Writing (Conlang)

In this post we’ll discuss worldbuilding writing systems for your conlangs, giving your fantasy races unique scripts with rich flavour to make them more interesting.

Hey everyone, my name is Matthew, at least according to how it’s written in Romanised script, and this post is part of a series where I will be going through a science-adjacent worldbuilding process step-by-step. Last time we discussed worldbuilding prehistoric cultures, looking at how to take a sapient species from its emergence, through the stone age and into the early stages of civilisation. If you missed that video the link to it should be… here.

For today’s discussion, we’ll be looking at worldbuilding writing, which is an extension of constructing languages, more commonly called conlang. We’ll look at different script styles, which ones are most likely to emerge for different cultures in different environments, and how writing evolves from simple pictograms into the diverse range of scripts that we use today.

Writing, very simply, refers to the transferring of language into physical format. Writing itself is not considered to be language, but rather is a system through which an existing language is transcribed, to then allow an individual to reconstruct the intended language for themselves. When it comes to designing writing systems for worldbuilding, many English speakers create their own alphabets, because an alphabet is the script most English speakers are familiar with. However, there are a number of other possible scripts that languages can use, and an alphabet is far from the most likely, especially to begin with.

The earliest script style, historically speaking, is called a Logography, where characters called logograms represent individual words, morphemes, or syllables, of which the most well-known are ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and modern Chinese characters. There are also Syllabaries, where characters represent syllables, usually open syllables like ‘ma’, ‘mi’, and ‘ki’, best suited for languages where syllable structure is simple and doesn’t include codas, such as Japanese. Of course, we also have alphabets, which use characters to represent sounds directly, which is what we use in English, specifically using the Latin or Roman alphabet. However, full alphabets tend to be used by languages with highly complex syllable structures, like English. There are also alphabet variations, including Abjads, which only write consonants, allowing vowel sounds to be inferred from context, and is common in most Middle Eastern scripts, and Abugidas, which also only write consonants but indicate vowels through changing the consonant shape or through diacritics, which are small marks or accents added to letters, found in most Indian and Southeast Asian writing systems. Abjads and abugidas tend to be favoured in languages with fewer vowel sounds, as inferring or marking the vowels in question is easier. Finally, there are Featural scripts, which represent phonological traits within the script itself, such as all labial sounds like ‘m’, ‘p’, and ‘b’ having similar characters, of which Korean hangul is perhaps the best-known example of.

However, it’s overwhelmingly likely for logographies to be established first, and for all other writing styles to be adapted thereafter. For ancient civilisations, it’s conceptually easier to attach a symbol to an entire word or meaning, and on earth every single one of our independently created writing systems were logographies, of which all our modern writing systems can be traced back to. Of course, if you don’t plan on creating a logography as your final product, then writing out an entire logography with symbols for every word just to evolve it into the script you want to use for your language is unnecessarily tedious, so here we’ll look at the process to make final scripts out of logographies easily but accurately.

This is the map of Locus, the fictional planet that we are worldbuilding across this series, with its four sapient species now having settled down, each with the potential to develop writing. However, rather than each settlement establishing writing independently, it’s far more likely that writing would be created by the larger more developed settlements, and then spread to those nearby.

At the dawn of the ancient era, the Silarin here have the largest and most developed settlement worldwide, called Kathochusho, and it would be reasonable to say that it is within this settlement that writing is first likely to emerge, though we can also expect that the other large Silarin settlement on the eastern continent, called Thuchus, would develop its own writing system, as would the two largest human settlements called Norford and Lindale, the largest Urakan settlement of Senanatgru, and the largest Na’qwuilian settlement of Tarna’qwua.

The humans of Norford and Lindale, as we determined when we designed the languages of Locus, will speak and write in whichever language we speak and write in real life as a ‘control language’, which for me is English, so we can assume all of their progression here-on will lead them towards English as their language. The words Norford and Lindale are taken from British naming conventions, which if you’re wanting to use for your own projects, can easily be found on Wikipedia. For the rest of our cultures however, we can make some wonderful scripts of our own.

Before we do that though, we have to consider what medium the script will be written on. For the first scripts, the most likely mediums will be clay, stone, or wood, with other mediums like copper plates, papyrus, and parchment not coming into use until later on. Generally, but certainly not always, we consider clay to be more heavily associated with cultures closer to the equator, while cultures closer to the poles tend to favour the use of stone and wood.

