How to Make an Awful Conlang- Episode 5 | The Writing Script

Got a new computer, so videos again. Thanks for the wait.

[@dion5322]

What does “猫” mean? Other people: cat. Me, an intellectual: airplane.

[@ConnorQuimby]

Every time I go back and look at my old videos I reread the comments and 5 months later this comment still gets me every time

[@wyntyrr]

@@ConnorQuimby Chinese Carslam

[@masicbemester]

when the cat goes *airplane noises*

[@phxlou]

@@ConnorQuimby the way u wrote the character for cat hurt me on levels I did not know was possible. It is causing my eyes to bleed

[@Geek-wl9kk]

I Am a native Hebrew and i just wanted to say that the Hebrew example text said "What is Palestine?" And that is hilarious.

[@natilevia6794]

בלסטין

[@comeanomalocaris8267]

דײַן מאַמע

[@KerbalHub]

What is Palestine? True Israel clay.

[@Dark.Pri77]

@@KerbalHub they are different but Israel don't recognise palestine and vice-versa

[@KerbalHub]

@@Dark.Pri77 that's why i said true israel clay Israel and Palestine claim each other's territory

[@ticcory6738]

That sentence at the end when translated was so wholesome. My emotions are going off the charts. I will never be the same again. Thank you.

[@reese9705]

SPOILERS!! Don’t read further if you didn’t decode it!! Epstein is spelled wrong. In the video, it’s spelled “Epsein”

[@haru2322]

I can't take your conlang serious without 龘

[@athelonus]

Haru what about this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGSxk2B5n66Nj7M No Rickroll, I promise.

[@emtheslav2295]

@@athelonus who allowed that to exist? That looks like torture! 🤯

[@ordenhartley1309]

The last bit literally DIDN’T KILL me

[@fantikus6300]

well maybe it killed HIM thoght, or did he kill himself

[@nadronnoco4227]

I liked the video overall, but I think you could have focused on making it even harder to write in the real world. Use different colors on the same glyph to change the meaning. The printer ink industry would have an even bigger racket than they already have. Overall, nice, but you could also turn up the sound a bit.

[@ConnorQuimby]

Thanks for the feedback. Still trying to figure out what I'm doing and how to use audacity.

[@Liggliluff]

(6:00) I wished more conlangers used more of those letters and not making every orthography based on English. That's one thing I like about Esperanto. - I find the Slavic Č Ć Š Ś Ž Ź /tʃ tɕ ʃ ɕ ʒ ʑ/ to be genius, and wishes it was used more. (I don't suggest using Ş because it collides with French Ç /s/ and Z̧ is missing in Unicode). This is much better than writing these as "Ch Chch Sh Shch Zh Zhch" or something.

[@Thomaas551]

You

[@puttiplush]

Bringing up boustrophedon was BRILLIANT. As was your admonishment about logographies: my second conlang ever used logographs for a FUSIONAL language and boy was that a unique nightmarish mistake. Also why not base your conlang script on Akkadian instead of or in addition to Japanese: Write using a combination of syllables that have historical spelling on your grammatical particles and then write content words, or some particles too, using combo-strings of determiners and phonetic syllables based on the unrelated language you stole from which itself stole them from the logographs of another unrelated language. (for example in English: write "coupon" as 梅毒之 , because "coupon" has nearly the same sound as Finnish "kupan" which is the genitive inflection of kuppa meaning syphilis, and if Finnish were written in Japanese that would be represented as 梅毒之 .) Thinking about how terrible Akkadian writing was honestly fills me with glee. And then make sure you stack everything as done in hieroglyphic Egyptian, so that the order in which one must read not only words but also the sequence of sounds within the words becomes opaque. If you want to, you can indicate reading order based on which way characters are facing as in Egyptian but frankly that seems too helpful for a truly bad conlang. In terms of glyph-forms to steal from, Chinese is a great source but I feel a true master-crap-class conlang orthography would borrow from Mayan so that, stroke order be damned, you absolutely must be a consistent artist who can differentiate curves or else your words become illegible.

