Hi. This is mostly for the people from Discord but tadah! I'm finally making that Tumblr post I've been talking about for months.
(Warning this will probably be very chaotic)
To anyone new who sees this: me and some friends made an alphabet for Parseltongue from Harry Potter, aka Parselscript. I'll take you on a little journey to explain my process and give you some tips, should you want to start writing it.
Disclaimer: I wanted to make this script usable for the writer I made it for (Isalise loml) so it's less of an actual language and more just some characters to represent the Latin letters. It is not realistic. If I made this realistic I'd have to add all sorts of things to indicate body language and smell etc and also have to figure out what sounds Parseltongue actually has etcetera etcetera. No.
It all started when we started talking about Parselscript in a Discord server and I asked my friend Ava to visualise the script because she seemed to have a clear vision of it, so I could use it to go from there.
I think we all wanted to go with something flowery for some reason, so we did.
After this I just messed around with brushes and shapes in Procreate for a while, tweaking things and trying to make it more writeable. I ended up with something like this (still a rough draft).
It may look a bit like random squiggles at first, and it kinda was at this point. As you can see there's also a lot of added dots and lines, which can be a bit hard to remember and I see you wondering what it looks like without them.
I showed this to the people I brainstormed with in Discord and we decided to go with the more complicated version because it looks better lol.
This is one of the final versions.
It says: "Hello, my name is Kiwi Cult. I made this script after reading a fanfic called Terrible, But Great written by Isalise the loml on Archive Of Our Own."
Now, to talk about some of the (boring) logistics.
It is read from left to right, top to bottom.
Every separate combination of squiggles you see above is a separate word. Every word is made up of a starting character, one or more letter characters and an ending character.
The very first character you see in the top left corner, with the three petal looking thingies, is a silent starting character that indicates the start of a sentence. Not word: sentence. The end of the character, that little circle thingy, is a comma. So, the first character says: "Hello,".
Then, the second combination starts with a kind of hook going down and right. This is also a silent character and more meant as an interpunction, that's why you don't pronounce it. It's kind of just a way to start the word when there isn't anything special about it (aka it's not the start of a sentence, a name, an exclamation or a question. But every character is special in its own right🥲). The same kind of hook can be found at the bottom of the combination, except going up. It has the same use, basically just a way to end the word when there isn't anything special about it. Now, you might ask: why does it go right and not left?
We talked about this a while, because I wanted the direction to have some kind of meaning. We wondered about gender, tone, blah blah all kinds of complicated things but in the end I just wanted this script to be writable so I chose to have proficient writers in Parseltongue make their hooks go left and beginners have their hooks go right.
Now, you might notice that I end my words with a hook going right. That is because I don't see myself as a pro in writing in Parselscript okay? It's hard!😭💀
Now, other than the character indicating the start of a sentence, the circle, and the simple hook, there are a few other characters to start or end a combination (don't worry I'll show them all to you at the end, you won't have to use your imagination for long).
We have a character to indicate a name. Now, the rule is: name indicator over start of sentence indicator. So, if you start a sentence with a name, you'll use the symbol to indicate a name, NOT BOTH. (That's not even possible but I don't even want to see you try and butcher my child).
There is a character to indicate a sentence that would usually be followed by an exclamation mark (!), but at the start of the sentence. So unlike in the Latin alphabet (the 'English' one for the people who don't know what I mean by Latin alphabet), an exclamation mark wouldn't necessarily be followed by a capital letter because you can just end the combination with a hook and continue on your merry way. (God this is vague but I hope it makes sense)
The same goes for a question mark (?): put it at the start of a question, not the end. Again, it wouldn't even be possible to use it at the end of a combination but I DON'T EVEN WANNA SEE YOU TRY.
Finally we have a period (.), which looks a bit like a flower with four petals. You do use this one at the end of a word, and it is always followed by a start of sentence indicator or a name indicator. I know people are rejecting capitals these days in their typing but I don't wanna see it. If you start a word after a period with a hook I will find you.
