I'll throw some of the initial ideas I've been working with up here:
Very much, just a WIP.
I think I've decided to eliminate all enclosed negative spaces (as in the center of A, P, D etc.). I am also thinking many of the figures will be reversible when written in cursive, and reading direction is equally contextual.
Update! Yesterday on the train I made some actual vocabulary aaaaand tried my hand at writing! So far the grammar is: Do what toki pona does, except there is some more specific vocabulary, and there's a weird construction for "to be" and for comparatives. Diggit.
pan gha ka dang ? What do I want?
pan gha ka ti: pan gim ah. I want this: I am a man.
kham ti xan, pan m gim ah. Now, I am not a man.
xim pan li lhu ka xim sum. My sibling has another sibling.
xim sum ti li gham ka sang wam. That other sibling has an impressive knife.
sang wam ti li xhung. That impressive knife is green.
sang wam xhung ti li sang dhang. That green, impressive knife cuts well.
tham tum ling pi pan xan, xim pan li gham ka sang. In my wooden house, my sibling has a knife.
Welp, been off the project for a few days because of busy work, but today I put in a half hour and am happy to say that my lexicon is coming along. I'm aiming at an intentionally simple language (more or less based on toki pona) but it's not so minimal as that. So far I have a few formality distinctions in which grammar particles you use (<li> is a formal predicate marker, <wa> is informal). Also I decided to go with a distinction between temporary and intrinsic ownership! I'm considering putting nouns into noun classes... but I haven't decided on that yet.
Now there are noun classifiers! And tone! Tone marks parts of speech. Function words have a neutraltone, verbs have a high tone, and noun phrases (which are all two-syllable) have rising-then-falling. Not sure about pronouns yet--maybe positionally determined?
- / \ | for neutral, rising, falling, high
la? wa- gha| ding| ka- ding/ ku\
She wants to eat wheat.
Or... something like that.
Things are going smoothly. I've figured out a system for the script: it's logographic on the roots, with diacritics for the vowel harmony, and modifiers for the vowel pattern.
I've taken a lot of inspiration from Maltese cave art and Sinhalese, which shares a lot of the same spirals and designs (though this is entirely coincidence).
That's neat! I'm working on a Martian (Russian-English) creole language for a sci-fi story