[@ConnorQuimby]

Obfuscobble mein gott that’s evil. i didn’t even think of akkadian’s system, and i love your example

[@Alekspfg]

i quite like boustephedron

[@allisond.46]

Actually, a logography for an agglutinative language might work. Using it for a fusional or non-synthetic(basically anything else) language, on the other hand, would be a nightmare. Of course, many agglutinative languages just use the Latin alphabet, which works too.

[@nirvanawayne9503]

Yeah I think that agglutinative languages would still work okay, 'cause you could use its origins (past tense might come from the verb 'to finish', and then you use the character for to finish), a fusional language is probably worse... since its origins are much more polluted and you are going to need so many characters for very short sounds or little syllables Also, a syllabary for a CCCCVCCCC (or something like that) language would be the worst 😳😬

[@lululipes4382]

Im pretty sure japanese and korean are agglutinative languages that used to be written with logographs. They both switched off of it because it didn't match it. So I would argue otherwise

[@yaitz3313]

My idea for an awful script: all of the glyphs are triangles. Some have very similar shapes; maybe a right-angled triangle with a 88° near-equivalent that represents a totally different sound. And then also plenty of diacritics, all of which are different regular polygons and are placed inside the triangles.

[@davidmacdonald9159]

Chinese stroke order is kinda silly but does have practical applications! For example, in cursive when all the strokes bleed together into one monster, seeing the direction of the strokes helps you reconstruct what the character was before it got mamed. (Also tone is not transcribed in Chinese characters).

[@toade1583]

Chinese stroke isn't really silly when you get into memorizing thousands of characters correctly. It's much easier to build long term memory of any specific pictograph's shape when when you spent a long time memorizing the exact brush strokes than looking at it once and having a fuzzy, general view of what it looks like when you need to write it down a year after you saw it, for example.

[@flameoguy3804]

Subtle but genius that the characters for 'E' and 'S' were incredibly similar. More ambiguities = more natural = more better

[@ferociousfeind8538]

"What is a writing system" and "what are some writing systems" involves a huge shift in internal conception- the changing of an implied indefinite singular article to a definite plural article implies that we are no longer asking for the foundational mechanisms of a writing system, but rather asking for examples of currently-existing writing systems. I think I simultaneously love it and hate it.

[@pentelegomenon1175]

Hieroglyphics is the worst writing system. Imagine the Chinese system, except full of redundant and arbitrary elements (to just pick one example, if you want to say "pilot" you could just write something that sounds vaguely similar, like "pylon" or "pirate," or even multiple words combined like "pie lint," or "peel out," it doesn't even matter if there's already a symbol for "pilot"). And if you want an idea for a terrible character writing order, check out the "knight's tour."

[@tristangamz2679]

The best Chinese character is Biang and it’s so complex there’s not even a Unicode for it

[@thepotatoishpotato1676]

Imagine if you had an entirely vowel conlang and you use an abjad

[@pannekook2000]

I would suggest that the worst thing you could do is combine boustrophedon with Chinese characters, and also use Chinese characters to represent individual phonemes. So 䯥 = ａ， 霸 = b，蠢 = c and so on. Cab is then spelled “蠢䯥霸”. Even better is if your language has a morpheme not in the standard Latin alphabet, apply diacritics like normal on top of the Chinese characters. So don’t write ć, write 蠢͍͋. Or, hell, just splash in a random Latin character once in a while. Regardless, every word should take several minutes to write. Alternatively, you could look at what medium your civilization uses to write on and choose a writing system that is particularly difficult to write in that medium, like carving Chinese characters into stone or scratching Norse runes into grape leaves. Finally, if you’re going to write on a computer, you could also use symbols that aren’t in standard Unicode like Ⰼ, Ⱛ, 𐤸, ܫ, ᜥ᜴, ꡰ, or ⸩,ꟹTo write your language the author should need to keep en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters open at all times to copy paste letters in. Make sure to have distinctions between very similar characters like 𐍈 vs ʘ vs θ vs 日, so if your handwriting isn’t perfect the entire meaning of the word changes. If you’re doing this you should also absolutely include a couple phonemic Unicode error symbols like � , Ꝥ, so you can’t tell if you’re missing rendering support as easily.

