Editing Midnight RPG - Orcish Written Language (section)

== Bill ==

'''On the number of characters:'''<br>
The [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cherokee.htm Cherokee] syllabary has 84 characters, and it boasts one of the highest learning and retention rates of any written language anywhere (maybe the Cherokee are just smarter, hehe).  I think black tongue could get away with 60-70 characters.

One option (maybe for the development of orcish) might be to make the written language be a syllabic alphabet.  In these, each character has an inherant vowel that can be changed or muted with a diacritic.  This simplifies the language by requiring the reader to learn the diacritics for the vowel sounds, and then a collection of 30-40 consonants.  This is closer to an alphabet, however.  [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ethiopic.htm Ethiopic], one of the oldest writing systems in the world, and [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/inuktitut.htm Inuktitut] (sort of), which is less than a century old, are both examples.  Inuktitut is normally classified as a syllabary because each character ''is'' different, but only because they are mirrored or rotated.  Rotating a letter to change it isn't much different than adding two little circles to the top of it.