rodo's journal

Final Notes:


Preface | Phonograms | Declination | Conjugation | Logograms | Ligatures | Final Notes


Final Notes:


So far, so complicated, and I haven’t even started to get into the minutiae and all the exceptions to the rules. One thing I had in mind when I worked on this was Tyrion Lannister, who does his very best in the series but who struggles with Valyrian. A lot. I figure a writing system that is not very phonetic and which doesn’t rely on you being able to conjugate to understand a written sentence might explain that. He’s probably doing alright when all he has to do is read a text.

As I have hopefully made clear, there are several ways to write High Valyrian, and even single High Valyrian words, and a combination of all these systems is often used. In general, it is preferred to write as much in logograms as possible. One context where it’s generally accepted to use phonograms are personal and family names. This is partially for emphasis, partially due to many names not being Valyrian in origin.



This sentence is “Nyke Daenerys Jelmāzmo hen Targārio Lentrot” – “I [am] Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen”. “Daenerys” and “Targārien” are written in phonemes. “Jelmāzma” is written with a ligature after the word “jelmio”, and “hen” is written with a ligature. In addition to that, we see some case markers, although theoretically it would be possible to leave them off, provided “-āzmo” and “Targārio” were written phonetically to convey their case. Overall, there isn’t really a “right” way to write, much like there wasn’t before our languages were standardized.

I’ve actually got most of the words from Dothraki Wiki figured out, and an idea for a more aesthetically pleasing “font”, so to speak, for the phonograms, at least. If there’s any interest in it, I could post about the origins of the phonograms as well, or anything else you might want to know. Just let me know! Until then, valar morghūlis!

Valyrio Bardion^[1]

Preface:

First off, I am not a linguist. So take everything I do here with a grain of salt. Moreover, I’m not used to talking about this topic in English either. But still, ever since I read that dedalvs never got around to creating a writing system for High Valyrian, I wished there was one, and finally, I decided to try to create one myself, just for the fun of it. It is obviously flawed and not what dedalvs had in mind, which was a writing system based on hieroglyphs.^[2] Instead, the writing system I decided to create has more in common with Japanese. It has logograms, but also phonograms derived from them (as well as some ligatures). Since the grammar is somewhat complex, I also added symbols with varying pronunciations that represent the grammatical context of a word – for example a symbol that indicates that the logogram is supposed to be read in a certain case.

Some other quick notes: the writing system I developed does not have some of the characteristics we are used to from modern writing systems – there are no spaces between words, no punctuation marks and there is no set direction. It can be written left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top, whichever is most useful in a given situation. For simplicity’s sake, I will stick to left-to-right with my examples.

Also, don’t mind my terrible handwriting. I have yet to find a writing system I don’t produce chicken scratch in, and apparently I can’t even come up with one on my own.


Preface | Phonograms | Declination | Conjugation | Logograms | Ligatures | Final Notes

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^[1] “Bardion” is not a canonical High Valyrian term. It’s a word I created myself using “bard-”, which is the root of the words “bardugon” (to write) and “bardun” (grammar), and combining it with “-ion”, a derivational affix that is sometimes used to substantivize verbs.

^[2] http://dothraki.com/2013/04/tikuni-zobri-udra-zobriar/#comment-1086