[@thunderwazp7653]

You deserve a lot more subs mate

[@tibethatguy]

bruh in that fake alphabet text thing, you forgot a letter in the second word

[@ConnorQuimby]

It seems that I did. Woops.

[@rongpirson5250]

9:10 Old Japanese and Old Korean: sweat nervously

[@friendly_sitie]

don't forget onnyomi and kunnyomi!

[@1Dr490n]

I invented a writing system today. Every syllable was drawn in one stroke going downwards. You write syllables from left to right. Every syllable consists of 5 parts that are on top of each other: on top is the tone. A line going either up or down or just a straight line down. Below that is the first consonant or just a straight line if there’s no consonant. In the third row is a vowel, in the fourth another consonant (or just a line) and in the 5th is either a horizontal or a vertical line, which says whether the vowel is long or short. New words are represented by a straight line in between syllables (it’s basically a short syllable with constant tone and no sounds in it). The purpose wasn’t to make a bad writing system tho. It’s not too good, but you can write pretty fast with it (one stroke per syllable) and it’s easy to read (no irregular pronounciation, no too complicated rules). But I’m thinking about dropping the tone, because it’s kinda cool because it’s unique but I’m not good at pronouncing it and I think that tone shouldn’t be in languages

[@mollof7893]

"Stick around if you like Japan" Ok! *leaves*

[@spcxplrr]

"it of is the the sample time time" wise words.

[@lowencraft1404]

"Baguettese" got me

[@rossjennings4755]

You're missing a "t" in that final coded message...

[@matthewbrownell5472]

I love the coded message

[@shadethorn5340]

omg this is actually so helpful 💗

[@coockingjanice996]

11:30 and i oop-

[@lionberryofskyclan]

hM

[@erentoraman2663]

To be honest, a lot of these things like writing a vowel heavy language with an abjad aren't necessarily a bad thing to add to a conlang and could even make it more interesting or even naturalistic. I mean, Turkish used to be written in the Arabic script for ages and Ainu is written in katakana despite having many final consonants. These things al come up because of the circumstances of these languages and makes the conworld the conlangs are spoken in more nuanced

[@ChrisLeeW00]

I knew what the message was going to say halfway through decoding the first word lol

[@lugeushqimi9135]

That's quality content mate

[@ConnorQuimby]

Lugë Ushqimi thanks, i’m digging your avatar, he just needs a microphone!

[@kaydenangel339]

ik this is an old video but another fun thing you could do is alternate your sentences to be read upsidedown and then rightside up. So you'd have to turn the paper upside down every time you've finished a sentence.

[@keeganmulligan4384]

Or instead of back and forth make it so you have to write on circular paper, where you spin it around... and around... and around... and then you get dizzy, but at least you finished writing.

[@tonksonk951]

I wonder what the last part says 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤯🤣🤣🤣 Funny af :P

[@piguyalamode164]

another "good" idea. Take your random scribbles and run them through detexify to find their typed equivalent. Then see if you can find that special character(or just make everyone who uses your language learn LaTeX)

[@xenomorph6599]

Sentence at the end made me d i e laughing

[@_uxxn3287]

Do you use dvorak?

[@AlbySilly]

5:15 As someone who's making a sort of conlang (toylang/artlang? it's just a personal project) the q and G seem to come up in quite a lot of words.

[@cyborggaming2987]

Writing order: right to left, then left to right, then vertical, then diagonal

[@dastardlydan4022]

I agree with that coded statement.

[@avaevathornton9851]

Subscribed.

[@jonnasjzg2932]

Abugidas deserve some love too

[@erikjohansson2703]

Lmao the Korean example said "Joseph Stalin didn't do anything wrong"

[@cyborggaming2987]

Another idea: look through all of the characters that you can type and pick the most random and nonsensical ones

[@rateeightx]

2:15 I'm Pretty Sure Featural Isn't A Particular Type Of Writing System, Any Type Could Be Featural, For Example You Could Have A Featural Alphabet, A Featural Syllabary, A Featural Abjad, Et Cetera.

