Day 0 of explaining each sitelen sitelen sitelen until i run out of sitelen
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Disclaimer: sitelen sitelen is the invention of jan Josan aka Jonathan Gabel, check out their website https://jonathangabel.com/
I am neither an artist nor a designer, but i like sitelen sitelen and have opinions that i want to share. You're welcome to disagree with me, correct me and offer constructive criticism, because it's likely that i have no idea what i'm talking about.
In this series of posts I'm gonna be going over each and every sitelen sitelen glyph in no particular order. I'm gonna be talking about the individual elements that make up each glyphs, possible variations and other neat info about how the glyph came to be. the general structure is going to be something like
0. Featured sentences with the word from the last post
1. Introduction to the new glyph in both ss and sp, drawing guide and the word
2. Other similar glyphs
3. Element breakdown
4. My personal associations, mnemonic methods for remembering and recognising the glyph when reading and writing
5. Possible variations on the glyph based on everything above
6. Personal opinion on the glyph, maybe tierlist?
In this post i'm not gonna be explaining any one glyph, instead i'll give an overview of what sitelen sitelen/suwi is for anyone new.
So what's sitelen sitelen
It's a script for toki pona made by Jonathan Gabel and refined by the community. Among toki pona folk sitelen sitelen is seldom used, but generally people tend to know of it and maybe can recognise a few glyphs. Reading and writing in sitelen sitelen is seen as an unneseccary and difficult skill but it's really not.
the name means something along the lines of "picture-like writing". it's also known as sitelen suwi, "sweet pictures".
here's a written document entirely in sitelen sitelen! (apart from the signatures). It's a sales contract, it's describing the sale of itself. Taken from here https://jonathangabel.com/2012/lipu-lawa-pi-esun-kama/
sitelen sitelen is a logographic script, read top to bottom, left to right. The glyphs are organised like comic panels, each one representing one word. Some glyphs are called containers for their ability to contain other glyphs or whole phrases inside them.
This is quite different from sitelen pona, the more popular logographic script for toki pona. It is usually written left to right, and some glyphs can go inside others to form two-words long noun phrases.
sitelen suwi features an alphabet that can be used to write down proper names or spell out actual words if need be. Alphabetic symbols go only inside cartouches - special glyphs-containers meant to signify either a name or a spelled out word. The letters combine to form syllables, vowels are drawn to be inside consonants. The document above has the names of the seller and the buyer in the bottom right corner of the page. Both follow the structure of "jan + name cartouche with the toki pona name". jan Mato, the buyer, is above, jan Josan, the artist, is below.
That's gonna be all for now! Please spread this to anyone you think would be interested and leave comments. The next post is gonna be describing the glyph for the word "tenpo", which means "time, moment, event". Please leave sentences that use the word for me to write using sitelen sitelen in notes! They can be in english, toki pona, written in sitelen sitelen, anything is good.
Feel free to ask any and all questions as well! I'll gladly explain everything.
Btw i'm very new to tumblr so all advice is appreciated as well!
