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Submitted: June 30, 2010
Image Size: 2.8 MB
Resolution: 3072×1704

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Comments: 8
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Make:SONY
Model:DSC-S700
Shutter Speed:1/160 second
Aperture:F/2.8
Focal Length:6 mm
ISO Speed:100
Date Taken:Jun 26, 2007, 1:01:33 AM

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Social Security Applicationby ~far-from-earth

Digital Art / Other / Conceptual

Tools: MSPaint, printer, camera, ballpoint pen
Time: 4 or 5 hours (drawing the words in Paint)
Conlang: Guhan/ Lana
Conscript: Gahasoka
Content: A social security card application

Proof that I hate myself

I had to make up a few (technical) words to finish this. I used a US social security application (ca. 2006, I think) as a template. [link]

Here be a [link] to a blank form:

Basically it says all the same things, but in Guhan. The Security Security Administration in World (ha) would be called Poruma fo Seforekosai fo Monakosai, or PoSeMo, I suppose.

All done in paint and then printed and filled out in ink, photographed, and adjusted in an image editor.

~speria Oct 17, 2010 Hobbyist General Artist

This is really really cool! A lot of the stuff I see done with conlangs (and I do it myself) seems to revolve around fluffy things like poetry or folk tales or things like that. Seeing a conlang being used for an everyday thing is interesting to see. Kind of makes me want to do something "normal" with mine.

~far-from-earth Oct 17, 2010

Thank you.

Well, I think in part poetry and folktales are necessary to the growth of our languages, after all people are their stories and we need to know the culture to more effectively build the language. But there are a whole lot of everyday things laying around that have language all over them, like train tickets, food labels (Although it was really boring, I once translated the nutrition label of a soda bottle.), various pieces of paperwork (I'm working on an invoice, now), business cards, birthday cards, etc.

Of course not all cultures would have all this junk, and ideally it shouldn't look the same but it's a great exercise for lexicon building.

~speria Oct 17, 2010 Hobbyist General Artist

They are indeed necessary, but sometimes we get caught up in all that that we forget that there are everyday uses for language as well. There's a lot of potential words we lock out by concentrating our conlanging efforts on just those sorts of creative things. (For example, I have exactly zero words for specific foods. I have a word for plant-based foods, animal-based foods, and food in general. But no specific food names. I would never be able to make something like a grocery list.) Plus it'd be a great change of pace to do something like a birthday card instead of, say, another translation of the babel text.

*keyanadrake Jun 30, 2010 Professional Writer

o.o Wow! That is so cool!

~far-from-earth Jun 30, 2010

Thanks! It was an interesting challenge and a nice journey out of the realm of poetry and folk-art-themes.

*keyanadrake Jun 30, 2010 Professional Writer

I'd like to start doing that sort of "every day" stuff with my conlang. I've got to fix my script first though, yours is nice and square and.. consistent with each other.. mines still at the wonky different sized letters stage. I think I need to design an "uppercase" version of my script so I can make a font or similar. It's a lot more work than I first anticipated. How long have you been working on yours for?

~far-from-earth Jun 30, 2010

I started working on my script very shortly after constructing the language: so, in the neighborhood of 2 years.

Just briefly imagining the toil of making a font from my script is enough to make me want to cry. I'd have to figure out how they program Hangul, and then draw the ~6050 possible character combinations (if my math isn't stupid), and that's only counting the letters that represent only a single sound each. Although, once done it would be preferable to my current method: draw, copy and paste, erase unnecessary bit, save, rinse and repeat.

You don't need uppercase letters just to make a font. I mean, unless you need them so that one would be better able to read and write the language, I wouldn't bother. Isn't yours an abugida? I wonder how that would be to program...

*keyanadrake Jun 30, 2010 Professional Writer

I was thinking upper-case more for... uni formality than the other uses for upper and lower case.. more like.. the digitised version of the script. Like there's the curvy calligraphy version, and then I can have the squarer digital version.. like.. for a keyboard or for a computer interface. Like with Japanese scripts, you have the pretty calligraphy way of writing the symbol, and then you have the more standardised.. I guess.. more square version that's used day to day in print and on computers... I don't know what the word for that is.. but my current calligraphy script isn't working as well as I'd like it to, the letters aren't uniform in width nor height. I have letters that have three different widths, and letters that go above and below the middle space... the general English script is mostly uniform horizontally but not vertically - this works quite well. If I use English as a standard, mine should be uniform either vertically OR horizontally, and it's neither. Which is fine for little things like poems and prayers and special words.. but I'm doing an entire manuscript text and it currently looks messy as all hell because of its lacking of uniformity.

Gah. It's all so involved. ._. Either that or I'm too much of a perfectionist

Probably the latter. heh.

But.. 6,000 character combinations? o.o wow. I have 24 consonant sounds with 9 vowel variations.. I was originally going to create a script for each consonant and vowel combination instead of diacritics.. but 200 odd individual symbols intimidated me... 6,000 combinations is a fuckload! Wow! That'd be such a big project to complete ._. I wouldn't envy you doing that.

As for the font thing, a friend linked me to a site that does the coding part for you, you just use their drawing program.. using pixels I believe.. to construct each symbol and then they convert it to a truttext font for you. I've been struggling with the program because it's mostly made for making new fonts for already established languages - either that I don't know enough about the system yet. heh.

Yes, I do believe the technical description for my conlang is abugida. :3

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