種語 [Germanic] - A written lingua franca

[Lysse]

I'm sure this will sound mad or weird to some people, but I'm trying to find out a system of writing all Germanic languages with Chinese characters. Hopefully in a universial way which is similar to written Chinese enough that people who already know Chinese characters can get it.

I'll upload a written example of it later. In the meantime let me explain how it works:

Since Chinese pronouns are a little vivid to Indo-european standards, I've changed all of them into new characters. So there will be no problem writing any of the pronouns.
Tense are marked with grass script versions of characters with a tense-like meaning. For example 今 will be used for present tense. These characters are placed after the character of the verb being modified.
Also the word "the" (and words or affixes which means the same in other languages) will be written with a grass script version of 定.
Plural will be written with a grass script version of 些.
...

And that'll be enough for this time.

I'll just get to my point with this post; I want people to collobrate with me! I've already got a Swedish languagefreak (which I am myself btw) and a Swedish guy who is very good at Chinese characters, Classical Chinese and in particular their origin.
So now I'm looking especially for:
- People who speak any Germanic language as their first language.
- People who speak any Chinese language as their first language and are able to write Chinese characters without problems.
- Anyone who thinks this idea is great.

If you're interested, please post in this topic!

I'm sure some of you who have read this think that we could use English instead of this script who will take a long time to learn, but, the things is that if you choose English, you are (in the most cases) not using your first language. This will make people use their first language while writing to people within their own language group. (And who knows, if this project goes well, why not try to intergrate the Romance languages in the future as well?)

After edit:

I reaserched Wikipedia a little to get a proper name for the language, I've used the character 種 (seed) according to this source:

Somebody on Wikipedia

Various etymologies for Latin Germani are possible. As an adjective, germani is simply the plural of the adjective germanus (from germen, "seed" or "offshoot"), which has the sense of "related" or "kindred"[1] or "authentic".

 

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

I speak English as my native language. razz  

[Lysse]

Eccentric Iconoclast

I speak English as my native language. razz

And you're interested? Great! ^^ I'll try to update the first post as soon as possible with more information~.  

[Homurakitsune]

That sounds über nifty! I only know a bit of German... and I'm quite frankly awful at it. xD

I have other engagements at the moment(like finishing Niora...) but I hope to see how this turns out! ^_^  

[Tweezle]

This sounds like a cool idea!
And English is my native language too. smile  

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

Homurakitsune

That sounds über nifty! I only know a bit of German... and I'm quite frankly awful at it. xD

I have other engagements at the moment(like finishing Niora...) but I hope to see how this turns out! ^_^

...who said anything about German? razz

And yesssss, I'm interested and want to see what you can come up with.  

[Lysse]

Ok, here we go.



Here are the pronouns. The left part is the indicator of the number of people, if it's only one person, then the pronoun is singular, if it's two; it's plural.
The numbers explains which kind of person it is.
One = first person
Two = second person
Three = third person

So in other words 仁 (which actually is a character that exists) means "you" (singular).

The heart can be added underneath a pronoun to indicate politeness. This will be needed to write some German pronouns, and also some Danish (if I'm right).



Next, we have the special characters which I spoke about earlier. If somebody is good at characters, please tell me if there are any more simple simplifications of 定，過 and 些. I've tried to come up with some myself, but it would be better to have versions already in use. My versions are the ones beside the accepted grass script-versions.

Explanation:

今 = present tense
了 = imperfect tense
過 = perfect tense

定 = "the"
的 = genitive case (and sometimes used to mark adjectives?)
些 = plural marker

Spaces will be used in this script. I talked with a friend of mine today about whether to use spaces or not, but we concluded that it would be best to use spaces, because if we don't, some things might get heavily misunderstood.

... So, to the fun part now! biggrin I've got a sentence for you to solve:



How should this sentence be read in English? (Please! If you don't know any characters, look them up!)  

