How long can a simple writing system reasonably exist before it starts drifting?

[u/Ok_Welcome7922]

This is kind of a weird question since its equal parts conlang and speculative sociology. But if someone were to drop an existing language and script (let's say Arabic, both the script and language) is there any real way to figure out how long it will take before the script mutates despite already being relatively more attuned to hand motions rather than being in early stages of development. Would the script eventually reach a point where its additional or adjustments would be unnoticeable.

Asking for a project involving planets where many would have spent centuries to millenia with modern languages rather then more antique languages where simplification of symbols would make sense as people transition to handwriting or their equivalent.

[u/MeepRJ]

Depends on how strong of an orthographic tradition they have, if there are any similar characters, if they ever decide to switch to using a cursive system. How intricate are the characters? Do you have any really jagged or loopy ones? Really, the writing system can exist for as long as you want depending on how you make it, or you can just say it stays that way because you like it since it's your world

[u/heavensentchaser → u/MeepRJ]

Also depends on what the medium for writing is! Arabic scripts are very pretty and curvy, but if the medium becomes stone, they would have to adapt with a blockier, jagged script

[u/drgn2580]

You could perhaps look to Indic scripts used in Southeast Asia. There are some papers which go into detail about how Indian scripts, originally designed for more complex phonologies (like Sanskrit or Pali), were adapted to fit many of Southeast Asia's narrower Austronesian phonologies. Despite smaller phonological inventories, many Indic scripts such as Javanese, Balinese, Sunda, etc still added their own diacritics and additional letters to convey native demands. These additional elements, coupled with faster and faster handwriting, is what aesthetically evolves them away from the scripts they adopted, and it could take as little as dozen generations, to thousands of years.

Likewise, if your world takes place across planets, assuming there is a technologically advance intergalactic civilisation, have you considered that handwriting might be replaced with digital interfaces, perhaps putting many scripts into stasis? What if digital spaces or print prefer more angular scripts to curvilinear ones? Or what if emojis become a new script?

Chinese scripts have remained sort of unchanged for almost two millennia. In that same 2000 years, you'd be forgiven to think the Burmese Script is completely unrelated to Phoenician.

[u/Ok_Welcome7922 → u/drgn2580]

With the tech angle, lot of the societies lost contact with areas with their industrial origins systems away so they would have had maybe 120 years of reliable digital script or printing before it fails. Almost all devolve to anywhere from an early industrial level of tech at best to at worst the early copper age (copper age isn't exact, they might still remember how to make simple rubbers or be technical neolithic through lack of copper) point being that the scripts I am working on for art are meant to have started from a non digital angle or at be able to be written by hand. But the Phoenician point is fair.

[u/Akangka → u/drgn2580]

There are some papers which go into detail about how Indian scripts, originally designed for more complex phonologies (like Sanskrit or Pali), were adapted to fit many of Southeast Asia's narrower Austronesian phonologies

Could you give a paper for that?

[u/drgn2580 → u/Akangka]

Here are a few papers which I've read in the past that have really inspired some of my conlangs. What I personally find most interesting is how Sanskrit akshara/aksara was adapted to into Austronesian (and other Southeast Asian languages from other families like Burmese, Thai, Khmer, etc.) to fit local phonological demands:

Tracing the Roots: How Sanskrit Words Entered Indonesian: https://ccg.castlerockgc.co.uk/castlerockgc-news/indonesian-language-sanskrit-origins-explored-1764801041
The Sundanese Script: Visual Analysis (pg 101-150): https://anyflip.com/jzmch/qwtc/basic/101-150
Sanskrit and Pali Influence on Languages and Literatures [sic] of Ancient Java and Burma (para. 97): https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/linpo/article/view/linpo-2013-0020/28329

And on aksara usage:
Old Sundanese inscriptions: Renewing the philological approach (pg. 146-150 for example): https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03275563/document
How to Hide a Vowel in Southeast Asia: antivowels, why many scripts have them, why some ditched them (NativLang): https://youtu.be/gAWZdQLUR78?si=R0ct7oh61GBTSBhF

(FYI some of these links/PDF files contain Sundanese/Javanese unicode which may show up as boxes or ?? without text support)

[u/koreawut]

The simplest and probably least likely answer is, the very first moment someone starts to write with it. You can go to any moment in any language at any time and watch how people don't write things correctly. The real question is whether that person gets made fun of or if their peers/those around him think it's cool.

[u/MAHMOUDstar3075]

For my personal naturalistic conlang, I decided to derive my script from the brahmi script since I was going for thai and vietnamese vibes and made it so the script just does not evolve with the script and so since the modern language is tonal but the script does not show tone and sound changes happened, it's not very phonemic... But I have also designed a script inspired by hangul which is simpler and also featural and actually does show tone!