Claviograms

Claviograms were created by Sebastien Gantois during summer 2017. They were inspired by the Arabic, Mongolian and Korean scripts, and can be used to write French, Japanese, Latin, Finnish, and other languages. He intended to create an aesthetically simple writing as Arabic and Mongolian, but more featural, without possible confusion of letters, as in Korean. The name comes from the shape of a basic C+V assembly, which looks like a small key.

Notable features

Type of writing system:
Direction of writing: free, the row can be rotated, even being a curve, round, etc. The only rule is to maintain the respective sides (bright and dark).
Used to write: French, Japanese, Latin, Finnish
Consonants shapes depends of the place of articulation:
- square for the lips and front of the mouth, like the Hangul letter ㅁ
- turned square for the middle of the mouth
- round for the throat and back of the mouth ㅇ
- the corner shapes are derived from the turned square and figure the tip of the tongue, as as ㅅ
Dots on a side indicate the voicing: no dot = nasal; one dot = voiced; two dots: unvoiced
Looking from the beginning of a row towards its end, left is the "bright" side and right is the "dark" side. Dots on bright side are for stops (b, t, g ...) , and dark side is for non-stops (f, l, h ...)
Vowel are separated in 2 groups of 3 variations: bright (a, i, e) and dark (o, y, u) and back (a, o), middle (i, y) and front (u, e)
Ligatures can create new vowels (especially o+e = œ). nasalised vowels are indicated by a "n" on the bright side of the vowel. A word need to begin graphically with a consonant, as in Hangul, so there is a null consonant (the dotless round), an vowel can be free only at the end of a word.

Claviograms

Sample text in Claviograms

Translation (French)

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité

Translation (English)

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

[top]

Why not share this page:

If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.

Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr are affiliate links. This means I earn a commission if you click on any of them and buy something. So by clicking on these links you can help to support this site.

Get a 30-day Free Trial of Amazon Prime (UK)

If you're looking for home or car insurance in the UK, why not try Policy Expert?

[top]