About Moxi
Moxi is an abjad writing system I created on 2019-6-25 that is read and written right to left. It is meant to write English and can include optional vowels making it an impure abjad. Words are spelled how they sound phonetically and every symbol in a word is connected while words are separated by a space. Optional vowels are written within each consonant in a space that the writer deems appropriate.
Old Visual Guide
The names of consonants are the consonants themselves with an A (ɑ on IPA) vowel. Names of vowels are just the vowel itself (ɑ, i, ɛ, o, u on IPA).
Vowel Rules
- Must be added to Moxi as it is pronounced, not as it is spelled in Latin script.
- Diphthongs are written top to bottom.
- If vowels are used, you can add as many as are pronounced or only as much as needed to make the word clear.
- To write words that contain only vowels, write a horizontal line and add vowel symbols to the top.
- The 5 vowel symbols correspond to the following IPA sounds and their general area on the chart: a=æ, ɑ, ə; i=i, ɪ; e=ɛ, e; o=o, ɑ, ʌ; u=u, ʊ. The sound 'ɑ' may be an 'a' or 'o' depending on interpretation. I mostly base it on whether a vowel feels like a strong 'o' or weak 'a'.
Punctuation Rules
- Generally, full stop punctuation is unnecessary and new sentences can be written on the next line but if writing needs to be condensed, full stop punctuation can be used.
- Quotations can be used for quoting or emphasis.
- Acronym marker is an overline of the entire acronym and vowels within an acronym are standalone.
Symbol Design
The style of Moxi consists entirely of connected straight lines that touch or connect through various points before reaching the next symbol. The points that are connected to can be seen in the image below. Every symbol must start at the starting point and end at the end point. This allows for its connected style. Every symbol is also designed so that ambiguity between symbols is impossible. For example: The symbols reflecting J, Ž, Ð, Þ can't be mistaken for the symbols reflecting G and R due to the vertical line in the center. The same is true for the symbols reflecting Č, L, Š, Y being non-ambiguous with N and M due to the vertical line extending past the N and M looking part. And since the symbols with just a vertical line which reflect D, F, T require the line be in the center and can't be at the starting point or end point, these vertical lines are non-ambiguous with the previously mentioned symbols.
Symbols with a vertical line from the starting point or end point form a ligature with other symbols with the same traits. The symbols that connect to the extra points can also be written with the upper middle point or bottom middle point connecting to the starting point or end point.
The style is very loosely inspired by Arabic script and Thai script. I wanted to make a script that connected and Arabic script most likely influenced that. The vowels A and I are inspired by the dots that appear in Arabic letters. The writing direction was not inspired by Arabic. I just think right to left feels more natural. The loose Thai script inspiration is said because Moxi was made to be the good writing system that my Unnamed script failed to be.
Vowels are made to be simple one stroke symbols (except I). A is a single dot because it is probably the most common vowel that appears in languages so I gave it the simplest symbol. I is two dots because I wanted the diphthong AI to be three dots together. E is a single horizontal line because that was the next simplest symbol other than a dot I could think of. O is a perfect ring because it was the next simplest symbol I thought of and since saying "O" is usually done with rounded lips in English, the symbol matches the shape you make with your mouth. U is yet the next simple symbol I thought of and it is a half-ring with vertical extensions. I then chose to make it the lower half since that would look similar to the U in Latin script.
I chose the consonants based on what appears in English as a single sound. Sounds that can be labeled as being two consonants together to make one consonant only have a symbol if the sound can appear at the beginning of a word in native words. This is why Č and J (t͡ʃ and d͡ʒ on IPA) get their own symbols but ŋ and t͡s on the IPA require two symbols. I chose the 5 vowels because I view every vowel in English as being able to be condensed into one of those 5 and think written vowel simplification is better than having a bunch of different symbols for similar vowels.
When I decided to create Moxi, the process started with me wanting to make a connected right to left writing system that wasn't going to be a poor and rushed failure like my Unnamed script. The first symbols I made were the ones reflecting N and M based on the symbols for those sounds from my Unnamed script. If I recall correctly, I think I made the T, F, D and S, P, K, B sets next and from this realized the style of the script. I think I then made the points grid and made the rest of the symbols with the ones that connect to the extra points being made last. While making the symbols, I assigned them to the sounds by assuming that subconsciously I would choose the right symbols for the right sounds. No idea how good of a process this was but the result worked. Maybe two or three hours later I had every consonant made and assigned. I knew I had to make some sort of vowel system since Moxi can be somewhat hard to read without at least some vowel markings. I knew vowels were going to be like diacritics. Possibly for weeks if not months I thought about what symbols to use for vowels and how many vowels to represent. Eventually I decided and the entire spelling system was complete. From the beginning, I even wrote down some possibilities for punctuation. Quotations are the same as I wrote them down originally. Full stop punctuation is similar as my original idea but with interrogative and exclamatory being flipped and adding four more full stop symbols for mixed sentence types. Why I chose to have 8 different full stops is because that's how many sentence types English has in my view. I don't view exclamatory sentences as a true sentence type but as an addition to another sentence type hence its name coming last in full stop names and its marker being at the top. Acronym marking came into my mind some time later, perhaps 1 or 2 years after Moxi's creation. Since there's no capitalisation in Moxi or other way to show acronyms, I came up with the overline idea.
Should Moxi be adapted into other languages, languages with more consonants than English may require the addition of more complex symbols that follow the design rules. Should a language require less consonants, the first symbols that should be removed are the ones that connect to the extra points on the points chart (symbols reflecting J, Ž, Ð, Þ) as these are the only symbols that connect to those points and the removal of these simplify the points rule to have 4 less points. Next would be the symbols reflecting Č, L, Š, Y as these are the most complex symbols should there be no extra points within an adaptation. Further removal requirements are up to the person adapting the script.
Moxi may have additions and changes as I develop it.
Changes Made To Moxi
- The symbol reflecting 'J' used to represent a Kh sound but was changed to represent the Dzh sound as it actually appears in English and commonly.
- Made full stop, quotations, and acronym marking punctuation canon on 2022-8-16.
Written 2021-6-17 Published 2021-8-1 Updated 2022-11-1