So, to put it all next to each other, the symbols we have are:
-start of sentence indicator
-name indicator
-exclamation mark (!)
-question mark (?)
-period (.)
-hook (direction depends on efficiency)
-comma (,) (direction depends on efficiency)
I didn't make adjusted characters to indicate a capital letter like we do in the Latin alphabet, meaning that the only things you can kind of 'capitalise' are the start of a sentence and the start of a name.
It is also slightly phonetic. Emphasis on slightly. I made separate characters for almost all characters in the Latin alphabet, so you can just write your word normally with Parselscript characters. The only difference is that I made only one character for the 'f/v' sounds and that there is no 'c' character. If a word has a 'c' in it, you'll have to use the character for a 'k' or an 's'.
A few examples:
-character=karakter
-parselscript=parselskript
-crazy=krazy
-science=siense
I know it looks a bit confusing, but I trust you guys' ability to read context clues and figure out what someone means when you try to decipher Parselscript.
Now, for a word like 'phonetic' or 'decipher' I don't really care whether you use the separate characters for 'p' and 'h' or just the one for the 'f/v' sound. You do you.
I also don’t use any double letters because they basically sound the same and it looks ugly but if you want to use double symbols feel free.
I also made some numbers that do not look like they fit with the rest of the script but I promise you that's just because you're not used to it yet. Our own numbers don't belong with our alphabet either because we nicked them from the Arabs (I think, don't quote me on this) but we don’t notice that either.
Tadah. (Yes I know it’s out of order I told you this was gonna be chaotic af)
Other than that, feel free to ask me questions if I've forgotten anything or if you're wondering about anything. I can't guarantee that I have a good answer because I might not even have thought about it myself, but I can always try to come up with something. I am one person, I'm afraid I haven't been able to take everything about a script into consideration.
Now, without further ado; here is the key.
No, your eyes didn't deceive you: there are two versions. The first has a bit more loose squiggles than the second one. I realised that when I was writing physically, the second version was much nicer to write, so it is kind of like Simplified Parselscript. I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna put some lore behind it or not yet. But I included the og one if you're a tryhard and wanna take it on.
Now, if you're gonna start writing it yourself, here is the stroke order.
I tried to make it as clear as possible but please ask me if you're confused on anything. (Also ignore that random dot thingy in the middle I just noticed it and I'm too lazy to change it now).
Red is the starting point of the whole symbol, the arrows indicate the direction to go in, x marks the start of the small extra's.
Now, I'd also recommend writing on some type of paper with vertical lines like this if you're gonna do it physically.
You can just turn a paper with normal, horizontal lines a quarter to get vertical lines. Also, do NOT write in between the lines. They are meant to help you keep the start and ending on the same line so you don't start going into crazy directions while writing. So, start your sentence symbol or hook or whatever in the middle of the line and try to keep coming back to that vertical line after every letter. As you gain more proficiency you'll probably go straight into the next letter without going back to the line all the time but I think this is a good starting point.
Here is another rough draft I made on physical paper to get a feel for it. As you can see this draft had a lot more different starting characters and ending characters so just ignore that. Hope this motivates you a bit or smth.
Lmk if you want me to post a video of me writing in this Parselscript.
Also please let me know if you know of someone else who's also made a Parselscript because I tried to look for it on Tumblr and Twitter etc but I couldn't find anything.
I also feel like there’s a big mistake I made that I realised the last time I worked on this script but I’ve forgotten it now so if you find out please comment or dm or anything💀
Also feel free to use in your own fic, tho a little tiny shoutout in the a/n would be nice :)
@natis-balamnimaja @asterialvia and @/zee (who unfortunately left the server and I don't know the Tumblr @ of) for brainstorming with me and @isalisewrites for inspiring us and making the server we discussed this in. Check out her profile and her Tomarry time travel fic if you have taste.
Okay bye :) tell me if I forgot anything.
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