Creation And Evolution Of Writing (Conlang) | Worldbuilding

Episode 21: Writing

In this video we discuss worldbuilding writing systems for your conlangs, giving your fantasy races unique scripts with rich flavour to make them more interesting.

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Clay Tablet image credit: Rama

[andresmarrero]

I would say that the octopi would have long since developed writing at this stage mainly because you had them stay put in the same marsh for hundreds of thousands of years. They weren't just mastering agriculture during that time but also construction with hardened and treated mud and grown plants as the material. So it makes sense that they would initially use mud tablets initially before transitioning to parchment for longevity using their own ink as a writing tool. This means that by the time they encounter the alien artifacts they would already have a highly advanced literary system for the time and it is from that point they incorporate and modify the alien language for their own use. Though after this micro merge or rather cultural absorption the preferred writing material might be a bit of parchment with a thin layer of mud to better preserve the ink that the symbols are written in.

[LeeCarlson]

Writing is the first example of "off-site memory storage" as we begin to get words/thoughts out of our heads and saved somewhere that others can access them even if we are not there.

[TrueWolves]

Traditional versus casual writing is such an important and I feel easily overlooked detail.

[kentario]

I've been watching these a bit out of order, so after watching the trade routes video I was having worries about whether my winged people always (or almost always?) getting their writing from copying it from the local sedentary humans would be valid, but then when I watched this, a lot of my questions were answered and raised a few helpful ones. These videos also help drive new ideas I wanted to find and explore (the desert video being a prime example) and I appreciate them so much. Thank you for making these!

[Lilas.Duveteux]

You have given me an idea for the Drow writing system:
The first Drow group, called the Silt Drows, have first developed a writing system that works in a way similar to heraldic, but with macramé knots made out of water-plant ropes. This was used as a way to avoid inbreeding and promote the supremacy of a family over others, as well as to remember which family did what treaty with what group for ressource access, to avoid unnecessary conflicts. The overall shape, the specific type of knot used and weather, the ornaments woven in the pattern or wither not the threads where ash-treated were imported symbols used to trace down family trees. For example, a family that would wear a net made in the way of a spider-web would symbolize a family line of medics or craftsmen. The reason why spider-related iconography have become prominent in most Drow cultures is because of how necessary spiders are to their civilisations. They need to make bandages that stops bleeding, and for settlements in which heating up metal or stone tools for cauterization is impractical, spider-silk is absolutely necessary for medicine as a way to slow down blood loss. Also, since spider-silk can become extremely solid once woven, it can also be used for certain types of armor, becoming highly useful in war-torn settlements. Also, the making of spider-silk products require a high degree of skill, which again, makes this commodity and the spiders that provide it extremely valuable. Not to mention, it's the only type of textile available in cave settings.
As the Drow travelled inland and diversified, this system became quite inadequate, and thus was born a way to draw symbols for different things. The two surviving settlements, the city of Pyroxene and the city of Emeralds had developed quite far appart were very linguistically distinct. The city of Pyroxene have developed a writing system that is a syllabary, since they have quite the simple system, along side a few extra symbols that are kept silent to mark palletization while smiling on vowels. The city of Emerald uses an alphabet as it has so many vowels and consonant clusters that using most other writing systems would be impractical.

[eldermagician]

Just found this channel today, and I've already watched like 8-10 videos definitely subscribing.

[Axiie]

I went through every single one of your videos in a playlist, and they are fantastic. I've dabbled in it a bit using Artifexian's videos, mostly on climate and biome placements, and have a pretty workable map, but the speculative biology and species emergence parts are fantastic, the set up for the galaxy and solarsystems were brill and the conlang stuff was infinitely clearer than other videos I've watched in the past.

I look forward to your future releases and to stealing all of it like a good lil' Na'qwuil.

[EJinSkyrim]

Almost a thousand subs, WoCo!! Congrats! And... y'know having not actually gone back to look at the earlier planet-building videos yet, I feel like I made that discovery at the same time as the Squidfolks. (Whose name I keep forgetting how to spell, which seems very on-brand for them.) What in tarnation.

