When I was much younger (as in, around 7 years old), I was fascinated by obscure Latin-script graphemes. (I suppose
I still am.) I would sit for hours on end looking for interesting letters using Microsoft Word’s character map, and I would assemble them into alphabets. In retrospect, this was the beginning of my long journey into conlanging. (I suppose that, for a 7-year-old whose linguistic knowledge was limited to a bit of phonetics, creating alphabets was a perfectly valid method of conlanging.)
Now, I mention this because while poking around some old files on my computer earlier today, I stumbled across the directory where I saved all these alphabets so long ago. And, although some of them are normal enough, most of them are really, really, horrifyingly weird. (No, this isn’t an exaggeration; see below for examples.) In fact, some of the alphabets I made seem so unusual that, after I saw them, I would have sworn I was hallucinating when I made them, but for the fact that I have no memory of hallucinations as a younger child. And thus I decided to put them on this thread, in the hope that someone here is able to make sense out of any of them. Actually, these alphabets are so horrifyingly weird that I will phrase this as a challenge:
I challenge you to reverse romanize any one of the alphabets below and get a sensible result. (I will be fairly surprised if anyone manages to do this for some of the more complicated alphabets.)
I suppose that I should go through the alphabets now; I’ll do it going roughly from least to most weird. Firstly, the least weird of the bunch is one which I appear to have called
Molero Asreri. (Yes, they seem to have names; no, I have no idea where I got the names from.) The only real complication with this one is that each vowel can be modified by any one of four diacritics:
⟨a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z á é í ó ú à è ì ò ù â ê î ô û ä ë ï ö ü⟩
The next most weird is named
Losen Yu. This has a couple of diacritics more than the previous one. It also seems to have an exclamation mark, to which I appear to have given the name of ‘Golal-usop’:
⟨a á à ã â ä b c ç d e é è ê ë f g h i í ì î ï j k l m n ñ o ó ò õ ô ö p q r s t u ú ù û ü v w x y z ă ą ę ů !⟩
Next is one called
Lagemen, which appears to have a bunch of stroked letters and carons, as well as one letter with three allographs:
⟨a ā b b̌ ɓ c č ç ċ d đ ď e ē f g ġ h ȟ ħ i ī j ɉ k ǩ l ł ĺ ľ ̦l m n o ō ø p ҏ q ɋ r ɍ s t ƭ u ū v w/vv/v·v x y z ż⟩
The next alphabet is one I appear to have called
Huvash/Hövax (some of them seem to have two or more names, for no apparent reason):
⟨a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ỉ ſ ß ç ü ö ŏ ħ ă⟩
The last four alphabets are the most truly horrifying ones. In
Zarhev, I appear to have mixed Latin and Cyrillic indiscriminately and in no particular order:
⟨ə a ư u χ ð ā Љ ŋ ī i þ ř b ġ ģ ĵ œ ſ ţ j ý y ß æ њ ђ и h й ж ž џ б p⟩
(Yes, that’s the order I originally listed the letters in.)
Kṣamba Ałfabèt uses some, well…
unusual digraphs and letters:
⟨a à ã ą b b̊ ȸ c ć d ď e è ę é ê ë f ƒ g ġ ĝ ƣ h ȟ ı i j k ǩ l ľ/ł m n ŋ ɲ ƞ ñ hn hŋ hɲ hƞ hñ nh ŋh ƞh ñh o ó õ p q ɋ ȹ r ŕ ṙ s ș t ŧ u ü ú v w ẁ ẅ x y z ż ź ʒ ǯ⟩
The weirdest thing about this one is actually its capitals: I seem to have decreed that for this one, the capital of ⟨ȸ ȹ⟩ should be ⟨B̼ Q̊⟩ respectively.
Olinianese is another one which mixes Latin, Cyrillic — and also apparently Greek and some punctuation, this time — in no particular order:
⟨ĝ þ ð ā o ß ô ŏ ċ ő œ § ø æ ă ą ċ č ė ę ě ġ ĥ ħ ĩ į ij ĵ ķ ĺ ļ ľ ŀ ł ņ ŋ ŏ ő ſ β δ γ λ θ ε η μ ν χ σ τ υ φ ђ є е ҝ ө щ ш ч џ я ц ъ ь ю ж б в г⟩
Finally, the most horrifying one of the lot is
Khn̍i͞ama/Kḧamna/Kẍhnim̩sxanxza (three names this time!):
⟨a b ɓ ƀ ᴃ ᵬ ᶀ c ċ ̦c ć d ḋ e ė f g h ḧ ı i ȷ j k k̗ ᶄ l ŀ ŀl ᶅ m ṁ μ ᶆ n ŋ ᶇ ᶇ̇ ᶇ͝ ᶇ͡ ᶇ͞͝ o ǫ ǭ p ᶈ q q̈ ɋ r ᶉ s ſ ʃ ß t ṫ tͦ u uͧ v w x ẍ y ÿ z ȥ ƶ ƣ ƣ̈ ƣͬ ʔ⟩
But the most truly horrifying thing about this one is the set of diacritics, which apparently may be applied to any letter:
⟨◌̄ ◌͞◌ ◌ͣ ◌ͨ ◌ͩ ◌ͤ ◌ͪ ◌ͥ ◌ͫ ◌ͦ ◌ͬ ◌ͭ ◌ͯ ◌ͣͦ ◌ͦͬ ◌̨ ◌̸ ◌́ ◌̍⟩
(I appear to have added a footnote to this one: ‘Some diacritics cannot be put over letters that have the same diacritics like ͬ cannot be put over ƣͬ.’ As I said, I was about 7 years old at the time.)
Needless to say, I will be very, very impressed if anyone manages to get a plausible phonetic inventory out of these last few alphabets.
(Also, one final note: at the time, my ultimate goal was to make a con-script which would be good enough to be able to submit to
Omniglot. I never did make one which I was that happy with, but I suppose I should be pleased that at least I finally got to post these alphabets to the ZBB! (Even if it’s only to talk about how horrible they were…))