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Urubast (2005.07.14)
Traditional alphabets are for the most part accidents of history. Urubast has
been designed for ease of writing (the pen never reverses direction abruptly
from left to right, and it is never lifted), for the purpose of writing in a
beautiful script, for illustrating the relationships between sounds so that the
"music" of a phrase is more apparent from the way that it is written, and for
use as a cipher. It was developed by the author beginning on 14 July 2005 while
crossing the countryside of Uruguay. One character is called "Uru" in reference
to Uruguay, and one "Bastille," in reference Bastille Day. The graphic below
shows the image of each character, its Latin or keyboard representation, and its
pronunciation. Note that this project was undertaken without any study, informal
or otherwise, of phonemes or the set of sounds that make up modern languages.
It was, in the main, an artistic exercise.
The truetype file is available from
this link.
1. Symbols for vowels and diphthongs
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Long (English) vowels occur above baseline, short below.
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All vowels represented by large closed loops entirely below or above
baseline.
2. Symbols for consonants not belonging to consonant pairs
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All occupy at least some of the space above and below the baseline.
3. Symbols for consonants belonging to consonant pairs
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Sharp sounds are sounds that require a release of an instantaneous
configuration of the mouth coincident with breath or voice or both. Symbols
with sharp sounds are represented using sharp points in the tracing of the
curve (i.e., discontinuities in the slope). Note that the symbols with Latin
representation c and C in section 2 also belong to this group.
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Consonant pairs are sounds related by the presence or absence of voice, or else
by a very similar configuration of the mouth.
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The aspirated form is represented by a symbol that lies entirely below the
baseline.
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The vocalized form is represented by a symbol that lies entirely above
the baseline.
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