Good morning, Interweb. Let's Worldbuild! So, inspired by the epicness of Artifexian
viewer TehSarcassicCanadian, links in the doobly-doo, and my recent trip to South Korea,
I decided to create a writing system for Oa. And here it is! Awesome! Video done. See you
all next time. Edgar out! Oh, you're still here. Right, well here's
a picture of the human food hole: nasal cavity, roof and floor of the mouth, lips, teeth,
tongue, and glottis - all graphically abstracted. /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ are all nasal sounds, right.
/m/'s place of articulation is the lips, /n/ the middle of the mouth, and /ŋ/ the back
of the mouth. /m/, /n/, /ŋ/. /p/, /t/, and /k/ are exactly the same as the
previous three, just minus the nasality. /p/, /t/, /k/. The glottal stop - a circle and a line - the
windpipe and vocal chords. Easy. /f/ and /v/ involve the teeth and the bottom
lip. /s/ and /z/'s place of articulation are again the middle of the of the mouth - so
they look like variations on /t/. /x/ is like /k/, but with extra air. /h/ windpipe plus
air. /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /x/, /h/. /ʍ/ is the labio-velar approximant. Lips,
back of the mouth, and extra air. /ʍ/. /ʙ/ uses the lips but in a wobbly fashion,
and it seems only fitting then to have /ʀ/ be it's reflection. /ʙ/, /ʀ/. And finally the approximants proper. Liquid-y
sounds get glyphs with more organic lines. /j/, /r/, /l/. Again noting that the place
of articulation in each case is somewhere in the middle of the mouth. /j/, /r/, /l/. The vowels, /o/, /a/, /i/ and /ə/, are pictures
of the food hole seen face on. /o/, /a/, /i/, ....Ok, so /ə/ isn't exactly a perfect pictorial
representing of what going on but I wanted the schwa to have a symbol the eye can easily
scan over when reading. Minimal attention should be paid to unstressed syllables. Oh, and diphthongs they're just two vowels
shrunk and squashed together: /ai/, /ia/, /oi/, /io/, /oa/, and /ao/. And that's it! 19 consonants, 4 vowels, and
6 Diphthongs. Done! So, this type of system is known as a featural
system. In featural systems, the glyphs aren't random, they're designed to encode phonological
information. In this case, I've created little diagrams demonstrating how the sound is produced.
Linguistic IKEA instructions, if you will. Now, these glyphs form words via syllable
blocks. That is, Oa glyphs don't string out horizontally but rather cluster together by
syllable, like so. They stack in a tower of three, onset, nucleus,
and coda, written, and read, in the order. If any segment is missing, the initial glyph
will stretch vertically to fill the space. Thus, the main syllable blocks are V, CV,
VC, and CVC. Just like the diphthongs, consonant clusters shrink and squish together and are
read left to right. Any glyphs that are hard to stretch vertically will be rotated 90 degrees
clockwise and then stretched. Now, given that the syllables are read top-to-bottom
left-to-right, it seems only fitting to have directionality of block text be the same. Logical, although
perhaps a bit boring. Finally, a couple of meta points. The decision
to have all horizontal lines be thicker than vertical lines is deliberate - my little nod
to Hebrew. The glyphs in isolation are in a 1 to phi ratio and the syllable blocks are
in a phi² to phi ratio. And lastly, I am working on a punctuation system (a more streamlined
version of English punctuation) and a Mayan inspired number system. So expect updates
on this topic sometime soon. And, yes, the number system will be in base 12. Why? 'Cause 12 is jolly, 10 is folly. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Man, Oa
is just a cheap knock-off of Hangul." And you would be totally right! I wanted my system
to be was logical, rigorous, and above all else, easy to learn. Hangul is all of these things
and much, much more. Just ask Xidnaf. So there was always going to be parallels between Oa
and Hangul, and I'm totally cool with that. Even though Hangul is WAAAY more elegant
than Oa and and less fugly! Good morning, Interweb. So, two points here. Point number one, Hangul is an amazing writing system, and if you're in any way intersted in coming up with your own writing system, Hangul is pretty much recommended reading. As such, I've left some links in the doobly-doo. Go check 'em out. Point number two, I realize that my language is very much like Hangul, and like I said in the video, that was totally deliberate. But, aside from that, let me know what you thought. Likes, dislikes, anything you think doesn't work anything you think does work, all that sort of stuff. Leave 'em in the comments. I cannot wait to hear from you guys. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the video, and thank you so much for watching. It really means a lot. Click the links on-screen or in the description for more Artifexian content, like, and if you think I earned it, hit the subscribe button. Thank you all so much for watching! Edgar out.
