Non-Linear Writing System

Matt Arnold
January 9, 2011

"Cat falls suddenly asleep near the end of heating up."

We commonly think of written language as starting in one place, then proceeding in a straight line (perhaps with one or more carriage returns) and then ending on the other end of that line. We do this because that's how spoken language works.

Alex Fink and of the Language Creation Society are developing a a non-linear writing system. The glyphs use their position on a 2D surface to communicate. This is not a writing system to express the phonemes of an existing language. In fact, it is not a representation of an audio stream at all. It is more like a new language, related to English only in the sense that American Sign Language is.

Comments


rizen on Jan. 9, 2011 8:54 PM

Ithkuil has a writing system like this.


atropis on Jan. 10, 2011 3:36 AM

finally, a return to pictograms! (?)

totally a fan of non-linearity.

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