# Have you developed your own language/alphabet?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-developed-your-own-language-alphabet/77793>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 23, 2001, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-developed-your-own-language-alphabet/77793 "2001-08-23T21:30:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2001, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-developed-your-own-language-alphabet/77793/21 "2001-08-29T19:10:48Z")

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I came up with an alphabet for aliens in my comic strip,  
then only used it in two.

They also used base 8, and the number symbols were more  
intuitive than ours.

I don’t know of any freeware programs, but of course there  
is software that allows one to create ‘your own handwriting’  
fonts.

If you’re creating your own alphabet from scratch, though,  
and there’s not a one-to-one correspondence between it and  
the letters on your keyboard, it’d still be a pain to use.  
I guess you could put tape over the keys with the new symbols  
to help you while you were getting use to it.

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**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2001, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-developed-your-own-language-alphabet/77793/22 "2001-08-29T20:03:09Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \*  
> **two different first-person-plural pronouns (“you and I” and “I and others”)**

Inclusive and exclusive first-person plural. Yeah, that’s a feature I’d always felt a language should have. When I was a kid I instinctively used to wonder why English lacked such a logical distinction. After noticing its existence widespread in certain Altaic, Dravidian, and Austronesian languages, I was sure to include it in Mömö.

I made my own writing system for Mömö—not an alphabet but a syllabary, a system of combining consonants and vowels into single syllabic characters. It shares some structural (but not graphic) characteristics with Sanskrit Devanagari, Korean Han’Gul, Ethiopic, and Cree syllabaries. To properly construct a writing system for your language, you first need an accurate phonetic analysis. The phonetic system is probably the first feature you should install before you even attempt any vocabulary and morphology. I established 8 vowels and 25 consonants for Mömö. So there are 233 Mömö characters in all (8x25=200, plus 25 more for consonants alone and 8 for vowels alone).

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