Alien Written Language

[UnFleshed One]

Not really, I just have hard time translating .

[Astyanax]

I kinda figured young aliens had all their "basic" knowledge drilled into them shortly after birth through psionic means... which would explain why some aliens do not think for themselves. Of course, I could be wrong, but oh well.

[[stewart]]

I guess theres no takers on this:

 

It says:

 

Sectoids

Strike a blow for

Freedom NOW.

 

The concatenation errors are:

1 ) The "k" and the "eh" in "Sec" in Sectoids can be joined at the bottom.

2 ) The "k" and the "ee" in "Strike" can be joined at the bottom.

3 ) The "F" and the "r" in "Free" in Freedom can be joined.

[UnFleshed One]

Oh, I found concatenation errors all right. But how one knows which soud goes when... I guess I'll have to learn korean first

[[stewart]]

It's not korean its english. The arrangement rules are only inspired by korean but doesnt actually use the korean arrangement rules. The rules are somewhat complicated because English uses the annoying practise of consenant clusters; for example the word "Strength", 8 letters - 1 vowel . . .yuck.

[UnFleshed One]

Yeah, it's arrangement rules I have problems with . I can identify sounds good enough...

 

BTW, can symbols be stretched with a loss of aspect ratio? Or proportions are always constant?

[[stewart]]

Stretch or squish them to fit. Chinese actually does that. They have a base set of symbols with which they build-up there more complicated characters; and they squeeze stretch and some times actually ROTATE them. No rotation for alien script.

[UnFleshed One]

But can you strech one in a way so it will look like two other joined? (strech height two times with constant width)

[[stewart]]

I dont believe so, since each character whether joined in a ligature or not fits into a right angle rectangle not any trapazoidal or parallelagramic space.

[UnFleshed One]

Edit: I meant aspect ratio

 

Is this (big one) one stretched symbol or two joined?

Edited November 29, 2005 by UnFleshed One

[[stewart]]

It is not two joined because the interfaces must match. If it were two joined you'd have an ending of line joining to a line at 90 degrees. Since lines in parallel for all the characters are not the same length this helps to avoid ambiguities as well. So your drawing shows two "s"es. Not an "s" and two stacked "z"s

[[stewart]]

English:

 

Subject: Human male,

approximately 32 units tall and 51 units in weight.

 

Subject was acquired 13 cycles ago, around the environs of a small agricultural plot. When acquired, subject was aggressive and confrontational, finally being brought under control using mind wave manipulation. While under manipulation, subject was encoded with a transceiver unit. Response was less than satisfactory, and invasive surgical means were required to hard implant behavioral control units. Subject was non-compliant during operational procedures, exhibiting strong verbal and physical spasms. Restraints were required. It is this researcher's opinion that surgical bays should be equipped with drains, as a copious amount of fluid was discharged from the subject's body during surgical procedures.

 

 

Alien:

 

I still have to proofread the alien for mistakes, but this'll get you going.

[testarossa]

Excellent!! that looks absolutely awsome, must have taken forever! I'll put that in the computer and update those scan lines! Great stuff!

[Guest Azrael]

Credits to Denevive for the text

[[stewart]]

Excellent!!  that looks absolutely awsome, must have taken forever! I'll put that in the computer and update those scan lines! Great stuff!

 

 

Thanks and yes, about 4 hours.

 

BTW can you spot the numbers in the text.

[j'ordos]

Excellent!!  that looks absolutely awsome, must have taken forever! I'll put that in the computer and update those scan lines! Great stuff!

 

 

Thanks and yes, about 4 hours.

 

BTW can you spot the numbers in the text.

Quite easily spotted, in fact the symbol for 32 stands out a little too much from the text compared to the other numbers here

[UnFleshed One]

A XCorps researcher who worked on almost hopeless project of translating alien written language was very surprized when he finaly did managed to translate his first peace of it. It turned out that while aliens had their own very special _writting_ system, in their spoken ways aliens were not far from any average american, meaning they were speaking plain old english!

 

Yeah, I'm offtoping again (hides under a cover)

Edited December 3, 2005 by UnFleshed One

[[stewart]]

Quick scan reveals "spelling" mistakes. Corrected text to follow shortly (probably not tonight though).

[[stewart]]

Excellent!!  that looks absolutely awsome, must have taken forever! I'll put that in the computer and update those scan lines! Great stuff!

 

 

Thanks and yes, about 4 hours.

 

BTW can you spot the numbers in the text.

Quite easily spotted, in fact the symbol for 32 stands out a little too much from the text compared to the other numbers here

 

 

It does but it's a verticle stroke with a slight cross-stroke to destinguish it from a one; not much to do about that. Did you note 13; I wanted to avoid it looking like the symbol for the long "A" (A-). Even though "we" have O and 0, and l and 1.

[j'ordos]

Excellent!!  that looks absolutely awsome, must have taken forever! I'll put that in the computer and update those scan lines! Great stuff!

