Zompist Bboard Again

Not sure if this is the right forum to post in, since I am working with English rather than a conlang, but here goes.

I came across the Yingzi article many years ago, and I thought that creating a full-fledged system for English might be an interesting artistic project for me to take on. As such, I developed the idea of a Japanese/Chinese-like English writing system for the past few years.

I created a set of over 10,000 characters with which English could be written. I started by first designing a large number of standalone characters (pictograms, ideograms - many are very abstract and not readily recognizable), and then combining them as semantic-phonetic pairs (形聲字). There are also some combinations whose meanings come together to create new meanings (會意字).

Another important feature I implemented is the usage of character combinations whose normal readings are not used, but instead have a completely different reading, inspired by jukujikun (熟字訓) in Japanese.

I wrote an example text here, with explanation of the characters to be found here.



More can be found on my subreddit (/r/Angloji) and my Instagram (@ryanchanghill), and I will post here regularly as well.

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Thu Aug 14, 2025 11:35 pm Not sure if this is the right forum to post in, since I am working with English rather than a conlang, but here goes.

Given that it is a conscript, and a very creative one, I think it isn't out of place here.

Wow, that's really a lot of impressive work! Unfortunately, I don't have the necessary skills to follow it in that much detail.

10 000!!! That's a lot of work. Few people get that far with their projects. How many characters would an average person know, in a hypothetical world where this was used instead of the Latin alphabet?

You absolutely nailed the hanzi aesthetic, although the graphic complexity reminds me of Tangut—there don't seem to be any pictographic characters akin to 日, 口, 刀, 女, etc. although this is probably an artifact of what you chose to translate. What are some of the simplest characters you have by stroke count?

Amusingly, macOS/Safari's functionality for copying text out of an image actually thought it could get something out of your example text. Reminds me of when people discovered that a text file containing a short phrase like "Bush hid the facts" opened in Notepad would be autodetected as Chinese gibberish.

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Thu Aug 14, 2025 11:35 pm Not sure if this is the right forum to post in, since I am working with English rather than a conlang, but here goes.

conscripts count.

I came across the Yingzi article many years ago, and I thought that creating a full-fledged system for English might be an interesting artistic project for me to take on. As such, I developed the idea of a Japanese/Chinese-like English writing system for the past few years.

I created a set of over 10,000 characters with which English could be written.

most impressive. may I ask how you chose which English phones to go with which signs? and how to craft the signs?

I wrote an example text here, with explanation of the characters to be found

I admit my eyes aren't doing great lately, but I can't find your explanation of the characters. I found the inspiration and a translation of the characters - is that what you mean?

That's really impressive!

How do you keep track of all ten thousand? Do you have some sort of thematic dictionary?

Thank you everyone.

most impressive. may I ask how you chose which English phones to go with which signs? and how to craft the signs?

The English sounds are chosen based on phonetic similarity, as determined most often by taking words' IPA notations doing Levenshtein distance calculation with them, and then grouping them. Some words in a group may be rather distant from others, though, due to the fact that English is not as homophonic as Chinese and that I have also sometimes assigned unique characters to longer words without breaking them down as such (for example, both "wisdom" and "wise" exist as glyphs).

The Yingzi article grouped the words by rhymes, but words in Angloji phonetic groupings do not necessarily rhyme with each other.

Also, some of the phonetic groups are larger than others, and this means that if there are multiple words whose sounds and abstract meanings are similar, then they would have to be classified into a different phonetic group or be assigned a rather less fitting semantic group.

I crafted the graphic components based on the clerical script style of Chinese characters, particularly those found in 好太王碑/廣開土大王陵碑.

I admit my eyes aren't doing great lately, but I can't find your explanation of the characters. I found the inspiration and a translation of the characters - is that what you mean?

That is what I meant; I should have been more clear.

You absolutely nailed the hanzi aesthetic, although the graphic complexity reminds me of Tangut—there don't seem to be any pictographic characters akin to 日, 口, 刀, 女, etc. although this is probably an artifact of what you chose to translate. What are some of the simplest characters you have by stroke count?

Some of the semantic components used are themselves as standalone characters, and the phonetic components are also independent characters as well; these are the simpler ones, and the lowest stroke count is 3. Overall, I went complex because I saw this project as an artistic rather than a practical one, and wanted to avoid anything too close to existing real characters in Chinese or other writing systems.

How many characters would an average person know, in a hypothetical world where this was used instead of the Latin alphabet?

Interesting question! I imagine that, in an imaginary Anglophone country where this were the official writing system, there would be around 2000 characters that are considered to be the standard for a high school graduate. This is similar to the number of joyo kanji in Japanese currently sitting at 2136. In such a nation, the official recommendation for writing vocabulary with rarer morphemes would likely be to use a combination of characters in the list, whose combination has a different reading than what would be expected from the individual characters, as in Japanese jukujikun.

How do you keep track of all ten thousand? Do you have some sort of thematic dictionary?

I do keep a database of the characters. When I release a dictionary, I will likely release them either ordered by their phonetic components or by their English spellings.

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Sat Aug 16, 2025 5:46 pm

most impressive. may I ask how you chose which English phones to go with which signs? and how to craft the signs?