That thing about the Urakan having a formal and casual script gave me Ideas. One of my regions - set in a temperate rainforest with Big Honking Redwoods - now has a traditional runic script that's written top to bottom and a casual script that they borrowed from a neighboring empire at one point. Which handily solves a worldbuilding puzzle that I had written myself into during NaNoWriMo. :D These videos are swiftly becoming ones that I keep referring back to because I am SO not a conlanger by nature.

[TBsentmehere]

Great video as always! Can't wait for the magic systems to be introduced!

[harpyrex]

Gods I love this channel!! It’s really helpful for my world that has a race of anthro praying mantises

[arixsalas]

A new video from this fantastic channel has arrived and about a truly fascinating theme.
Matthew, words can't describe how much of a help your channel and you have been to me and my "Men before Men" project after i lose my inspiration for a couple of months.
I love this channel and i think you deserve more followers.

[radleytadong]

7:55 Let's not forget the Ogham writing system that's read from bottom to top.

[valtteripennanen]

3:10

One small correction. In abugidas, the base characters to which the diacritics and other modifying characters are added, have an inherent vowel attached. for example, in hiragana, ka is か and ga is が. They look the same, but が (ga) has a modifying diacritic to chance the consonant the vowel is inherently attached to. Of course, there are exceptions when it comes to abugidas, but hiragana and katakana are one such examples.

[agentpapayatree]

Nearly 1k subs, congrats dude! This channel deserves WAAAAY more though

[SHDUStudios]

Oh my lord, the Nakwquil are really becoming Mind Flayers.

[quentenwalker]

I enjoyed this - you organize your videos well - I am glad I discovered this channel

[ludvercz]

I am loving this series so far, and I appreciate the impressive pace you keep with your upload schedule. I sure hope though that humans will be a bit more interesting and diverse than just all speaking modern English unchanging throughout the entire history of civilization. I understand the need for a 'common' lingua franca in your fiction to be your local real world language, but I always look at it as an assumed translation. In fact it doesn't really make sense otherwise.
I love everything else, can't wait for what kind of Lovecraftian horror crawls out of this combination of brain-parasites and ancient aliens.
That reminds me, there is one language on this planet that's expected to have loanwords from all kinds of languages non-existent on this planet but no influence from any of the actual local ones. One that might influence some of the local languages but is not expected to change over time. It's not any local human language but you do have one believable candidate. If you really want to physically pin English into your world... Just saying.

[worldforger]

Yet another great video! I have no idea how you keep up such high quality videos on such a frequent release schedule. The Urakan's use of two scripts has given me some inspiration, I wonder what conditions would lead to more than two scripts being in use? Maybe a highly culturally diverse city which has to use so many scripts for all of its inhabitants?

[memnun]

another great video! ive been working in my own world on a non-linear writing system, originating from military strategy diagrams scratched into the dirt (my peoples have a long history of war between tribes and nations). one of the parts that's always felt the least natural in its transition from a visual aid to a proper writing system has been entry points; im thinking i may borrow the ananatgrian idea of what is functionally a punctuation mark that states where a page of text begins.
one thing i'll mention that isn't coming up in your world but might be helpful to others, is the links between writing and tone. since most natural tonal languages are east and southeast asian, there's definitely a stronger correlation for tonal languages to be logographies; however, Cherokee uses a syllabary and chooses to leave tone unmarked, and Igbo uses an alphabet and marks tones with diacritics. I do wanna shout out Ńdébé as an absolutely gorgeous syllabary (self described; it functions amazingly similarly to Hangul in the its elegance of interrelatedness with its syllables, featurally marking onset, vowel and tone) based on Nsibidi, and everyone who has even a passing interest in linguistics I highly recommend to go check it out!

[fsbayer]

4:00 - this claim is incorrect. The alphabetic Ogham script of Ireland and Scotland arose independently (unlike, say, Germanic runes which ultimately came from Egyptian hieroglyphs via Phoenician, Greek and Latin)