Monthly Archives: September 2011

Gyaru-moji — 2000 AD?, Japan

Posted on September 28, 2011 by ducky

Gyaru-moji is sort of like a Japanese Leet: a variant orthography for Japanese.  Unlike Leet, which was developed in the predominantly male hacker culture, Gyaru-moju (which means “girl characters”) appears to have been developed by schoolgirls.  In both cases, by … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, private or secret, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence, Syllabaries | Leave a comment

Leet — ~1980 AD, USA

Posted on September 27, 2011 by ducky

Leet, also known as “1337” is a writing system developed for the English language which gains some of its value in being difficult to understand — but not too difficult.  It is in some respects a code-substitution cipher, where glyphs … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphabet, private or secret, Rating: 3 "I did not know that" | 1 Comment

Gond — 2010 AD, India

Posted on September 26, 2011 by ducky

It is not very common for someone to create a new script.  Cherokee, Ol Chiki, Pin Cin Hau logograms, Gurmukhi, Hangul are just a few of the scripts which we know were created or invented more-or-less from scratch. However, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, inventor known, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting", significant female influence | Leave a comment

Tolong Siki — 1999 AD, India

Posted on September 25, 2011 by ducky

Tolong Siki was developed rather recently for the Kurukh spoken language.  Previously, Devanagari was used (and is still used in large part a decade later). Tolong Siki is one of the few languages that was created from scratch collaboratively that … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, National pride, now ceremonial, Rating: 3 "I did not know that" | Leave a comment

Sora Sompeng — 1936 AD, India

Posted on September 24, 2011 by ducky

In the history of writing systems, it is not uncommon for people create writing systems based on dreams or visions.  It is also not uncommon for writing systems to have particular religious significance.  It *is* somewhat rare for people to … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, inventor known, now ceremonial, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", revealed in a dream | Leave a comment

Gondi — 1928 AD, India

Posted on September 23, 2011 by ducky

Gondi was developed by a gentleman named Munshi Mangal Singh Masaram, to be used in central India to write the Gondi language.  (In India, it almost appears that people don’t take a spoken language (and hence ethnicity) seriously unless it … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, inventor known, National pride, Rating: 3 "I did not know that" | 1 Comment

Thanna — 1700 AD, Maldives

Posted on September 22, 2011 by ducky

Thaana, used in the island chain of the Maldives off of the Indian coast, is one of the very very few alphabetic or abugida writing systems whose glyphs (apparently) are not ultimately derived from Proto-Sinaitic.  Like most blanket statements on … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Numbers, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", spiritual or supernatural | Leave a comment

Tulu — 1500 AD, India

Posted on September 21, 2011 by ducky

There are arguments about whether the Tulu script descended from the Malayalam script or whether Malayalam descended from Tulu.  I tend to believe the camp which posits that there was a single script, derived from Grantha, which diverged into Tulu … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting" | Leave a comment

Telugu – 1300 AD, India

Posted on September 20, 2011 by ducky

The Telugu script, like the Kannada script, derived from the Old Kannada script. In fact, the demarcation between Kannada and Old Kannada is when Telugu and Kannada started to diverge.  If there hadn’t been the Telugu branch, scholars would probably … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting", Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Kannada — 1300 AD, India

Posted on September 19, 2011 by ducky

Not surprisingly, Kannada evolved gradually from Old Kannada.  As such, it is tricky to specify a date when Kannada split from Old Kannada; I’ve seen dates between 1100 AD (when the first differences appeared) to 1800 AD (when, under the … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting" | 1 Comment