Mattias Persson has created hundreds of writing systems over the years (about one per week every week). Often Mattias takes an existing script and extends it to enable a much larger inventory of phonemes to be written. Many scripts are inspired by the rich Brahmic family of writing systems of India and Southeast Asia. This is a sample of his prolific output.

Introduction

My name is Mattias Persson, and I live in Uppsala, about 70 kilometres north-north-west of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. I was born in 1967, in a smaller village called Sala, located about 50 kilometres west-north-west of Uppsala.

As long as I can remember, at least since I was 5 years old, I have loved letters, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems. When I was young, I just played with plastic letters, but nowadays, I create new writing systems and research writing from all over the world (using the Internet). I had learnt the Latin alphabet already before starting school, but several years had to pass before I learnt to read properly, at about 11 years of age. At 12, I learnt the Ethiopic abugida from a retired missionary who worked at my school. Greek and Cyrillic followed soon after that, and later, Arabic, and Devanagari (for Hindi). At 17, I met another pair of missionaries, who taught me the Mongolian vertical script, and the Kannarese or Kannada script from southern India.

My favorite type of writing system has always been the Indic so-called syllabic alphabets, and the favorite among the many such scripts in existence has always been the Burmese “round script”, Sa Loun, and its extensions.

When I create a new writing system, I often put the letters in the same order as in the Indic scripts (but not always).

I sometimes produce more than one completed script per week. I also sometimes borrow ideas from, or extend, other peoples’ invented scripts, as I usually find other peoples’ scripts better than my own creations. In such cases, I generally try to get in contact with the original creator, so he or she does not get annoyed or angry. I do not mean to steal the other person’s creations; instead, it should be seen as flattery, and really means that I like the other’s script.

It was such an incident that brought me into contact with Mr Ian James. I had found one of his creations, that I liked, and made a new script in the same style. I wanted to show Ian my script, and found his email address at Simon Ager’s excellent writing system web site, www.omniglot.com.

Of course another important web site for me is www.unicode.org where I often find inspiration, despite their rather odd transcription that makes it difficult to learn how to pronounce the new letters.

M.P.

Uppsala is at latitude 60N and timezone +1

Sky Knowledge

Index of Scripts (66)

