how to make a secret writing system

so imagine you want to write something on a piece of paper but you don't want anyone reading what you wrote how about a secret code that you can use so nobody ever can read what you have to hide you can share secret messages with friends or family that only you can comprehend well that's exactly what I did about four years ago and although it wasn't the best code because it was my first time trying so it was kind of easy to cipher it was just not very professional but I continued making such writing systems and I got better at it over time in this video I'm going to cover what exactly is a writing system and how to make one first of all don't confuse writing systems with conlangs a writing system is not a language this text is in English but it doesn't use English alphabet and when you read it you'll be speaking English it's just written differently so it sounds great but where to start now let's show you one that I made this is AMECS this is the main secret code that I made but I'm not going to explain AMECS in this video because it'll no longer be a secret obviously so how about we create a new one right now so let me emphasize here that the steps that I'm going to present you with are not the only way to create a writing system of course you can think outside the box and do anything but this is the way that I think is the most practical to make a writing system so let's get into the steps of making the writing system first of all choose the language that you'll write in is it English Arabic or French it matters because you will make the decisions based on the language that you're going to use so for example the languages alphabet or sounds I think I'll choose Arabic for this one now before we get into the fun stuff we've got to decide the purpose of our writing system what is the goal of that writing system? if you just want to make a simple writing system that's fine of course but you can make one for other purposes like one that saves space so you can write more in less paper or one that is intended to look beautiful for artistic purposes it's totally up to you maybe you want to make one for maybe cheating on an exam no seriously don't do it a cheating is bad so in my writing system I think I want to make it look like scribbles and not text so that people don't even know that something is written in there they'll just think I was drawing something now think about the writing material if it's a pen and a paper you'll be able to draw curves easily compare that to wood carving where rigid lines are encouraged but round shapes are very time-consuming and just difficult or maybe your writing system is typed on a computer screen here you'll be able to easily add color sizes opacity and much more actually maybe you don't even want to write it you can make a writing system literally out of types of cheese or entirely made out of the combinations of tools in your pencil case as long as people can understand it and you can understand what's written or whatever it's fine it works so I'll go with the basic paper and pen now you might say cool now can we start drawing the alphabet no no not yet first we got to add some interesting features think of some rules that make your writing system unique there are types of writing systems there are alphabets and alphabets use a glyph for each sound just like English but that's not the only way to write you're also a Paquita in a bow Gita's only consonants get a glyph and vowels are just extensions or modifiers on concepts this could work well with the writing systems that have a lot of vowels now I'm not gonna go over all the types but here's an interesting one logographs logographs are not letters but each word or each meaning has its own symbol so imagine you trying to make a symbol for every single word it's really hard I try to make it but I'm not done yet and I'm not sure if I'm going to ever finish it I mean it's really hard but Chinese has a look of perfect writing system now as I said think outside the box don't just do the usual okay here's some interesting ideas for example you can make two sets of letters and make one set have larger glyphs with holes in them so you can fit a smaller letter in it that's pretty cool I think or if you want something complicated you can make multiple variations of the same letter and each variation is used depending on its position in a word for example like first middle or last so that means if it comes first you use that symbol if it comes in the middle you use that simple if it comes last you use that symbol you can make it as complex or as simple as you want okay now enough of that let's get into the fun stuff designing the symbols now I personally recommend designing all characters then assigning each to a letter I believe that this method is much much better than as designing letters one by one so for example I make the letter A I design a character then B I make a character then C I make a character I don't think there's a really good idea also make sure you give the most used characters the simplest symbol so you don't take much time writing them so I think a common question would be based on what do I make the symbols well you could make them random but also try to make them distinct and related or you could make a rule for creating the letters some things like this and once you're done keep changing and updating and fix the mistakes until the result is a complete writing system keep iterating it takes weeks two months and there we go I made my writing system and I'm gonna call it drumroll scribbles that's a really cliche name I don't know that's the best I got I'm sorry so scribbles it is go make your own now if you want to check it out it's in the description if you're watching from YouTube I made a document explaining it so do it you'll learn it I mean it

Channel: Ammar Almarzooq

Views: 51,592

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Id: 02nogSFu_GE

Length: 8min 6sec (486 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018