Aspies For Freedom

I know there are others here interested:

I'll post a link to the lastest incarnation of my main lang, which I got partway through last summer before calling it off for the school year.

This summer, I'll probably take it apart and completely change it, yet again, so get a look while you can.

Qaaolchouraav

Some things I plan to change are:
Phonology, alveolar removed, retroflex added, affricates regularized.
Vowels removed.
I really have too many consonants for the number of vowels I have.
Even English doesn't have this many phonemes.
I'm thinking I'll simply keep "a" "o" those dipthongs, and use other phonemes only in loanwords.

Orthnography, regularized to extended characters of the Latin Alphabet rather than random Greek and Cyrillic characters I don't know how to use.

I like my screwy pronoun system, I think I'll keep it.

Have to change verb endings because of vowels.
No biggie.

Add the other sections, which I started, but not to the point where I felt comfortable uploading them.

Writing a linguistic history and consonant shift, to explain the large numbers of consonants.

Adding syntax, which I planned out in depth, but for some reason never did a page on.

All this assumes I don't get too bogged down revising phonology again.

I just read what you had on your site. Very, very well-done.

I have to go to bed relatively early, so I won't describe Eshi Zhab Athi (my fictional language) yet, but because it shares many characteristics with Chinese, let me just say that it is pretty different from yours.  Well--really different. For instance, verbs are not conjugated at all (although there used to be a past tense ending, which survives in many words), and, except for pronouns, nouns are not declined. This language is analytic rather than synthetic, so relation, number, time, etc are indicated by function-words and syntax. Function-words are words such as the auxliary verb "to have" in English; it is a word in its own right, but is also an auxiliary verb which indicates the past-perfect.

In structure--not in lexicon or phonology--Eshi Zhab Athi is sort of like what English might be like in several hundred years, or what Classical Chinese was like at the time of Confucius (400-s BC, I think).

I'll start a thread for English 2.0, my ideas for an agglutinating conlang with English vocabulary, but very different spelling, completely regular.

I rather like English in all her irrelgular glory.

That said, I've had some fun with an auxlang for English, based as much as possible on IRL conventions.

Main issue there is phonology (C, J, and X, of which I'd like to use two of for sh and zh, I cannot make myself.  Nor can I get myself to use diagraphs for simple phonemes (barring vowels) or special characters.  Also, I try to do things like inflect for future tense, and cannot come up with a good English equivilent.

I think -u would be a perfectly reasonable future suffix, derived from the /w/ in with.  -l is another possibility

I like to use c for sh, x for zh, q for ch.  Dx seems reasonable for english j, as it's an affricate, which is really two sounds.  J would then be sounded as its original value, as it is in MnGerman, and could double as the sound in beet, while i would always be pronounced short.  W can function as a vowel and a consonant; u is therefore always short.  

Because I speak American English, a short version of o is not necessary, but our British friends are not so lucky.  The sound in "but" is an intractible problem for me, however.  In writing I use the IPA symbol, but this is not available in typing.  A in cat is another difficulty.  

Frankly, I like the Cyrillic alphabet better(especially the older versions that still have letters like thita and otu).

I've tried l.

English is heavily consonantal though, and a liquid or vowel too often adds another vowel.

Problem is that x has a clear use in English, as the affricate ks, c I use for ky, and I like having both or neither affricate as one sound.

Q I suppose might work for Ch though.

It's not really the phoneme kw and indeed early versions of English used "cw."

I generally use it for its IPA value or for the phoneme c (or for voiced versions thereof) in my colangs, but c is already ky in English, and we don't use it in any native words.

In the other hand, there a lot of foreign words that still use it, and as I mentioned, I like preserving dead phonemes for English.  Though except for "ph" they're all native to the language.

I like making my own alphabets, and I've been toying with the idea of remodeling a typewriter.  Problem is, iof course, I don't have the skills to make the type.

I actually modelled a typeface on a regular keyboard.  I had to drop the numbers and symbols, but I don't mind spelling things out.  (although I mapped MnE "short a" to the at symbol, so it could function as an abbreviation).

Unfortunately I was not very skilled with the font program, and the trial expired before I could get the bitmaps corrected.  So I'm in about the same boat with my own scripts.

This was with one of my most simple ones, too; as regards letter form, anyway.  I think if I could get a graphics tablet (and see how it would be on the screen without having to scan) it would be easier; I just need the cash.

But you can find programs on the internet where you can substitute your own bitmaps for letters and make a decent typeface independent of unicode.  

For zh, you might consider resurrecting yeogh, because over time it drifted towards the pronunciation before being elliminated (damn Normans).

Where'd you find even a trial font program?

And where can I find these programs of which you speak?

Yeogh I'd like to use for gh, since that was what the Normans replaced it with.

As I mentioned, I like the silent historical phonemes.

Hear, hear.

My dear friend google  :wink:  

I lost the url a long time ago, alas.  This time I'll probably have to buy a full-version, in addition to a graphics tablet, so I haven't bothered to go looking until I know I've got the funding end settled.

What'd you type in to find them?

I'v tried to find freeware font programs before (I used "free*" so free trial/demo ought also have come up), and had no luck.

So I asked a friend who was good at finding things on Google, and the also had no luck.

Font-related things seem to be more inclined towards proprietary than other stuff.

Here's one:  http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Shell...ogram.html

And here's the search page,

http://www.google.com/search?q=free+font...S:official

But I don't think you'll find anything else for free--there's several different pages linking to the same editor.  I also suspect that your abilities are sharply curtailed in this version (it's one of a number I used a few years ago), so it's better to just buy one.

Thanks.

What more do I need besides a vector graphic and a program to turn it into a font?