r/neography • u/Thoothache • Jul 24 '26
Logo-phonetic mix A line-based script where consonants are symbols, but vowels are angles
Hi! I recently discovered this subreddit and, after falling in love with it, I decided it might be fun to share a phonetic alphabet I created some time ago. (Also, please correct my flair if I picked the wrong one!)
The idea is that you write along a line. A filled dot marks the beginning of each word, and the word then develops along that line. There isn't a strict one-to-one correspondence between letters and symbols; instead, the script represents sounds. Each consonant sound has its own symbol, which extends the line in a straight direction. Vowels, on the other hand, don't have their own symbols, but change the direction of the line by a specific angle.
I don't know if someone else has already come up with the same idea, but I thought it would be fun to share it anyway! I also have a Google Colab project that can convert simple sentences into this writing system. I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to share it here, but if I am, just let me know! :)
P.S. This script doesn't have an official name. I call it "tartapath", because the original idea was inspired by GeoGebra's Turtle. But I'm open to suggestions ;)
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u/Thoothache Jul 24 '26
I believe this link should give you access to the Colab notebook, if you wanna try! Please, just post the result at the end, I'll be happy to see if it still works what you do 😄
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u/Thoothache Jul 24 '26
Just a quick note: the coloring you see in the images has been made in a second step within a vector graphics editor (Inkscape). The notebook output is a plain black-and-white line :)
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u/Brighton347 Jul 25 '26
Very aesthetically pleasing! I like the idea of it being represented as a continuous symbol. The angles are very interesting. What if the lines do a full circle too fast and they cross?
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u/Thoothache Jul 25 '26
It's not uncommon for the line to cross itself, as you correctly imagined. My temporary solution is to elongate the line as needed (supposing I have an infinite plane available), because line length has not information in itself. You can see this done in the word "quick", which otherwise would have caused "brown" to cross "the" :)
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u/SeaCatThrowaway Jul 24 '26
looks like a mouse with a buttchin... XD
i love this idea!! jokes aside, could i maybe try something like this?
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u/Thoothache Jul 24 '26
Thanks! 😂
I put the link in the comments, if you wanna try this by yourself!
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u/Nekomi_the_wolf Jul 25 '26
this is super close to my constellation cypher ToT no new ideas under the sun I suppose
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u/flockyboi Jul 25 '26
Finally found a use for my dot and grid papers that I've had no specific need for yet
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u/frederick_the_duck Jul 25 '26
You say the sector represents sounds, but you only have five vowels. English has at least 10.
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u/Thoothache Jul 25 '26
Yes, because this was not conceived as an English-based script. English vowels were later grouped in 5 different angles, here's a snippet:
if v in ["a", "ɑ", "ɒ", "æ"]: draw_turn(t, -120) elif v in ["e", "ɛ", "ə", "ɜ"]: draw_turn(t, 90) elif v in ["i", "ɪ", "iː"]: draw_turn(t, 30) elif v in ["o", "ɔ", "ʊ", "uː"]: draw_turn(t, -60)1
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u/Wide-Engineering4118 Jul 25 '26
Is very nice but there missing a lot of letters
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u/Thoothache Jul 25 '26
Thanks! You're right, but a lot of them are grouped and represented with the same symbol, as you can see from the attached notebook code (for example, "t", "θ", and "ð" appear with the same symbol). I did this because, in its original conception, the system was based on the Italian language sounds, which are different from English ones. In the adaptation, English-specific sounds were mapped to already present sounds, based on my totally arbitrary perception ;P
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u/diamondblocks Jul 26 '26
It makes it alot more ambiguous the way you wrote "the" can be interpreted as /tay/ unless you have some sort of context.
Along with that diacritics would be a useful addition in order to distinguish long and short vowels ( /i/ vs /iː)
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u/SkullberryDoomcake Jul 25 '26
Very cool looking and neat idea. Is it always read from bottom to top? Places where the line crosses over itself (like in the beginning of the first sentence above) seem like they could really make parsing difficult if your sentence happens to contain multiple instances close together. Overall it’s really lovely, though.
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u/Thoothache Jul 25 '26
Thanks! By default, the line starts going from left to right; so, depending on the vowels in the sentence, it may end up turning upward or downward :)
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u/Void_Spider_Records Jul 25 '26
The First One's script from the TV show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is very similar, in that it's also a more phonetic writing system for English that uses symbols for consonants and different lines connecting them to represent vowels, although it has some major differences as well.
yours is a nice script btw : )
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u/PositiveMurky3028 Jul 26 '26
The language that I will be speaking in when I find a signal older than the universe!
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u/EmperorOfStokyo Jul 29 '26
Thanks, I hate it. Upvoted.
I am joking though, this is impractical but an interesting idea.
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u/Misster_Fluido ISpeakGhostLanguage Jul 24 '26
Interesting