What have you accomplished today?

[sasasha]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

That’s absolutely beautiful!

[bradrn]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

That’s absolutely beautiful!

Thank you for saying so!

Personally I feel it’s a bit wonky — I’m not very good at vector graphics. (This one is a lot better than my previous attempts have been.) Still, I’m sure I’ll be able to refine it.

[sasasha]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

That’s absolutely beautiful!

Thank you for saying so!

Personally I feel it’s a bit wonky — I’m not very good at vector graphics. (This one is a lot better than my previous attempts have been.) Still, I’m sure I’ll be able to refine it.

Meh, perfection is for the gods. I like it, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Ambitious - it seems a small amount of space you’re going to be squishing your logographs into - but it’s a great seed. (Anyway, it seems the logographs can spread out in various direction, just with a tendency to sit around the midline, which is cool.)

[bradrn]

Meh, perfection is for the gods.

No! I will accept nothing less than perfection!

I like it, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

If you’re curious, the primary inspiration was Georgian Nuskhuri calligraphy — as soon as I saw it, I immediately knew I just had to make something like that. (Particular inspirations were this and this. That second image has a particularly strong resemblance.)

Ambitious - it seems a small amount of space you’re going to be squishing your logographs into - but it’s a great seed. (Anyway, it seems the logographs can spread out in various direction, just with a tendency to sit around the midline, which is cool.)

They do tend to be squished a bit vertically, but they make up for it in horizontal extension. Besides, various ascenders and descenders are possible, of which I’ve only shown two here.

(Hieratic and Demotic scripts are somewhat similar in their aspect ratio. Amongst non-logographies there’s also scripts like Malayalam and Burmese.)

[Travis B.]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

That’s absolutely beautiful!

Seconded!

[xxx]

very wavy and consistent...
as a font should be,
without the small imperfections of handwriting,
which denote our human weakness,
ingrained in the vicissitudes of the world...

[Lērisama]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

Ooh, that's lovely!

[WeepingElf]

A first attempt at digitising the script for Eŋes shown earlier:

Ooh, that's lovely!

It is!

[malloc]

Inspired by this video, I have been experimenting with a seximal number system for another, rather minimalist project. Despite its promise, the seximal system faces the obvious problem of requiring more digits per number than larger bases like decimal. It also poses significant challenges for existing measurement systems like metric. Nonetheless the initial results look promising and the number six and its multiples appear elsewhere in the language (six color roots, twelve underlying phonemes, eighteen inflectional endings), making for a nice resonance.

[alice]

Nonetheless the initial results look promising and the number six and its multiples appear elsewhere in the language (six color roots, twelve underlying phonemes, eighteen inflectional endings), making for a nice resonance.

Bizarrely, I did somethng very similar to this a while ago, where almost everything in the grammar was done in sixes.

[Raphael]

If you want something that has practical advantages over decimal, isn't base 12 better?

[xxx]

For a conlang whose interest is an offbeat vision of the world,
exoticism takes precedence over practicality...

[keenir]

It also poses significant challenges for existing measurement systems like metric.

when in doubt, coin your own units of measure; if you can't, then rounding works.

Nonetheless the initial results look promising and the number six and its multiples appear elsewhere in the language (six color roots, twelve underlying phonemes, eighteen inflectional endings), making for a nice resonance.

excellent; keep up the great work.

[malloc]

If you want something that has practical advantages over decimal, isn't base 12 better?

Definitely something I have considered, although that requires adding two extra roots for eleven and twelve. Furthermore, the video I linked points out that seximal handles fifths and sevenths better than dozenal. That said, it definitely improves on decimal at the cost of only two more numerals so I am definitely giving it consideration. Overall it just feels conceptually unsatisfying to default to decimal considering that it mainly reflects us having ten fingers rather than any useful mathematical properties.

[Travis B.]

In natlangs the main alternatives to base ten are hybrid systems involving base five (i.e. the fingers on one hand) and/or base twenty (i.e. the fingers and toes).

[WeepingElf]

There are decimal systems in which '6' to '9' are derived from '5+1' to '5+4' (which is probably what Travis means). In the same way, a base-12 system can easily be built on roots for just '1' to '6': '7' is '6+1' and so on.

[xxx]

Yes, linguistic number bases are not the same as mathematical bases...

[Emily]

flash drive where i have my notes and dictionaries crashed and of course i don't have recent backups, so until i can get it looked at i've been recreating some words and putting them on my anthologi.ca dictionaries:

• eye: augo > owȝu > owȝus
• shoe: sgohs > zgwohs > zgwohs
• pair of shoes: gasgohi > gezgwozje > gezgwoȝ̃e (becomes dual inflection of zgwohs)
• hand: handaus > adus > adus
• dog: hunds > odz > ods
• house: razn > razo > razo

[xxx]

I really hope this never happens to me,
who stores all my conlang in my head...

[Man in Space]

Technically yesterday, but I finally got (most of) the Caber logograms indexed to their referent term(s) in my spreadsheet. Hopefully now I’m in a better position to make new ones and avoid duplicating existing ones.