Phonetic Picture-Writing

A phonetic picture-writing is a picture-writing, which also is a true phonetic writing.
For its ideograms (picture symbols) are composed of special letters. An example:

This ideogram means ' face' - and also it represents the pronunciation 'ela'
For it is composed of specially designed letters. If you read these letters from bottom to top, the phonetic result is 'ela' :

(Vertical writing is much better suitable for "drawing" faces, men, plants, houses etc. than horizontal writing)
When reading the ideograms, the result of course is not English, but an artificial language (artlang, or conlang = constructed language), which might serve as an international auxiliary language (auxlang), as a kind of Esperanto with associated picture-writing.

Here we show a simple, but quite efficient phonetic picture-writing. It has only these 12 letters (3 of them contained in the above ideogram for "face"):

(Red letters describe the pronunciation by international phonetic writing. h is a shortening for the sound "sh")

One can bring into one's mind this alphabet by 5 ways: Just learn it. Or learn the system of this mini-alphabet (see below). Or learn a few words (the ideogram and the pronunciation): If you, for example, know the 5 words for 'face', 'two', 'circle', 'square' and 'rhomb' shown below, you know the whole alphabet of this picture-writing. Or print the letters (including their phonetic transcription), cut them out and lay words with them. Or type in words on screen.

The words above can be spoken easily. For all syllables only consist of consonant + vowel, e.g. 'me' or 'la'. (At the beginning of the words, also the syllables 'e', 'a', 'o' may occur.) But what can one do, if an ideogram is an unspeakable series of letters, e.g. 'fp' ?

To solve the problem consequently, and to yield a very clear and nice-sounding pronunciation, there is help: when speaking an ideogram, you insert as often the vowel 'i' and the consonant 'j' (spoken like the y in 'yes'), until the resulting word has only syllables consisting of consonant + vowel. (But the syllables 'e', 'a', 'o' at the beginning of a word are not changed - they can be pronounced easily). These i / j are not written, there are no letters for them. Thus, the ideogram 'fp' is spoken as 'fipi', the ideogram 'taa' as 'taja'. Examples:

More examples of words in the printable dictionary and in the interactive dictionary

For didactic reasons, we figured the phonetic picture-writing rather big. But its simply shaped letters may be reduced much in size, more than Latin letters. Then they appear more charming and not so bulky, also more realistic: one scarcely has the impression that details are missing. (Also gray instead of black colour lets ideograms look more impressionistic, also bigger distance between the letters.) Some smaller ideograms:

Printed by laser or by types, the ideograms are more clear than on a screen. (If using an inkjet printer, the lines become too broad and thus the distances between lines become too small - the letters become indistinct at this size.) Here some pictures of scenes, explained in the article about grammar:

The original purpose of a phonetic picture-writing is: it's an artificial language, by which one can express everything - optically and acoustically.

For ideograms can be combined into scenes, and these can be spoken as sentences: This example is pronounced ani amimipi ela and means "legs, (over it) cape, (over it) face": "There is a standing man, with cape, his face is visible."

Such an artificial language has many advantages: Much fun, quick optical surveying, quick writing of the simply-shaped letters, very clear phonetics (good for speech recognition by computer).

During the classical antiquity, the phonetic picture-writing was used to encode pictures into texts. How this was done (mostly by the initials of the words) is described in the article pictures encoded in texts and in the article about the latin writer Plinius. By this method, antique writers handed to us lots of mini-pictures, mostly faces. These encoded pictures served for entertainment, the mutual recognition of initiates (the phonetic picture-writing was kept secret in mystical circles), an the hiding of informations in texts.

The simple phonetic picture-writing presented above contains the 12 most useful signs, and the sounds are attached very systematically to the signs. It's already very efficient. But to yield a full speach, more signs are necessary: 25 letters seem to be the mininum, to be able to portray all kinds of things and ideas by good ideograms.

During the antiquity, different versions of phonetic picture-writing have been used. Often the difference was only an other attachment of sounds to the signs, e.g. to exchange the humming for the hissing consonants, and vice versa. By this way, mystical circles tried to delimit from other such circles, and the "upper class" in greater mystical circles tried to delimit from the "ordinary people".

In the picture beside we arranged the 12 letters so, that you recognize at once: There are narrow, middle-broad and brod signs.

Below again the 12 letters, now arranged in a 4 * 3 matrix. You see: Similar sounds are represented by similar letters. Signs for vowels are flat, signs for consonants are high. For every (in writing direction) broadening sign there is a similar, narrowing sign. By turning down the one, you get the other one.

Another memory-aid: If you remove the curves from the Latin lower case letters l,n,m (from m also remove the central vertical line), you receive the corresponding letters of the phonetic picture-writing presented in this article. You get the same result, if you remove all non-vertical lines from the Latin upper case letters L,N,M. Also Latin K and P resemble the corresponding letters of our picture-writing, if you now remove the vertical lines and turn the result by 90 degrees.

Non-bold links indicate pages in German language. (I'm sorry I had no time to translate them.) Nevertheless, pictures on these sites often will give you a good idea of the content.

Downloads:

To make it possible for you to write own texts in phonetic picture-writing, here are document patterns with embedded font and isolated fonts ready for download. The latter ones you must install in your computer after downloading
(Windows 2003: - working place - system management - fonts - install new font)

lautbildschrift-16-buchstaben.ttf  (4 KB)
Phonetic picture-writing with 16 letters, vektor-font  (for all WINDOWS text-programs)

laut16bu.fon  (2 KB)
Phonetic picture-writing with 16 letters, bitmap-font
(usable in text-programs NOTEPAD (new), WORDPAD (old), not in WORD)

lantik12.fon  (4 KB)
Antique phonetic picture-writing with 12 letters, bitmap-font
(usable in text-programs NOTEPAD (new), WORDPAD (old), not in WORD)
Simply view antique text by NOTEPAD and select this writing !



lautbildschrift-dokumentvorlage.doc
Document pattern and instructions for using phonetic picture-writing in texts  (29 KB, WORD - format)

lautbildschrift-lexikonvorlage.doc
Dictionary pattern for words of phonetic picture-writing  (32 KB, WORD - format)

lautbildschrift-lexikon.doc    Dictionary  (98 pages, about 1590 words, 1703 KB, WORD-Format)





Author and inventor: Leonhard Heinzmann         email      Homepage

This site also can be reached via     www.lautbildschrift.de

FREE COPYRIGHT   for this article!          update:  2013-8-9
The phonetic picture-writing  is free for everybody  and not subject to any rights or patents