Circle Gallifreyan: Because Klingon Isn't Difficult Enough

[Broomstick]

Don't have much time to post this one (off to a social event soon) but while net surfing today I found this YouTube of someone writing in Circle Gallifreyan. If you don't know what Circle Gallifreyan is, the final result is a decent representative sample of this fictional writing system:



That lead to this guide, which in turn lead to this website. Once again, the SF geeks compensate for a lack of social life by intensive fanwork.

Personally, I had had the theory that it was ideogram based, and the reason the TARDIS didn't translate it was because it dealt with concepts that most races didn't know about or understand, so any translation would have been nonsensical gibberish anyway. Or it was some sort of cultural security system, so that outsiders couldn't access Time Lord knowledge without laborious translation by a living entity (other than a TARDIS) i.e. a Time Lord.

It should be noted that all systems depicted in these links are fan originated and are in no way canon or sanctioned by the Doctor Who production team or the BBC.

Offered for thoughtful discussion.

[FaxModem1]

Been sending people their names in Gallifreyan. They seem to appreciate it.

[Broomstick]

I've got to have a go at both "Broomstick" and my real name.

I've pondered the awkwardness of such a graphic writing system, thinking perhaps with computers and dictation software smart enough to generate the graphic words it wouldn't be so burdensome. On the other hand, there have been a number of heavily-graphic Earth writing systems and people seem to manage alright.

I recently re-watched some of Nine's season and this time around noticed that he had Circle Gallifreyan written on sticky notes and stuck to his TARDIS monitor. Kind of interesting.\

In Old Who the TARDIS console and a number of other things were in English, but I'd explain it away by saying that pre-Time War he used English in part for the convenience of those he shared the TARDIS with, or used a form of Gallifreyan the TARDIS would translate into an intelligible written language for guests but he might have upgraded the security by using non-translatable Gallifreyan during the Time War and just never went back afterwards. In Eleven's seasons the monitors did do some display in English and not just Gallifreyan.

[Gandalf]

Broomington, Klingon isn't actually hard.

I bet someone down in BBC merchandising is kicking themselves right now. I'm surprised that there wasn't a "Gallifreyan dictionary" a few years ago.

[Broomstick]

I sometimes think the BBC is the only for-profit company on Earth that could conceivably be heard to say "Golden eggs? Market golden eggs? Who would want to buy golden eggs? Nobody is interested in golden eggs. Oh, and stop passing around pictures of those eggs without permission."

[AMT]

Did my name... looks like a goofy face wearing a ball gag
Spoiler

[Atlan]

Don't have much time to post this one (off to a social event soon) but while net surfing today I found this YouTube of someone writing in Circle Gallifreyan. If you don't know what Circle Gallifreyan is, the final result is a decent representative sample of this fictional writing system:


That lead to this guide, which in turn lead to this website. Once again, the SF geeks compensate for a lack of social life by intensive fanwork.

Personally, I had had the theory that it was ideogram based, and the reason the TARDIS didn't translate it was because it dealt with concepts that most races didn't know about or understand, so any translation would have been nonsensical gibberish anyway. Or it was some sort of cultural security system, so that outsiders couldn't access Time Lord knowledge without laborious translation by a living entity (other than a TARDIS) i.e. a Time Lord.

It should be noted that all systems depicted in these links are fan originated and are in no way canon or sanctioned by the Doctor Who production team or the BBC.

Offered for thoughtful discussion.

I think you're right: Gallifreyan is a language with the ability build in to properly describe timetravel and all of it's implications. Not only does it deal with concepts that are nonsensical to most people, we KNOW that the Doctor, for example, sees the universe in a completely different way than normal humans, being aware of the ebb and flow of time around a person and places.
Gallifrean doesn't just deal with baffling concepts, you literally need more senses than we have to properly understand the concepts it tries to depict! No wonder the Tardis doesn't translate Gallifreyan, it cannot make you understand!

[Broomstick]

AMT and FaxModem, did you use the downloadable app for your CG names?

[AMT]

AMT and FaxModem, did you use the downloadable app for your CG names?

Yup.

[LadyTevar]

That is just absolutely fascinating and surprisingly simple. The grammar is easy, words and sentences written widdershins. A paragraph would be either a string of circles, or one very detailed larger circle. (For clarity, the string of circles would be best)

Learning the alphabet is going to be a matter of remembering which symbol means what (which is always my problem). Like Ogham, it's more a matter of remembering what 'family' a consonant is within, and giving the base symbol the appropriate secondaries. The vowels are not that intuitive, imho. It will be straight memorization of not just how they look, but how the looks change when they're on their own or attached.

There's also the matter of things like 'ee', 'ie', 'ea', 'oi', 'oo', and 'ou'. This particular guide says the first letter is connected to the consonant before, the second floating. I find that system, while good if you're writing, very awkward while reading. The language either needs a way to connect vowels as needed, or to add more vowel symbols to cover the problem. Of course, connecting the vowels seems an easy trick. Double vowels can be written around each other, ie the 'o' within an 'o'. That leaves 'ea' a problem, however, as 'a' is outside the word/letter-circle, while 'e' is centered. How do you connect them then?

Perhaps double-vowels should both be connected to the preceding letter, following the widdershins rule. Then "tear" becomes 'tea r', instead of 'te a r'. But again, you have the problem with words that start with multiple vowels, like 'our', 'ear', or 'eat'. By the system shown, it would be spelled/read 'o u r', 'e a r', and 'e a t'. Once again, combining the vowels would be very useful in these situations, but a new symbol representing the combined sounds would work even better. If you want to be annoying, those symbols could only be used when a combined vowel starts a word, with all others wrapping around the consonant preceding.

Of course, this is all for Latin Alphabets only. Trying to make Gallifreyan translations for Cyrillic/Slavic/Nordic would require another family of consonants entirely to account for the combined consonants sounds. Arabic and Hebrew alphabets should have little trouble translating, as many of their words drop vowels or use the bare minimum to insure understanding, although I am fuzzy on if they have their own special consonant combinations. Chinese and other Asian alphabets are going to be a headache, due to the sheer number of symbols they use.

Thoughts? Commentary?

[mr friendly guy]

Chinese and other Asian alphabets are going to be a headache, due to the sheer number of symbols they use.

Thoughts? Commentary?

Chinese doesn't have an alphabet per se. However it has lots of homophones, with different intonations, and I am not sure if Gallifreyan has a method of indicating different intonations. Heck English doesn't either, which is why the current romanisation system pin yin has symbols to indicate this.

[FaxModem1]

AMT and FaxModem, did you use the downloadable app for your CG names?

Yep, downloaded it, installed it, and played around with it. Hint, if you want more complicated stuff, don't use spaces between names.

[Broomstick]

Thoughts? Commentary?

You're just as geeky as the rest of us?

Hypothetically, CG would have more than just the consonants depicted, perhaps hundreds of symbols to accommodate all the various possible phonemes, but we've just been allowed a glimpse of the ones relevant to English.

[Broomstick]

As an example - here is CG on a fob watch from the show which is a bit more complicated than what we've been working with:

[Broomstick]

Ok... now, someone help the old lady out here: how do I capture the image generated by the translator to make it a JPG or whatever so I can pass it around, mail it to people, and so on?

[madd0ct0r]

printscrn button - top right hand area of your keyboard, then paste it into 'paint' - assuming you have windows.

[Broomstick]

Thanks, got it

[WesFox13]

Well Here's mine just for fun,



See if you can figure out what they say.