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scriptorium >>Conscripts, Conlangs and Conworlds >>Shiwi


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Sano- 07-20-2008
Shiwi
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/shiwi.php The Shiwi alphabet was invented by Kiro to write a language of the same name that appears in a story he is writing. Shiwi can also be used to write English, and is modelled on Middle Persian alphabets. I came very close to putting this one in the neographies forum....why? Because I see very little to convince me that this is much more than writing English with a Pahlavi cipher. He has a sample in what looks like a conlang, but no phonological info and his "conlang" appears, suspiciously, to be a cipher to me.

Rik- 07-20-2008

You think it's an English cypher? Even the commas are in the corresponding places! ("Shiwi punctuation is minimal - only fullstops/periods" - sure looks like commas in that example to me). And the alphabet has a one-to-one correspondence to modern English - I'll lay money on X being pronounced 'ks'. I'm not enamoured by the script itself, either. Some of the individual letters give the appearance that this should be a cursive, handwritten script (D in particular, but also M, V and Y), yet there's no feeling of internal consistency within the design of the glyphs. I'm also struggling to think of what sort of medium is employed for the writing - scratches on rocks, maybe? I don't see the glyphs surviving in their presented form if they were rendered with paper/ink, or clay/stylus, or even chisel/rock: the temptation to simplify and prettify would surely tempt scribes away from the proscribed forms. The page says the script has been 'modelled' on middle Persian scripts, and can be written horizontally or vertically from the top left corner of the page. After searching for a sample of middle Persian, I have to say that I'm not impressed by the Shiwi model.

Sano- 07-20-2008

You think it's an English cypher? Facetiousness, apparently, isn't read easily. It is almost certainly a cypher, but it says conlang, so...

Hakaku- 07-21-2008

Well, I think the one to one correspondance to the latin alphabet and english vocabulary is pretty clear, as you've all mentioned. But put that aside, script/aesthetic-wise, I like the feel of it since it doesn't provide the harsh scareness or tengwarishness of most other recently posted scripts, however the sample is too short and repetitive to say any more than that.

chicken-pot Wy- 07-22-2008

Looks like chicken tracks.

Alonocus- 07-31-2008

Looks like chicken tracks. I think chicken tracks look more elegant and mystical than that cipher/thing. On a seperate note it looks incredibly uncomfortable to write. Take the letter W for example. The curve inwards is going to make it difficult to write in cursive.

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