СКАЗЬ

The СКАЗЬ writing system was developed by cka3b.livejournal.com in 2012/2013. The main goal of the experiment was to reinvent a writing system for Russian language from the scratch and optimize it as much as possible, or at least make it as regular as possible. The forms of letters 'o', 'a', 't', 'p', 'ts', 'k', 'g' are influenced by corresponding Greek/Latin/Russian letters.

The name of this alphabet, СКАЗЬ (CKA3b/skaz'), is not a word of Russian language but can be understood as 'something told' or 'narrative'.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabet
Direction of writting: from left to right
Used to write: Russian
The following principles were used:
1. There should be one-to-one correspondence between characters and phonemes of the base language.
2. Similar sounds correspond to similar glyphs, and similar elements of pronunciation correspond to similar elements of drawing.
3. More frequent phonemes are depicted with simple glyphs. Less frequent phonemes are depicted with more complex glyphs. The complex glyphs can be constructed from the simpler glyphs by adding elements of drawing corresponding elements of pronunciation which differentiate the more rare phoneme from a frequent one.
Due to the fact that the structure of the closeness of the characters mimics the structure for the phonemes the reading (text recognition) could mimic the hearing (voice recognition) but the experiment with reading did not produce another kind of reading.
The binary Unicode representation of the characters keeps the same structure as well, say, characters for phonemes 't' and 'd' differs on the 'soundness' bit and 't' and 's' differs on 'fricativeness' bit and so on.

СКАЗЬ alphabet

Consonants

СКАЗЬ consonants

Vowels

СКАЗЬ vowels

Sample text

Sample text in СКАЗЬ

Transliteration

Все люди рождаются свободными и равными в своем достоинстве и правах. Они наделены разумом и совестью и должны поступать в отношении друг друга в духе братства.

Translation

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)

Download a font for СКАЗЬ (TrueType, )

More details of СКАЗЬ (in Russian) can be found on cka3b.livejournal.com

[top]

Why not share this page:

Conversations - learn languages through stories

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]