So my current worldbuilding project involves a race of aliens that have a natural pen built in to one claw of each hand. It's actually an ink sac with the claw being used as a pen nib. Before achieving sapience it was used to mark territory. They also have spoken language. With that in mind, how do you think that would work? I have a few ideas, but wanted to see what other people thought. The written language would likely be unrelated to the spoken language. It would probably also be a true ideography, with the glyphs not conveying any phonetic information. It would probably be less linear than human written language, with the relative position of glyphs conveying as much information as the shapes of the glyphs themselves. Lastly, it would be much more iconic, in the same way as human sign languages are.
I haven't really developed the spoken language at all, because the aliens have very different vocal tracts from humans. The language sounds like the noises made by a dreaming dog.
If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
I don't think it's important if they were born with a pen. Written language should just be developed before or simultaneously with spoken one. Or that the written language just has the primary status in everyday situations too.
I once read a book about writing systems. It showed a letter written by a woman of an indigenous people in Russia. It was a picture of herself a man and a Russian woman. Their clothes had some decoration to show ethnicity. Then there were some lines showing that she was sad because the man she loved was with the Russian woman. So, it was a drawing with a very specialized message.
The question is if this is language?
Maybe it would be something akin to sign languages.
How would you have conversations in the written format, before computer chats?
I once read a book about writing systems. It showed a letter written by a woman of an indigenous people in Russia. It was a picture of herself a man and a Russian woman. Their clothes had some decoration to show ethnicity. Then there were some lines showing that she was sad because the man she loved was with the Russian woman. So, it was a drawing with a very specialized message.
The question is if this is language?
Maybe it would be something akin to sign languages.
How would you have conversations in the written format, before computer chats?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
Indeed, I think the stages of writing would be the same, marks/drawings, pictography, logography...
the phonic information in logographies is just a facility to easily increase the sign stock, I don't think it's easy to do without it...
and, if there are speakers of other languages to adopt this logography, syllabary/abjad, abugida, alphabet...
the phonic information in logographies is just a facility to easily increase the sign stock, I don't think it's easy to do without it...
and, if there are speakers of other languages to adopt this logography, syllabary/abjad, abugida, alphabet...
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
A very good point. That's part of the reason why they also have a spoken language. The reason why I want them to evolve writing is that they haven't been around any longer than modern humans, but since they've been able to preserve information between generations as long as they've been a sapient species they're able to become a type II civilization on the Kardashev scale around the same time that humans discover agriculture.
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
It might not be visibly written at all. In addition to scratches and similar types of markings, animals can leave messages by scents (e.g. pheremones, musk, urine).
A sentient species could develop a type of writing system which would be almost invisible to the eye, but that was smelled. I am reminded of Cat in the British series Red Dwarf. Cat's civilization wrote scented books which were read by smelling them.
A sentient species could develop a type of writing system which would be almost invisible to the eye, but that was smelled. I am reminded of Cat in the British series Red Dwarf. Cat's civilization wrote scented books which were read by smelling them.
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
ha it's been ages since I watched that show. Actually the aliens already use perfumes in a similar way that we use clothing to communicate. A human policeman has a uniform and a badge to quickly let people know he's a cop. A Yinrih policeman would have a particular blend of scents that communicate the same thing, but it's not complex enough to form complete sentences. It's more like "I'm a doctor", "I'm a cleric", 'I was too lazy to be bothered putting anything on before going out in public."Lambuzhao wrote: ↑01 Aug 2023 05:22 It might not be visibly written at all. In addition to scratches and similar types of markings, animals can leave messages by scents (e.g. pheremones, musk, urine).
A sentient species could develop a type of writing system which would be almost invisible to the eye, but that was smelled. I am reminded of Cat in the British series Red Dwarf. Cat's civilization wrote scented books which were read by smelling them.
The "finger pen" idea has been pretty ingrained in this project though, and I don't know I want to swap it out for something else. I might just make it a regular written language and ignore the other ramifications of having evolved writing beyond having a written history that covers their species entire existence. The aliens have to have something that humans can process as a language. My original idea was that there would be a sign language used as a lingua franca, but I'm also trying to make the Yinrih less humanoid, and the further their body plan diverges from ours, the harder it would be for a sign language to work. So far I've settled on that their arboreal canids with prehensile hands and feet (paws?) as well as a prehensile tail. The best image I can think of is the head and body of a wolf or fox, paws like an opossum (except with two thumbs) and a tail like a binturong.
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
I like the species idea a lot. Honestly I would love to see art of it.
When I try to answer this question, I'd want to first define what writing i, versus speaking/signing. What makes them different?
For example, let's say we have a species that contorts (a) tentacles or (b) beads of mucus into certain shapes to express language. Would this be sign language? If the tentacles/beads of mucus were instead torn off the body and (c) given to another to study, or (d) put on the ground to read, would that still be sign language as opposed to reading?
Let's assume we define sign language as something still attached to the body, and writing as something that is not.
So (a) is sign language (even if it's completely "phonetic") and not writing, even if the signs act as glyphs, but what is (b)? What would (c) and (d) be?? If we were to go by our gut human instinct, we might even say none of these are sign language, or all of the are, or (ac) (ad) and (b) are while (bc) (bd) (a) aren't, etc....
We are forced into casuistry.
What about smells? Are they part of the body, or not? At what point does smell (or any other sense) escape being just animal noises and mean language - defined by our "three" forms???
The question is so rooted in human understanding, that either we take a logical view and classify things as "writing"/"signing" even if they feel wrong (writing on your arm, cutting your arm off, and having your friend eat it to receive the message isn't very human, though our genes do something like this), or take the intuitive view, which is just "not"/"normal" which is subjective?