[@syro33]

Korean is also just weird in general though. Its like an alphabet, but the letters have to be put in blocks and changed around a bit to make syllables, so you could argue it's that instead. also, if you count it as an alphabet, I'm pretty sure it's the only example we have of an alphabet that doesn't trace back to Phoenician.

[@hihi615]

Tbh, I found the easier way for me to create words in a conlang was just to create the script first..... it somehow just tells me how the words are gonna be formed. I know natlangs don't really do that, but I found it easier for me. That and Awkwords....

[@estebanod]

I read the first 4 letters and I knew lmaoo

[@gavinwilson5324]

Okay, hear me out: an abugida, but the features indicating vowels are completely different for each word. The intense memorization of a logography combined with the counter-intuitive pseudo-phonetic spellings possible with an alphabet combined into one!

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Left to right

[@amirsur1596]

Dvořák is better than qwerty, but Colemak is superior to that.

[@kaengurus.sind.genossen]

I just use QWERTZUIOPÜ

[@1leon000]

6:27 dude, those same not sins are almost the same as mine, especially /x/ being written like in the IPA, but it doesn't have a /j/ phoneme, so that's bad

[@ferociousfeind8538]

That moment when your writing medium/instrument is the spiderweb-like structures created by your conlang's speakers (hentai logic, no complaining allowed) and so you have no real official words for either the type of script of the writing direction... Ohhhh the writing direction. I consider myself very clever for coming up with it, and actually, it was sort of the whole spark that lead me to create the language. At the center is a circle or polygon, from which all the text emerges. For simplicity's sake, it can be rendered left-to-right with the origin point interpreted as a sentence marker, instead of its more native use as an overarching _topic_ marker. But on its native medium, _text emerges from the origin point and sprawls out across the web in all directions._ So there is no real preferred direction, and strings of text may be read in any order, which then lead to my next design choice- almost completely free word order. There are some more rigid concepts which require word order to convey complex relationships, but those chunks can then, themselves, appear anywhere in the sentence. Damn, I forgot that this whole project has a really unique root. I should go work on it some more.

[@ConnorQuimby]

Hot damn that is impressive

[@ferociousfeind8538]

@@ConnorQuimby 9:17 oh _no._ I have a syllabary planned for my poor language with poorly-defined consonant cluster rules... I mean, it was intentional, and I am looking forward to designing a lot of evil little differences, but seeing this specific combo in a "how to make an awful conlang" video is definitely an odd feeling. Perhaps it'll make it more naturalistic... That's the hope, at least. To make a good conlang ya gotta make a bad conlang, or something like that.

[@ferociousfeind8538]

(Not to mention I am also inventing multiple writing systems for different mediums O__O;;) But... it makes sense to evolve your outward-cascading writing system into a more traditional left-to-right system when moving from spiderwebs to paper, r-right? _What am I doing to myself with this terrible, terrible, amazing, terrible language?_

[@ashaler__]

i made a new type of writing system, where there was a vowel and then youd add these diacritics to represent consonants, so basically abjads in mirrors

[@ConnorQuimby]

my god

[@freezejr2000]

sounds amazing 10/10

[@ashaler__]

@@ConnorQuimby i never noticed that you ended up replying but YEAH IT WASNT GREAT

[@ashaler__]

i never did figure out how to tell the position of the consonants in relation to the vowel

[@holdingpattern245]

if you have many vowels and few consonants, it would work

[@tailbonetailbone9380]

Shoutout to the Hispanic scripts, which are mix sillabary-alphabets.

[@bob._.4839]

Mans dressed like spongebob

[@holdingpattern245]

Wouldn't agglutinative languages be attracted to logographies, because they could make symbols for all of the different morphemes?

[@flashingmustard1131]

it is the time of the sample time? or it of is the the sample time time QUESTION REALITY

[@kuollutkissa]

One of my conlangs evolved a nightmare romanisation using a shit ton of diacritics because of a large phoneme inventory and not-too restrictive phonotactics Yeah

[@takashi.mizuiro]

i have to sub

[@erdgerd9584]

mhh but how do i learn my own awful conlang?