Both Silarin settlements are in warm dry environments, either tropical or Mediterranean, with excellent conditions for the use of clay as their writing medium, so let’s have them create clay tablets not dissimilar to those used in ancient Mesopotamia. This choice is doubly useful as their sharp claws can easily carve into wet clay, minimising the effort required to write, and giving their script a more cursive look.  

The Urakan settlement is located in a far colder environment with an abundant source of trees, so let’s have them use wood as their initial writing medium, which favours more chiselled strokes in the direction of the wood grain, making symbols mostly vertically written.

A consideration now that we have symbols is directionality, which refers to which direction multiple symbols will be read in. In English, we read left to right, though in other languages it can be different, such as Arabic being read right to left, and Chinese reading top to bottom. Let’s put some cultural worldbuilding into place to determine directionality. For the Silarin, there is a heavy cultural importance on the red moon of Locus called Rufus, which rises in the east and sets in the west. The western Silarin settlement Kathochusho is built into a small rise on the southern side of the river, meaning that looking out has an individual facing north. From this perspective, Rufus rises to the right and sets to the left, making right-to-left pathways considered sacred to the Kathochushi, so their script will also be written right-to-left. In contrast, the eastern Silarin settlement, Thuchus, has mountainous terrain block the view of Rufus until it is almost directly overhead, with its journey starting high in the sky and descending downwards, influencing Thuchusian script to be written vertically, top-to-bottom.

For the Urakan, their writing direction is initially going to be influenced by their writing medium. Writing on trees means that writing top-to-bottom allows for the full length of the tree to be used, so this is likely how they would develop their script. However, while a top-to-bottom script style may be necessary to begin with, once writing is formalised onto smaller mediums like wooden tablets or onto structures, the need for top-to-bottom script is not only less relevant, but it also makes communication with their neighbours in Norford more challenging. The Urakan therefore may develop two writing directions, one that is top-to-bottom for more internal use that might become their traditional formal script, and another that is left-to-right for more commercial use, becoming a more casual script, kind of like how in Chinese writing there are both traditional and simplified scripts. To signify the direction that writing is to be read, the Urakan will use this symbol, which is intended to represent the branches of a tree, existing as a symbolic relic of their script’s origins.

To begin with, all the symbols used in early writing systems are likely to be quite complex, to ensure that accurate meaning is conveyed. Consider that at this stage, writing is only one step down from drawing actual pictures. For example, this symbol in the Thuchusian writing system might mean ‘animal’, directly inspired by the Saltus, one of the animals the Silarin have been in regular contact with throughout their history. Of course, over time, these symbols are likely to become simplified, and so long as all the readers understand their meaning, their function remains the same.

If you’re going to keep a language as a logography, you can go through and do this for all the words and meanings in the language and have a complete script. However, we can simplify things even further by looking at the spoken languages themselves. Silarin and Urakan have simple syllable structures of CV(C) and (CC)V(C) respectively, meaning that an entire alphabet may not be necessary, though with the presence of relatively few vowels, an abjad or abugida would be simple and logical, and so I’m going to create an abjad for one of our two Silarin writing systems, and an abugida for the Urakan.

For our eastern Silarin, the Thuchusians, this earlier symbol that previously referred to the word ‘animal’, which is pronounced “chas”, may simplify to refer to the “ch” sound. This symbol for ‘river’ pronounced “kathochus” simplifies to the “k” sound, ‘home’ simplifies “thash” to “th” and so on. This transition from using logograms as effectively pictures into having them refer to actual sounds is called the Rebus principle and is exceptionally common across many languages and writing systems. Importantly, I’m selecting symbols for this transition that are likely to be the most used in text, so for words with the “ch” sound, the word for ‘animal’ is more likely to need to be written than the word for ‘far’, and so its symbol is more likely to be given precedent. Silarin also use voiced sounds to reference authority or importance, and so words like “sash” and “zazh” might both mean ‘head’, but while “sash” might refer to a head anatomically, “zazh” is more likely to refer to a leader or someone in charge.

