Interlingual Pasigraphy

Matthew McVeagh | my conlangs

I’d like to create a universal written ideographic symbol system that can be used to express the thought and meaning behind any piece of human language. Potentially any human language expression could be translated into it.

My plan is to use the all-encompassing grammatical structure of Omnigrammar as the basis for Interlingual Pasigraphy (ILPG). Both will have the potential to express any language's grammatical pattern and to that extent translate any sentence in it.

The closest previously created conlang would be Blissymbols. Like that ILPG will be a pasigraphy, which is a linguistic writing system not based on representing sound but rather representing meaning directly. However pasigraphies are still linguistic, as opposed to for instance picto- or ideographies, in that they contain things like grammar. The symbol set would have to be rather large, but in common with ideo- and logographic writing systems would probably involve combining component parts to make larger symbols. It would definitely not be phonographic in any way, as it is not a writing system for an existing spoken language, nor is it a new conlang that is both spoken and written; it would be a language in its own right, with no spoken aspect, just a written one.

A piece of another language represented in this one could be seen as being written in it, but more honestly it would be translated, as this language has its own structure, just one that can hopefully mesh with those of all other languages. Since its expression of ideas is interconvertible between any two other human languages, it could be used as an 'interlanguage', like an auxiliary language (which was what Blissymbols was intended for). Hence its name.

As with Omnigrammar, the trick to enabling all structural forms from all human languages is to allow all of them as alternatives and let people choose. If their language has an animacy hierarchy, or ergativity, or possession classifiers, or OVS word order, or both restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses... it can be encoded. The difficulty will not be in finding a way to express the meaning the way the source language shapes it, it will be in learning all the myriad ways this language can say things, and sometimes in knowing how to interpret a sentence in it.