Constructed Logographic Writing System

I’m quite passionate about Japanese, particularly because I find the writing systems so beautiful (and delightfully complicated, although often equally frustrating to memorize). While studying Japanese and working on various constructed languages – each suffering from various stages of incompletion – I developed an interest in Logographic writing systems. To be entirely accurate, I suppose I should also include Pictographic and Semanto-phonetic writing systems, since I’ve been looking at Mayan glyphs, the various script styles of Chinese from Running/Grass to Clerical to Oracle Bone scripts, as well as Naxi, Tangut, Khitan, and the Egyptian scripts Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, and Demotic. This interest has led to an attempt at creating my own logographic writing system. So far, I don’t actually have a language to use it with; either one will develop to match the writing system, or I’ll adapt one I’ve already started. Perhaps I’ll simply say that this writing system is supposed to be based on an entirely pictographic writing system that was never tied to a particular language (perhaps some kind of “lingua-franca” writing system), and various languages are now making use of their own versions of stylized/simplified characters. That would allow me to create several related languages, each with their own distinct writing system, but all writing systems based on the “original” pictographic/logographic writing system.

Starting the Script

To begin with, I created a list of “key words”, things that are fairly basic but can be combined to form more complex words/meanings. After listing quite a few words on my own without reference, I took a look at a list of the 214 Chinese “radicals” and added quite a few from that list to my own. I avoided radicals with meanings that I felt were a little to “complex” – meanings that could be derived from combining more “basic” meaning elements.

For example, “forest” is “many trees” (or even more basic: “tree tree (tree)”). This essentially occurs in the Chinese & Japanese character for “forest” – 木 (tree) + 木 + 木 = 森 (forest). 木 + 木 = 林 (woods, forest, copse).

My list does include quite a few meanings that could be considered “complex” – “mountain” could certainly be “stone + stone (+ stone)”, and “body” could be “head + arms + legs (+ torso)”. Both “mountain” and “body”, however, are most often considered “whole things” in their own right; and besides, once you start breaking down “mountain” into “stone + stone”, you could break down “bird” into “beak + wings + feathers + …”. You get the idea. Below is my final list of words; ignore the bolded words for now – I’m just trying to determine what the absolute most basic pictograms will be. You can also ignore the numbers; I just wanted to see how many I had.

NUMBER	MEANING
1	Fire
2	Metal
3	Torch
4	East
5	Act, Action, Movement
6	Strength
7	Power, force
8	Water
9	Fish
10	Hook
11	Net
12	Ice
13	River, Stream
14	Bend, supple
15	West
16	Wave, splash
17	Earth
18	Mountain
19	Stone, rock
20	Field
21	Harvest
22	Valley
23	Wealth, gold
24	Jewel
25	Stand fast, sturdy
26	North
27	Wind
28	Sky, heaven
29	Zero, none
30	Feather, wing
31	South
32	Fly
33	Speak, speech
34	Knowledge, knowing
35	Self, person
36	Mouth
37	Eye
38	Hand
39	Ear, hear
40	Eat, food
41	Legs, go
42	Stop, halt
43	Stand, erect
44	Do, perform
45	Fight, anger
46	Face
47	Head
48	Body
49	Work, worker
50	See, sight
51	Jar, bottle
52	Cart, vehicle
53	Half
54	Piece, part
55	Roof
56	Container
57	Seat, stool
58	Alcohol
59	Town
60	Boat, ship
61	Gate
62	Enter, entrance
63	Exit, outside
64	Country
65	King, ruler
66	Leader, magistrate
67	Spear, lance
68	Drum, beat
69	Song, instrument
70	Sign, signal
71	Door, house
72	Slave
73	Weapon
74	Embroidery, needlework
75	Cloth, fabric
76	Parchment, scroll
77	Animal
78	Insect
79	Bird
80	Horse
81	Deer
82	Bone
83	Shell
84	Blood
85	Grass
86	Meat
87	Leaf
88	Plant, sprout, growth
89	Tree, branch
90	Pig, greed
91	Rat, mouse
92	Horn, antler
93	White
94	Black
95	Three
96	Sound
97	Light
98	Dark, profound
99	Sun
100	Moon
101	Evening
102	Morning
103	Color, pretty
104	Rain
105	Night
106	Right, correct
107	Wrong, incorrect
108	Heart, spirit
109	Bitter, unhappy
110	Sweet, good-tasting
111	Sentence, writing
112	Book, literature
113	Origin, original
114	One
115	Two
116	Life, living
117	Time, day (from dawn of one day to dawn of the next)
118	Mound, grave
119	Ghost, demon
120	Dragon
121	Herbs, spice
122	Cauldron
123	Salt
124	Wheat, grain
125	Death, decay
126	Corpse, flesh
127	Sickness
128	Compare, compete
129	Divide, distinguish
130	Mix, mixture
131	Long, deep
132	Short, insignificant
133	Run, go quickly
134	Round, around
135	Tall, high
136	Big, large
137	Small, little, short
138	Strong, strength
139	Weak, feeble
140	Man, male
141	Woman, female
142	Child, seed
143	Even, uniformly
144	Opposite
145	Sixteen

Initial Ideas

Initially, I drew fairly simple pictures for most of the words (some of them I couldn’t think of a good way to represent the word as a picture, such as “bitter”). From there, I created a sort of “first pass” of simplified forms, some of which are more simplified than others. This “first pass” would be one direction that a particular people could have gone in when adapting the language-less pictographs for their own language.

In the interest of being thorough, I think the next step will be to actually go back and refine the basic pictograms, before I start simplifying – in any direction. I do already know, however, that I’d like to create a rounded, almost cursive simplified form and a blocky, all-straight-lines simplified form of each pictogram. For the rounded forms I’ll be referencing Hieratic, as well as several non-logographic writing systems with curves and some degree of complexity in their letter forms (such as Mongolian, Arabic, Kaithi, Khojki, Lao, Georgian (Mkhedruli, and possibly Asomtavruli), and the various styles of Thai). For the blockier forms I’ll be referencing the Phags-pa script, as well as Tibetan, Runic, Georgian (Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri in particular), and Hebrew. I’ll also look at Chinese, Japanese (Katakana as well as Kanji), Khitan, and Tangut, as well as possibly Chu Nom.