Going through the phonetic inventory we created for their language, we can create a list of symbols of the most used words for each consonant sound. With just these symbols referencing consonants, we have created a complete abjad, with any vowel sounds able to be inferred from context. For example, this sentence, read top-to-bottom, reads “The male leader sits in the palace”. Though because we are writing in abjad this sentence could also refer to “The formal claw assistant own in be palace”. Which makes no sense, and even without context most readers can tell this is incorrect. While this might seem confusing to someone who only speaks English, we too have context dependencies, like “The ruler is rigid”, which can both refer to a queen being inflexible, and a measuring instrument being stiff, though if you were given the context of a formal setting in a palace, you’d probably be able to figure out the correct meaning.

An abugida in contrast does hint towards vowels, either changing the consonant symbol shape or using a diacritic to mark when vowels are present, which is what we’ll do for the Urakan language, after going through the same process of the Rebus principle we used earlier. In their writing system, Urakani uses small notations to mark the vowels that appear before or after a consonant sound.

For our second Silarin settlement, the Kathochushi, they’re going to buck the usual trend and create a syllabary. Syllabaries are ‘usually’ created by languages with open syllables, and Silarin is not exclusively open, with optional codas at the end of syllables. This doesn’t make a syllabary impossible however, and as part of the Silarin’s writing transition away from logographs, symbols are going to denote syllables like ‘ti’ and ‘the’, and when writing words, codas will simply be ignored. The word ‘tithetos’ for example, meaning ‘night’, would be written as ‘ti’ ‘the’ to’, with the coda ‘s’ left out. There is precedent for this system of ‘dropping the coda’ across several real-life writing systems, including Ancient Greek. An alternative is that the coda is written as its own syllable, such as the ‘si’ symbol, making the word written as ‘tithetosi’, but this isn’t the path we’re going to follow. With codas being dropped in writing, there is the possibility over time for it to be dropped in spoken language as well, and we now have two separate Silarin languages developing, one with codas, and one without. For any changes your languages make like this, it’s important to keep track of the order they occur, to make determining which words are allowed in your modern languages much easier.

So, we have our humans using our control language, which for us is English, the Urakan using an abugida, and the two major Silarin cultures each having a unique language path, with one using an abjad and the other using a syllabary. These styles are very likely to change over time, but they give us usable scripts to work with moving forward. But what about the Na’qwuil? Well, let’s take them in a unique direction. Long-time viewers may remember that when we created the planet Locus, it didn’t originate in its current solar system, and that 4.8 billion years ago, Locus was visited by an advanced spacefaring alien species that built a small mining colony. At this stage, we haven’t worldbuilt that species at all, beyond the fact that they abandoned their colony. The Na’qwuil however are going to uncover artifacts of this alien settlement, and most importantly for today’s discussion, be exposed to remnants of their alien writing, copying it for their own use.

This is a very common occurrence on earth, and a huge number of languages, including English, don’t use their own writing system, but rather have borrowed it (or had it forced upon them) from another culture. Of course, for the alien writing to survive for billions of years, it will have to be on composite materials that the Na’qwuil are nowhere near advanced enough to create for themselves. Let’s say however that the material is aesthetically similar to stone, and so the Na’qwuil will begin to replicate this writing on stone tablets, skipping the logography stage entirely and moving straight into having a full alphabet, which fits well with their complex syllable structure. Stay tuned in the future for the uncovering of these alien artefacts to have significant cultural implications for the Na’qwuil.

Before we finish up, it’s important to understand the concept of Romanisation, which is the translation of any text into the roman alphabet, so that readers, viewers and players can appropriately read and understand your fictional language. While having your own writing scripts is really cool, most people don’t want to learn an entirely new script just to be able to engage with your world. When Romanising your fictional language, it should be written as close to how it is pronounced as possible, to give people the best chance of getting things accurate, and allow them to use the language themselves.

So, to recap, writing systems are split into logographies, syllabaries, alphabets, abjads, abugidas, and featural scripts, which develop based on the features of the languages they represent. Writing is most likely to begin as a logography and simplify into other writing styles over time. The aesthetic of a writing style is greatly dependant on the medium it is being written on, as well as the tools being used to write with, which in the early stages are mostly clay, stone, and wood, but eventually can develop into more efficient mediums like bronze etchings or parchment and ink.

Join me next time when we’ll take a quick sidestep away from talking about all things science, and discuss worldbuilding magic, looking at designing magic systems and how to input them into your world. And until next time… stay awesome!