Script

I've been working on the script for quite a while and now I have finally organised my scribbles and scanned them in. First a sample, so you can get a feel of it:

The name of the language (‘Mhmmz) in the ‘Mhmmz script

The asian inspiration should be obvious, and I think that goes well with the tonal nature of the language. I have tried to mimic, mix and match (and even shamelessly stolen a bit from) scripts such as tibetan, devanagari, chinese, katakana, hiragana, hangul, tamil, mongolian and possibly many more. It is written vertically - another very asian feature - from top to bottom in rows from right to left.

Now let's break down the word into its individual parts:

Analysis of the word ‘Mhmmz

The yellow things are punctuation: The first two circumflex-like things mean "begin paragraph", and the last vertical line means "end paragraph". I know. It's a very short paragraph.

Each syllable is enclosed in a 7-shaped bracket; the green ones in the image. Or if there is no onset simply a vertical line. This is from devanagari- and tibetan-influence.

The red characters are the vowels m and mm respectively. See how the shape of the long vowel symbol is derrived from the short vowel symbol? All long vowels of the script are, but each of them is derived somewhat randomly. But I guess this makes the script featural. At least a bit like hangul.

The bright blue character is the onset of the second syllable (h), and you may wonder where the onset of the first syllable (‘) is. It is not written directly, but the horizontal line of the syllable-bracket alone stands in for it. And as mentioned no onset is marked otherwise.

The purple curl at the end marks the tone, and so does the absence of a curl in the first syllable. I think you get the point of how this script works. Now jump in to get the full alphabet.


Without further ado, here are the (onset) consonants:

The consonants of the ‘Mhmmz script with romanization.

Most consonants connect to the top line of the syllable-bracket. The glottal stop does not take up as much space as is depicted here, but is rather narrow as in the sample earlier.
Edit: I forgot to say: The coda consonants (f, k, x) have the same shape as in the onset, they only attatch themselves directly to the vowel. Except if the vowel is q or qq, in which case they just hang underneath without contact.

The vowels are here:

The vowels of the ‘Mhmmz script with romanization.

I told you they were derived. I like the nn; it looks like saturn to me.

Now let's get on with the tones:

The tones of the ‘Mhmmz script with romanization. From left to right: low, high, rising, falling.

In this picture low tone may be a bit too bended. As you have seen in the sample it may as well be just a straight end. All of the tone symbols are sort of iconic. The high tone ends up high. The rising tone rises, and looks a bit like a combination of low and high. The falling tone is the only one pointing down and could be analyzed as the combination of the high and low tones.

Lastly the punctuation:

The punctuation of the ‘Mhmmz script.

Start sentence is like a period, except it begins the sentence rather than ending it. And of course I forgot the end paragraph we just saw in the sample. It's simply a vertical line, that may stretch all the way to the end of the line of text it appears in.

Wauw, what fun we've had today! I hope you  enjoy the script as much as I do.