[JeSuisMustapha]

Egad! My head hurts... I don't get it gonk  

[Lysse]

JeSuisMustapha

Egad! My head hurts... I don't get it gonk

Are you able to read Chinese characters ... ? Or what exactly aren't you getting? :3  

[JeSuisMustapha]

Lysse

JeSuisMustapha

Egad! My head hurts... I don't get it gonk

Are you able to read Chinese characters ... ? Or what exactly aren't you getting? :3

I am a native english speaker and I am learning french. I've never learned a language with characters, so that concept alone is confusing, or at least it will be for a little while. Once you throw in trying to write a germanic type language with chinese characters, then I get really lost...  

[Lysse]

JeSuisMustapha

Lysse

JeSuisMustapha

Egad! My head hurts... I don't get it gonk

Are you able to read Chinese characters ... ? Or what exactly aren't you getting? :3

I am a native english speaker and I am learning french. I've never learned a language with characters, so that concept alone is confusing, or at least it will be for a little while. Once you throw in trying to write a germanic type language with chinese characters, then I get really lost...

... Ok, so why are you replying to this topic then? :S
Of course, it'll be hard for a total beginner.

... ... Ok, I'll get nicer. 是 is the verb "to be", and 誰 means "who" or "whom".  

[JeSuisMustapha]

Lysse

JeSuisMustapha

Lysse

JeSuisMustapha

Egad! My head hurts... I don't get it gonk

Are you able to read Chinese characters ... ? Or what exactly aren't you getting? :3

I am a native english speaker and I am learning french. I've never learned a language with characters, so that concept alone is confusing, or at least it will be for a little while. Once you throw in trying to write a germanic type language with chinese characters, then I get really lost...

... Ok, so why are you replying to this topic then? :S
Of course, it'll be hard for a total beginner.

... ... Ok, I'll get nicer. 是 is the verb "to be", and 誰 means "who" or "whom".

Well, I would like to contribute as much as i can, and I have to familiarize myself with this type of language eventually, so why not now?

So does the second character in 誰 mean something along the lines of "person" then?

I hope my thoughts aren't mangled up too much.  

[Doppelgaanger]

Is it something along the lines of 'Who are you' or 'What is your name?'

I thank you for the 'who' or 'whom' bit...

And in the top image of that post, if I understand correctly, those are the pronouns with a layout like this:

I/You/He
We/Y'all/They

Where the dashes indicated the spaces between the characters.

The only thing I don't get is the bottom-most character. Is that a formal you?  

[Lysse]

@Doppelgaanger:

Exactly! "Who are you?" is the correct English reading. :3 One important thing to remember is that this is a written language, so the goal is that the reading should be correct in all Germanic languages. Unfortunately, the grammar of English is a little different compared to the other languages' of the language group. For example the verb "do" will make problems in sentences like "Do you eat food?". If anyone has an idea of what character to use, please tell me! ^^ I'm thinking about 做, but I'm sure there are a better one ...

Anyway, "What is your name" would be:

"何 是今 仁的 名？"
(今 and 的 should look a little different, but I'm sure you understand. smile )

Ah, your translation of the table of the pronouns is correct. And the bottom-most character is a formal you, as you said. I'm sorry I was a little unclear there. D:


@JeSuisMustapha:

誰 is ONE character and means "who" or "whom". It's made up of 言 (speech) and 隹 (short-tailed bird), where 隹 is the phonetical part. But that's Chinese. ^^ Just remember it has "who". :3  

[Homurakitsune]

Eccentric Iconoclast

Homurakitsune

That sounds über nifty! I only know a bit of German... and I'm quite frankly awful at it. xD

I have other engagements at the moment(like finishing Niora...) but I hope to see how this turns out! ^_^

...who said anything about German? razz

And yesssss, I'm interested and want to see what you can come up with.

Lysse

I'm trying to find out a system of writing all Germanic languages with Chinese characters

I saw that part. =) (And I would assume that German is a Germanic language, yes?)