The English sounds are chosen based on phonetic similarity, as determined most often by taking words' IPA notations doing Levenshtein distance calculation with them,

I'm sorry...I have no idea what you just said.

Some words in a group may be rather distant from others, though, due to the fact that English is not as homophonic as Chinese

I'm not sure if you and I are using the same definition for that; for me, English has at least as many homophones as Mandarin does. IE, look at how many words English has, where any of the words has multiple meanings for a single spelling or for a single pronounciation.

I admit my eyes aren't doing great lately, but I can't find your explanation of the characters. I found the inspiration and a translation of the characters - is that what you mean?

That is what I meant; I should have been more clear.[/quote

no no, that is what some people mean when they say "explanation"...I'm just not one of them.

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Aug 17, 2025 2:07 pmI'm not sure if you and I are using the same definition for that; for me, English has at least as many homophones as Mandarin does. IE, look at how many words English has, where any of the words has multiple meanings for a single spelling or for a single pronounciation.

FWIW, older editions of The Guinness Book of Records make the claim that "the word with most homophones in English is rōz", which of course translates to /roz/. I think there were fourteen.

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Aug 17, 2025 2:07 pm

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Sat Aug 16, 2025 5:46 pm

most impressive. may I ask how you chose which English phones to go with which signs? and how to craft the signs?

The English sounds are chosen based on phonetic similarity, as determined most often by taking words' IPA notations doing Levenshtein distance calculation with them,

I'm sorry...I have no idea what you just said.

‘Levenshtein distance’ is a metric for similarity between lists of symbols, in this case IPA symbols. I’m not convinced it’s the right tool to use for measuring phonetic similarity, though — e.g. with this metric /pæn/, /bæn/, /pɪn/ and /pæt/ are all considered equidistant from each other.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Aug 18, 2025 8:27 am

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Aug 17, 2025 2:07 pm

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Sat Aug 16, 2025 5:46 pm
The English sounds are chosen based on phonetic similarity, as determined most often by taking words' IPA notations doing Levenshtein distance calculation with them,

I'm sorry...I have no idea what you just said.

‘Levenshtein distance’ is a metric for similarity between lists of symbols, in this case IPA symbols. I’m not convinced it’s the right tool to use for measuring phonetic similarity, though — e.g. with this metric /pæn/, /bæn/, /pɪn/ and /pæt/ are all considered equidistant from each other.

The problem with naive Levenshtein distance IMO is that it does not treat phonemes or phones on a featural level, so two different phonemes or phones that differ on many features can be judged as contributing an equal distance as two phonemes or phones that differ only on a single feature.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Aug 18, 2025 11:15 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Aug 18, 2025 8:27 am

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Aug 17, 2025 2:07 pm

I'm sorry...I have no idea what you just said.

‘Levenshtein distance’ is a metric for similarity between lists of symbols, in this case IPA symbols. I’m not convinced it’s the right tool to use for measuring phonetic similarity, though — e.g. with this metric /pæn/, /bæn/, /pɪn/ and /pæt/ are all considered equidistant from each other.

The problem with naive Levenshtein distance IMO is that it does not treat phonemes or phones on a featural level, so two different phonemes or phones that differ on many features can be judged as contributing an equal distance as two phonemes or phones that differ only on a single feature.

That is definitely a good point about the weakness of Levenshtein distance, and it would certainly not fly if I were to do an actual linguistics study. I am looking into more advanced phonetic similarity methods for my next project.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Aug 18, 2025 11:15 am The problem with naive Levenshtein distance IMO is that it does not treat phonemes or phones on a featural level, so two different phonemes or phones that differ on many features can be judged as contributing an equal distance as two phonemes or phones that differ only on a single feature.

There's a research grant in there somewhere.

o

masako wrote: ↑Tue Aug 19, 2025 6:14 am Faux Hanzi. So avant garde. So daring and original.

Seriously, though, seems like you put a lot of work into just recreating Hanzi.

What's the new thing here? How is this new, or not derivative?

"Derivative" conlanging is a fairly common form of conlanging. Are you against all a posteriori conlangs?

o

masako wrote: ↑Tue Aug 19, 2025 6:14 am Faux Hanzi. So avant garde. So daring and original.

Seriously, though, seems like you put a lot of work into just recreating Hanzi.

What's the new thing here? How is this new, or not derivative?

The character designs are indeed derivative, and I meant them to be such, following most of the known conventions of kanji while still creating new combinations.

What is new is their application to write out English with them in a logographic manner similar to real-world Chinese/Japanese characters. These glyphs, unlike previous fake characters, quite literally have meanings!

The answer is emphatically no, but this isn't even a conlang, is it? This is literally English.

Hence my first post wondering if this is the right forum or if it belongs in a different one. Unless a mod decides to move it, I guess it would stay here.

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Tue Aug 19, 2025 6:54 am

masako wrote: ↑Tue Aug 19, 2025 6:14 am The answer is emphatically no, but this isn't even a conlang, is it? This is literally English.

Hence my first post wondering if this is the right forum or if it belongs in a different one. Unless a mod decides to move it, I guess it would stay here.

On the main ZBB page, the subtitle of the forum is "Conworlds and conlangs". "What if English was written with Hanzi-like characters" is a conworlding question.

o