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Morning Musume=5 characters(in Chinese) Members: 3 glyphs YasuDaKei YosiZawaHitomi TuziNozoMi TakaHasiAi 4 glyphs IiDaKaOri ABeNatuMi YaGutiMaRi IsiKawaRiKa KaGoAI KonNoAsaMi OGawaMaKoto NiiGakiRiSa

[@Liggliluff]

(6:25) Looks more like you used Ğ (breve) than Ǧ (caron/hacek)

[@lecreeperweeb4813]

2:42 I didn't know "suu" could be use that way, but it's not very cool what's written

[@lululipes4382]

why are his clothes the same as sopnge bob's

[@Imacrab398]

In my awful conlang, the writing system is a combination of the latin script, numbers, cyrillic, and the cherokee syllabary. None of the letters make any sound. Spelling is completely random just like in english.

[@GG69BLIN]

Baguettese

[@apfelstrudel2365]

i am going to create adidas stripe based system thx

[@EliotKiti]

I like how it says in Hebrew: "what is Palestine?" 😂

[@JerusalemStrayCat]

Is that what it said? I was trying to figure out what "plastin" was

[@EliotKiti]

@@JerusalemStrayCat Are you learning hebrew?

[@JerusalemStrayCat]

@@EliotKiti no, I'm fluent, I'm just a little obtuse sometimes

[@EliotKiti]

@@JerusalemStrayCat תזכור שאם אתה לא מוצא שורש ברור, סביר שהמילה לקוחה מלעז. במקרה הזה "פלסטין" הוא שם רומי אם אינני טועה

[@JerusalemStrayCat]

@@EliotKiti הבעיה היא שחשבתי שהמילה איכשהו קשורה ל"פלסטיק" - בדרך כלל כשאני רואה את השם הזה יש 'ה' בסוף

[@kaengurus.sind.genossen]

So basically try to write Maori with a more complex version of the Arabic script and do it irregulary.

[@jameswang999]

Lol I cringed when he wrote 猫

[@martinkullberg6718]

Did the computer die by calculating evry aspect of the worst conlang ever ?🤣

[@zeeslag123]

Some other bad ones are using the oe, I just don't think that's really necessary in today's modern world. Me, a native Dutch speaker: Is that like a personal attack or something?

[@Liggliluff]

I quickly tried to think of a new writing system, and came up with: a syllabary that is only CV, then you add a symbol for the final C. However, this is Japanese, where you have the -n suffix. This means that Japanese isn't a _true_ syllabary, as it should have a unique glyph for every syllable ending with -n as well.

[@k.umquat8604]

Japanese is a moraic syllabary, as Ainu is. Most syllabaries are moraic syllabaries.

[@filipinojalapeno1527]

you spelled the 2nd word wrong at the end

[@user-pk9qo1gd6r]

You forgot a t in your writing, and the glyphs still look a bit too much like latin - you should write a codeto distribute them completely randomly and apply it without checking how it looks!

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

Disetaimue ai makeénechòisue makue idiomue mi Ai kòlewue itue niuujeremanue

[@aykarain]

DIRECTION HAVING MEANING this will waste space on whatever so uh ---oh and why not make it written with brush so you will smudge the writing every time

[@iris_drawssandwiches]

Why not just mix them all into one. I also mean the writing systems just put them all in one system.

[@kazekagetoriyama861]

If your wondering then look im replies

[@kazekagetoriyama861]

Jefferey Epsin Didnt kill himself

[@sunburnedshirts3724]

writing script uh isnt that redundant

[@sunburnedshirts3724]

@@ConnorQuimby bfnfbshdjf nah like the phrase its basically the same word twice

[@ConnorQuimby]

@@sunburnedshirts3724 well there's java script... I just used terminology that's clear. Saying writing script shows that we're discussing ways of writing that are not necessarily Latinate.

[@sunburnedshirts3724]

@@ConnorQuimby i guess that makes sense orthography gang tho

[@ethanbeharry9478]

WAHAH JOSEPH STALIN WASN'T VERY HANDSOME FOR KOrEAN hAH

[@masicbemester]

ẍ