Yembik

The Yembik script was invented by Leon Jia Hua Huang for Terredaic, a fictional Japonic language, spoken on a fictional island nation to the east of Japan. This script replaced an older "segmental" script (where many glyphs are placed linearly and make up a word, which is suitable for Terredaic agglutination) called Terrebik. Yembik comes from the Terredaic words "yem" - Sound, and "bik" - writing/symbols/signs.

Internal History

Yembik was developed and originally used as a secret code for writing secret messages to other revolutionaries and Terredaic Nationalists and also other Terredaic people who had mastered this secret code. It was influenced by the letter forms of Burmese and also by the way the Thaana script works, as both of them did encounter Terredae, before, in the 1500s. In 1788, after Terredae won independence against the Japanese and British Empires, during the Terredaic Civil War, Yembik was made the official script of Terredae, replacing Terrebik.

Notable features

Type of script - Vocalised abjad
Direction of writing - left to right
This script has no mother script, all the letters were based on the phonological features of the Terredaic language.
This abjad has tone letters, unique to other abjads.
This abjad also has it's own punctuation marks. Numbers are same as Hindu-Arabic numerals today, but the Terredaic people originally spelled the words of numbers at first.
The letters are almost mainly round and made up of circles and arcs, as messages had to be quickly written,
The script was originally only written on paper, due to easy transportation of written messages, and the easiness to hide from the Japanese and British, rather than stone or wood.

Yembik consonants

Yembik vowel diacritics with null consonants

These vowels diacritics can be used on other consonants by placing them on top of other consonants.

Yembik vowels

Yembik tone letters

These letters are placed at the end of a syllable, if the tone is not mid-level.

Yembik tones letters

Yembik punctuation

These signs are not placed immediately after a character, as the character and punctuation mark are separated by a space. Surrounding characters '', "" and () are placed immediately around the characters it surrounds, without spaces between the first and last character and those punctuation marks that surrounds.

Yembik punctuation

Sample text in Terredaic National Anthem

Sample text in Yembik

Transliteration in IPA

tʰɛɾ˧dɛ˧ sa˧ɾa˧ɛ˥˧ d͡zan˧ da˥ʞɛ˥˧
a˥ɾa˧pʰa˩ɛ˥˧ sɒ˥˧ da˧ʞɛ˥˧
βaɾts˥˧ kʰʊ˩li˥˧ɛ˥˧ ja˧jɔ˥dœ˩˥
βaɾts˥˧ kʰʊ˩li˥˧ɛ˥˧ na˩˥da˥ʞɛ˥˧
sɔ˥ʞɔl˩ sa˧kʰa˥tʰo˩ tsɛ˧mɪ˥ɾɪ˥
βaɾts˥˧ɛ˩˧ kʰʊ˩li˥˧ɛ˥˧ ja˧mɛ˧nɪ˧

Translation

Terredaic people progress on,
raise the flag!
We are a nation,
we protect our nation!
Freedom, righteousness, victory,
for our nation!

Leon is right now developing on a font for Yembik, but is having difficulty as he claims that the diacritics won't behave properly on his font, but will on other fonts. He requests anyone with experience of constructing fonts, especially for con-scripts, to please contact him on Facebook, or at leonjiahuahuang@qq.com, if they are available and very happy to lend a helping hand. He thanks you in advance for those who help.

If you have any other questions or comments, please contact Leon. If you would like to know more about the fictional nation of Terredae, please visit terredae.weebly.com.

[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]