	Akson Dawk	the ‘flower’ script, Indic-based.
	Akson-e-Saq	Indic-based alphabet with bitonal consonants; the saq ‘hair’ refers to the stroke on top of the letters.
	Akson Hima Phaan	Brahmi-style syllabary with influences from Japanese Kana.
	Alcesian	a bold, serifed innovation built upon Ian James’ Full Aelg.
	Arabiyat-il-Latînat	A left-to-right revision of Arabic, with Latin-style glyphs, somewhat reminiscent of Bostani.
	Asomtavrabjad	Courier-style alphabet with carrier vowels, based on the old Asomtavruli style of Georgian.
	Bhartuli	stylized Indic script.
	Brahmi Lue	full, modern Indic-style alphabet with vowels and finals derived from the TaiLue script.
	Burkayah	alphabetic hybrid of Burmese and Kayah Li.
	BurShanLe	hybrid of Burmese, Shan and TaiLe.
	Cao Yin Zi	Times New Roman style alternative to Bopomofo for Han Chinese (this is the Omniglot page).
	Courier Tengwar	alphabetic extension to Tolkien’s system, using an attractive Courier style font.
	CyrTai	a modified Cyrillic script for Thai and/or Indic languages.
	Dai Nemew	tonal alphabetic script using modified Tai letters.
	Ethebar	a syllabary where the parts are joined, reminiscent of Ethiopic.
	Etiozindi Lipi	hybrid of Sindhi and Ethiopic, mostly intended for Ethiopian.
	Gaudikarang	Cased alphabet using Indic-style characters and a Times-style font.
	Gowaithani	new system suggestive of Indic-style abugida, inspired by Unicode charts of Indic scripts.
	HurufArkawi	Arkian letters, inspired by the game ANIMA Ark of Sinners.
	Hwang P’o Sark	An extension of the Korean script with more sounds.
	Indarthai	a cursive alphabet with modifier diacritics.
	Indabxaz	The modern Indabxaz script is an alphabet, where the vowel marks always are written on a carrier ‘u’. Long ago, the vowel marks were put upon the consonants.
	InsulTai	stacked syllabary based on Tai/Indic, inspired by a letter seen on a shirt in a TV program, and Lanna script.
	Ishchuq’	alphabet derived from Armenian, with phonetic digraphs & trigraphs.
	Jimeneh Lipi	a full phonetic Latin-style alphabet featuring digraphs & trigraphs.
	Kai Lipi	the “egg” script, based on Shan/Burmese and Indic.
	Kerna Lipi	new cursive syllabary system, inspired by Ian James’ Nav script for the language of the aliens of Avatar.
	Khudawadi Lipi	the lovely old Sindhi script, with extensions for Arabic etc.
	KhuenTaiLue	hybrid of Khuen/Lanna and New Tai Lue, with some extra phonemes.
	Kwerbha Lyppai	new syllabary with stacked components, inspired by a joke of Ian James.
	Mammaui	a full combining syllabary, inspired by Ian James’ Maui script.
	Mammattia Lipi	abugida inspired by, and derived from, Matt Youen’s script Banlehu.
	Mattai Le	extension of TaiLe with slight Japanese Kana influence.
	Mjama Thai	Burmese consonants in a style derived from the font Frankfurter by Linotype. TaiLe- or NewTaiLue-style vowels derived from Burmese and some other sources.
	Modern Twitterati	full phoneme alphabet based loosely on Burmese. (The name comes from the now defunct Langmaker.com website.)
	MongolBichig	a right-to-left (rotated 90 degrees clockwise) Mongolian script with Latin-based glyphs.
	Mt’sk’riobha Lipi	a stylized and greatly extended Georgian alphabet, based on the Mkhedruli style.
	Myalanna	alphabetic hybrid of Burmese and Lanna, with features from Semitic scripts in the vowels (matres lectiones as bases).
	Myangon	hybrid of extended Burmese and Gondi scripts.
	Myanmai	an alphabet with influences from Burmese, Ramkhamhaeng Thai and other South Asian scripts.
	Myarabi	alphabetic extension and modification of Tai/Shan.
	Myarathána	hybrid of Burmese and Thaana (Maldivian).
	MyaShanLe	extended hybrid of Burmese, Shan and TaiLe.
	NawaBrahmi	Indic syllabary, of the component variety.
	Nawariyakkhara	a stylization and extension of the Ariyaka script of King Rama IV of Siam.
	New Konkani	alphabet for the Konkani language, in Times New Roman style.
	Oytunnic	a full, Lanna-style abugida.
	Pau Thai Lai	alphabet mixture of Lao, Thai and Pau Cin Hau, with Indic influences.
	Pers-e-Bur	a Burmese-style alphabet for Persian, including vowel sound shifts from Old Persian to modern Iranian languages.
	RajaLipi	Indic-based tonal script with front-back consonant sets, inspired by the Lao script.
	Ramkhamia Lipi	Extension and development of King Ramkhamhaeng’s Thai script; more consonants and linear vowels.
	ShastraLipi	Indic and SE Asian consonant forms, with “scientific” vowel system.
	Siizu Lipi	complex but clearly organized component syllabary.
	Sigilipi	An alphabetic syllabary with half-characters derived from Devanagari, and extra marks partially from Japanese Kana.
	Sirindi Lipi	hybrid of Cyrillic and various Indic scripts.
	SvanTimes	extended Georgian alphabet using style of Times New Roman (Latin) font.
	Syllabitsa	geometric syllabary with full phoneme coverage, inspired by Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.
	Tai Boeng	new Indic-based script with bitonal consonant set; Tai Viet consonants and New Tai Lue vowels, in Times New Roman style.
	Tai Riang Khiau	inline modification and extension of Thai.
	Thai Pen Sen	linear extension of Thai, using inline vowels and new tone system.
	Thai Sara Baep Mai	extension of Thai, using inline vowels inspired by those of King Rama 6.
	ThaiTaiLue	extended inline Thai alphabet with ideas from TaiLue.
	Times New Burmese	a Burmese script using style of Times New Roman (Latin) font.
	Tropozia Lipi	syllabary based very loosely on Ian James’ Elektrum, with vowels inside the consonant frame.
	TwCenThai	simplified, modern style Thai with extra vowels. (Name comes from the font used in its creation.)
	Uklandar	new system with regular phonemic treatment & full vowel set; the vowel system is almost that of Khmer.
	Zagwi	a complex, but neat and regular, syllabary.