 

 

Thanks and yes, about 4 hours.

 

BTW can you spot the numbers in the text.

Quite easily spotted, in fact the symbol for 32 stands out a little too much from the text compared to the other numbers here

 

 

It does but it's a verticle stroke with a slight cross-stroke to destinguish it from a one; not much to do about that. Did you note 13; I wanted to avoid it looking like the symbol for the long "A" (A-). Even though "we" have O and 0, and l and 1.

Naah, that's alright, as long as it's done like this. When you start writing it by hand, then it could be a little troubling. But, since you haven't used a 'C'-shaped glyph, why not use that instead if you're really worried about lookalikes? Unless a C-shaped glyph will pose problems with concatenation, creating lookalikes there?

edit: do numbers get concatenated? If not, then it's a possibility

Edited December 3, 2005 by j'ordos

[[stewart]]

I dont really see it as a problem. Occassionally you get a glyph that is busier or simpler than the rest; it just happens.

[[stewart]]

BTW how about if the interested artists amongst us make some different "fonts". Take the basic characters and start from there; then work on the ligatures afterwards; what do you think?

[j'ordos]

Oh alright, take1 sample:

Edited December 4, 2005 by j'ordos

[[stewart]]

I like it keep 'em comin'.

 

J let's see the characters with the dots and let's see how it handles ligatures.

[[stewart]]

The corrected text:

 

This has been a good study as this one showed that not all syllables in english contain a vowel sound.

 

SPA-SMS and CHAR-GED

[j'ordos]

I like it keep 'em comin'.

 

J let's see the characters with the dots and let's see how it handles ligatures.

Full alphabet, and as extra the unused symbols

Tried a ligature test, but I don't get the concatenation thing so I could be off a little

 

edit: what's the alien equivalent for ' ?

Edited December 4, 2005 by j'ordos

[[stewart]]

Puctualtion is undecided at this point. At the moment I'm using none. Why dont you come up with something.

 

BTW your words (second grapphic)

 

SUB, JECT, ?,BET, ?, DUSS

 

Wait are you trying to say "Subject Alphabet Jordos"

 

Very sharp BTW

 

Hey how 'bout trying serifs!

 

Here's "Jordos" in a "medieval" font

[j'ordos]

Puctualtion is undecided at this point.  At the moment I'm using none.  Why dont you come up with something.

 

BTW your words (second grapphic)

 

SUB, JECT, ?,BET, ?, DUSS

 

Wait are you trying to say "Subject Alphabet Jordos"

 

Very sharp BTW

 

Hey how 'bout trying serifs!

I'll leave punctuation to you, our official xenolinguist

In fact, I'll leave translations entirely to you...

Luckily, a good understander needs only half a word

(btw I meant to write 'font', must have made a mindslip when I wrote 'alphabet' - at least, tried to write)

 

Anyways, just a quicky with a sort of serif:

edit: what about serifs where letters join? (see the two joined glyphs in the first syllable)

Edited December 5, 2005 by j'ordos

[[stewart]]

Neat! That one arrow in the middle of the ligature seems out-of-place though.

[j'ordos]

Neat!  That one arrow in the middle of the ligature seems out-of-place though.

That's what I meant with

what about serifs where letters join? (see the two joined glyphs in the first syllable)

leave them be or remove them? I'd say the latter

[[stewart]]

Yep, your graphic demonstrates that.

[testarossa]

Sorry this took so long to do, I'm not really sure those scan lines work this time either, but I still haven't been able to see those new star wars for reference. .

How about a control panel? does the screen need one?

 

Edited December 8, 2005 by testarossa

[[stewart]]

a /labeled/ control panel

 

Looks good btw.

 

Check this out.

[rincewind]

For those interested in different letters, etc:

 

http://www.decodeunicode.org/

 

Rincewind

[[stewart]]

[dan2]

Pretty colorfull, but I always thought the aliens would be on the dark side, with cryptic and dark writing Edited February 24, 2006 by dan2

[[stewart]]

It's supposed to be Neon.

[[stewart]]

Okay I'm revamping the written language. Remapping characters and so on to make more underlying logic and to create more ligatures. Overall it'll "look" pretty much the same but I've added little circle thingies that'll make it look better. More details when they are ready.

 

Rather than having it be transcribed english should we actually try to create a full artificial language as well?

[[Mad]]

Rather than having it be transcribed english should we actually try to create a full artificial language as well?

Well, if you have too much time on your hands, this would be quite ice; but creating a language is quite complicated, and I doubt that there will be too many people actually fleshing out that they could be able to read the transcribed english, let alone learn a language of its own, just to have some fun stuff written all over the place...

[[stewart]]

right then I'll start with grammar then.

[kafros]

Have you seen this link??

 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang

 

Conlanging seems really fun but it needs a lot of patience

 

Good luck stewy!

[[stewart]]

Okay Version 2 of the writting system is done I'll post shortly, overall it looks the same but there are some interesting changes.