Bin Tahr Font Test

Just tweaked the crap out of the CSS on this blog so I can post better translations. Here's a sample.

BEn Taq---	Been Tahrr	One Two
CEm ay--	Kdeem Ahdz	Love Deeply

Even thought that took a while, I still got it to work with very little code...I'm sure that I can get it to work with less, but hey, I've spent two days on it so far...

More comments to come on how I accomplished all this with easy and small code. Phew, took a while. Now to reformat old posts.

Lexicon Update

I need to find a nice place to hold my lexicon online. More than likely I'm going to create a little mySQL database entry method with my newly learned ruby on rails skills.

This will be implemented within the next few weeks. As of right now, the lexicon is back up on my Qream.com hosting server. However, I recently switched back to OS X, so I do not have MS Access on my computer...yet.

Possible length problems

Given the fact that Bin Tahr is supposed to be simple, it will be very easy to dig myself into a hole with this concept. Due to the fact that I don't want to have words that are more than one syllable and that multiple simple words strung together are supposed to communicate complex ideas.

For instance, I was trying to come up with a way to say "human" today, and I wanted to say "one that lives with thinking", or in other words a sentient being. I ended up discerning that the way to say this was "kae mahch kdeem koot keel" literally translating as "it that lives with thinking" this was a rather long word. So I condensed it down to "kdeem keem" which means "lives thinking". Still too long, so I went with "keekd", a combination of "keel" and "kdeem", thinking and living, which in turn mean person or human.

This problem will be very familiar to me in the future, and word condensing will have to be mastered in order to maintain the simplicity and brevity of that Bin Tahr is supposed to have.

Pronounciation and the English port of Bin Tahr words

As demonstrated in previous posts, the characters in Bin Tahr are completely phonetical.

1. Top consonant
2. Middle Vowel
3. Bottom consonant

Together, these three things comprise on word, or character. In the font, just hit the space button to advance to the next character after building the current character. NOTE- Sometimes more than one button must be pressed in order to achieve the desired character. NOTE 2- In this table, the "English" column represents the keys pressed to make the character you see in the "Bin Tahr" Column

The Bin Tahr alphabet/phonetics goes as such:

B---	B	B
P---	P	P
S---	S	S
SD---	Sh	SD
D---	D	D
F---	F	F
G---	G	G
J---	J	J
H---	H	H
K---	K	K
C---	Kd	C
L---	L	L
M---	M	M
N---	N	N
R---	R	R
Q---	Rr (rolled)	Q
T---	T	T
TH---	Th	TH
TR---	Ch	TR
W---	W	W
V---	V	V
Z---	Z	Z
Y---	Dz	Y
A---	ae	A
a---	ah	a
E---	ee	E
e---	eh	e
I---	ei	I
i---	ih	i
O---	oo	O
o---	oh	o
U---	ew	U
u---	uh	u

Character Composition

The Characters are easily composed using a font called Bin Tahr and can be obtained by clicking the previous hyperlink. The language when typing is very easy to get used to. The capitalized consonants are the top part of a character, and the lower cased consonants are the bottom parts. The middle portion of characters are always vowels, and the case changes the pronunciation. I have to go socialize, but before I do I apologize for the previous post and how the alphabets didn't line up. One day I'll line them up, but in the mean time, just point with your fingers to find out which is which.

Sentence Structure

Simple Sentences

Bin Tahr relies partly on syntax (word order) but mostly on morphemes (non-translatable, single syllable sentence modifiers) to determine sentence and word meaning. Subjects always begin sentences, and predicates always follow. Structure is as follows: Subject, Verb, Object (SVO). Modifiers always follow the word they are modifying, so for instance adjectives always directly follow what they are describing.
So instead of saying “the small boy is swinging the bat hard”, a literal translation into Bin Tahr would be “man young small swing forceful bat”.

Morphemes and Modifiers

Bin Tahr contains many modifiers that change the sentence meaning. For instance the question modifier is always used at the end of a sentence to make the sentence into a question, sort of like a spoken question mark. Similar modifiers exist when determining verb tense and such.

Characters and Phonetics

The Bin Tahr alphabet is entirely based on pronunciation and phonetics. Each character consists of three parts: the first consonant(s), the vowel and the ending consonant. Characters are written and read from top to bottom, with the vowel sandwiched between the consonants.

As you can see, the dots (.) are mostly vowels and modifiers of consonants to make sounds like “k'd” and “dz”. The only vowel without a dot in it is thee loose É vowel, pronounced as “eh”. Also, something to take note of is that the only vowel with a line are the “E” derived characters.

The consonants can be either written in the upper third of a character of the lower third of the character. A full word is read from top to bottom, pronouncing each symbol as it is reached, just like any other language, in the order as it appears.

Words can be written either vertically or horizontally and be as equally as readable, and still maintain sentence structure. However, some words (mostly pronouns) can be rotated to save space when writing horizontally, but remain the same when writing vertically.

Since there are a maximum of three letters to a word, the strong majority of words in Bin Tahr are only one syllable. Some words that are more complex in nature are written as two separate words, but understood as one single concept. Take the Bin Tahr word “hate” for example zohmehk’d, is two syllables, but is the actually the reverse phonetic spelling of the Bin Tahr word for “love with understanding” kdeem ahdz and as you can see is rather similar to its counterpart “hate” when written side by side.

Being that there are no upper or lower cases in Bin Tahr, the font itself is created so that upper case letters will be placed at the top of a word, and the lower cased letters will be placed at the bottom of a word. All vowels (upper and lower cased) will be placed in the middle. To switch between pronunciation of vowels, simple switch the case of the vowel.

Introduction

BEn Taq---

Bin Tahr was created randomly as a result of drawing some characters on the back of a lovely woman by the name of Rachel.

The characters themselves are influenced by fictitious vampire “glyphs” commonly depicted in motion pictures. Also, I believe they are also partial to the characters that are in the “Imperial” language from the Star Wars universe seen on the planet Coruscant.

The language was designed with simplicity in mind. As I am familiar with many languages and their grammatical structure as well as their written language, I decided that many of the common current languages of the world lack readability, versatility, and compactness. Also, the grammar is based purely on logic and learn-ability.