Conlang construction philosophy? :)

[Larb]

I actually have a half-constructed ancient language of my own. It is a syllabary and I haven't gone into any of the more advanced grammar and such. I just use it for individual words. The alphabet itself is very curved in style.

Which reminds me - I once read that the shapes of the letters tended to follow the medium on which they were most often used. For example: Roman and Norse script was most often (originally anyway) carved onto stones which is why it is made of straight lines and harsh angles. Arabic script and the like was more often written with brush on papyrus or paper so it could be more cursive. I suppose that is something to consider when creating an "alphabet" for a fictional people.

[rgcalsaverini]

I actually have a half-constructed ancient language of my own. It is a syllabary and I haven't gone into any of the more advanced grammar and such. I just use it for individual words. The alphabet itself is very curved in style.

Oh sounds interesting! Could you share it with us?

Which reminds me - I once read that the shapes of the letters tended to follow the medium on which they were most often used. For example: Roman and Norse script was most often (originally anyway) carved onto stones which is why it is made of straight lines and harsh angles. Arabic script and the like was more often written with brush on papyrus or paper so it could be more cursive. I suppose that is something to consider when creating an "alphabet" for a fictional people.

It does make sense. I'll use that to enrich my future languages, thanks for the info!

[Larb]

Oh sounds interesting! Could you share it with us?

I've attached mine below.

It doesn't have any grammatical rules as yet. I use it because I needed an "ancient script" and I tend to just make single words or concepts out of it, or place names. Well a lot of place names - but then they tend to translate literally as things like Goldport or whatever. So I'd have a word for "gold" and then a suffix word for port.

Linguistics was one of the things I did at university so the topic isn't totally alien to me. But I've never done any proper conlanging. Originally I was going to go with a simple substitution alphabet (or cypher I guess) but I decided it wasn't very natural so I did some research and came across things like the Cherokee syllabary. It turned out to be a much more fun and interesting route to take.

[Jalyha]

ᏣᎳᎩᏍ ᎯᏬᏂᏍᎩ?

I don't. Not really. But the cherokee syllabary (see, I caught on to the correct spelling!) is used in a lot of sign-age in some states!

The only problem I have with using that (or a similar system) is that the *written* language wasn't developed at all until around the 1800s (pretty sure) so it was a late entry... my stories usually start much earlier in history... with early writings.
It's so beautiful though...
So... do you just adapt the lettering from that to your own system? It looks great.

Is the "-M" to indicate that can only come before one of your "M" syllables? Like how q (usually) can only come before a "u" in english? :s

Or is it a different sound altogether?

I don't understand the notation.