Maybe it's not defined by the medium, but by the receiver. Is writing when the receiver has to read the text instead of just receiving it straight (i.e. by ears/eyes)? If I communicate phones via eye movements, is that "reading" or "hearing"? Braille is writing, right? So what about what Helem Keller did, feeling the speaker's face?
What about abstraction? At what point do 1000 pictures get used to mean some words instead of painting a single painting to mean 1000? Could a species in theory communicate using single pictures, like if you want to send a friend a text, you send a Renaissance painting with the exact meaning you wish to convey instead of some glyphs/phones/signs? When does writing stop and drawing begin?
Is everything I just said only applicable to the human condition, which an alien might think is completely looking at it the wrong way, as we'd think of them?
It's so huge.
As for a system suggestion, the whole "write on arm" thing could be a viable example of evolved writing: the creature codes a message into a body part, and lets another creature read the body part (let's say by seeing or eating it). The code is a bunch of certain tastes/smells/abstract symbols/bumps as opposed to just drawing a picture. Like braille but maybe more than an alphabet. Or not.
When I try to answer this question, I'd want to first define what writing i, versus speaking/signing. What makes them different?
For example, let's say we have a species that contorts (a) tentacles or (b) beads of mucus into certain shapes to express language. Would this be sign language? If the tentacles/beads of mucus were instead torn off the body and (c) given to another to study, or (d) put on the ground to read, would that still be sign language as opposed to reading?
Let's assume we define sign language as something still attached to the body, and writing as something that is not.
So (a) is sign language (even if it's completely "phonetic") and not writing, even if the signs act as glyphs, but what is (b)? What would (c) and (d) be?? If we were to go by our gut human instinct, we might even say none of these are sign language, or all of the are, or (ac) (ad) and (b) are while (bc) (bd) (a) aren't, etc....
We are forced into casuistry.
What about smells? Are they part of the body, or not? At what point does smell (or any other sense) escape being just animal noises and mean language - defined by our "three" forms???
The question is so rooted in human understanding, that either we take a logical view and classify things as "writing"/"signing" even if they feel wrong (writing on your arm, cutting your arm off, and having your friend eat it to receive the message isn't very human, though our genes do something like this), or take the intuitive view, which is just "not"/"normal" which is subjective?
Maybe it's not defined by the medium, but by the receiver. Is writing when the receiver has to read the text instead of just receiving it straight (i.e. by ears/eyes)? If I communicate phones via eye movements, is that "reading" or "hearing"? Braille is writing, right? So what about what Helem Keller did, feeling the speaker's face?
What about abstraction? At what point do 1000 pictures get used to mean some words instead of painting a single painting to mean 1000? Could a species in theory communicate using single pictures, like if you want to send a friend a text, you send a Renaissance painting with the exact meaning you wish to convey instead of some glyphs/phones/signs? When does writing stop and drawing begin?
Is everything I just said only applicable to the human condition, which an alien might think is completely looking at it the wrong way, as we'd think of them?
It's so huge.
As for a system suggestion, the whole "write on arm" thing could be a viable example of evolved writing: the creature codes a message into a body part, and lets another creature read the body part (let's say by seeing or eating it). The code is a bunch of certain tastes/smells/abstract symbols/bumps as opposed to just drawing a picture. Like braille but maybe more than an alphabet. Or not.
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Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
I don't think the naturally evolved pen (evolved for which purpose? Perhaps it once was a venomous sting, but after a mutation the former venom is just an ink? And BTW, blood makes a pretty good ink, I think) would be such a great game changer. I mean, we humans are indeed pretty close to that: just stick a finger in some colourful mud and smear it on a surface. A pen merely adds more precision to that. So I think such a naturally evolved pen would for a long time not be used for actual writing but for drawing picture.
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Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
Thanks! Probably won't happen because I'm legally blind lol.
They started out as basically a fox/chimp hybrid but I decided that was too humanoid. I'm actually having more fun thinking of how a mostly quadrapedal species would do things like computer input, or how a giant mech would look based around their body plan. It's part of the lore that they didn't think of mechs until they saw human anime.
I'll probably post a physical description over in the world building subforum at some point.
Regarding "writing" vs "speaking", I'm going with the notion that writing is permanent and composed before it is read, and speaking is consumed by the listener as it is produced by the speaker. As pointed out before, writing need not be visual. Braille is very much a writing system, up to and including how it's processed in the brain. Signed languages are "spoken" in the same sense. But I don't want to stray too far from the human norm of visual writing and audible speech.
I do have some basics of the spoken language down. The teeth, tongue, and lips aren't really involved. Most articulation happens in the chest, throat, and nostrils. To a human, it sounds like a dog having a dream. Any cross-species loanwords are really onomatopoeia attempting to mimic the speech sounds of the other species. The word "yinrih" which is the aliens' name for their species, is actually two quiet yips ending on a short exhalation through the nose. It translates to "from the earth/ground", so they literally call themselves "humans".
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
The pen was originally used to mark territory.WeepingElf wrote: ↑02 Aug 2023 12:45 I don't think the naturally evolved pen (evolved for which purpose? Perhaps it once was a venomous sting, but after a mutation the former venom is just an ink? And BTW, blood makes a pretty good ink, I think) would be such a great game changer. I mean, we humans are indeed pretty close to that: just stick a finger in some colourful mud and smear it on a surface. A pen merely adds more precision to that. So I think such a naturally evolved pen would for a long time not be used for actual writing but for drawing picture.
Re: If a species evolved writing rather than inventing it, what do you think that written language would look like?
I meant in the sense of a tiger scratching a tree trunk or a dog peeing on a bush, but I suppose eventually treaties would be written with the natural pen as well.