Columns were read left to right.
>> > This pattern was also used in other mesoAmerican languages.
>> >
>> > Several present-day languages (most notably Thai and Lao, and most
>> > languages derived from written Chinese ideograms/logograms) are written
>> as
>> > scriptio continua, or without spaces or punctuation; often, language that
>> > now use spaces and punctuation were also originally written scriptio
>> > continua.
>> >
>> > In C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels, one race, the T'ca, are so alien that
>> > their messages can only be represented in Hani [using English as a
>> > stand-in] as a 6×6 matrix of words, and one supposedly must read said
>> > matrix in all directions to understand the message. While an interesting
>> > idea, Cherryh does not carry it off well; the examples provided in the
>> > story are not difficult to interpret simply reading down the columns.
>> >
>> > The Vulcan tanaf-kitaun script at korsaya.org can actually be written in
>> > any direction; a text starts with a symbol that unambiguously indicates
>> the
>> > direction of writing.
>> >
>> > Most (but not all) scripts derived from the Latin and Greek alphabets
>> > (including the Cyrillic script) include two forms of each letter,
>> generally
>> > called "upper case", "capitals", or "majuscules", and "lower case",
>> > "small", or "minuscules", and there are grammatical and orthographic
>> rules
>> > governing when each is used. Letters in scripts based on the Arabic abjad
>> > have varying forms based on the surrounding glyphs, rather than a "case"
>> > distinction. Other scripts generally have only a single form for each
>> glyph
>> > ("monocase"). Constructed scripts are often, but not exclusively,
>> monocase.
>> >
>> > ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
>> > Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
>> > the trademark in this notice and in the
>> > referenced materials is not intended to
>> > infringe or devalue the trademark.
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>>          Thomas Jones-Low
>> Work:   xxxxxx@softstart.com
>> Home:   xxxxxx@gmail.com
>> -----
>> The Traveller Mailing List
>> Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
>> Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com
>> To unsubscribe from this list please go to
>> http://archives.simplelists.com
>>

®Traveller is a registered trademark of
Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
the trademark in this notice and in the
referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.

--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
http://www.freelancetraveller.com

Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
enterprises for hosting services:

onCloud/CyberWeb Enterprises (http://www.oncloud.io)
The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)