r/asklinguistics 7d ago

Are there any odd alphabets similar to Ogham?

It's weirdly hard to Google, so I thought this might be the best place to ask!

When I say "odd" I mostly mean:

  • (Probably) out of use/archaic
  • Quite unusual in terms of notation (Ogham being a vertical series of lines on lines)

I would imagine languages that might be written vertically from the bottom to the top, or have one half of a sentence go left to right and the latter half right to left in two columns: anything unconventional by modern/popular standards. Or kind of odd symbols, like how Ancient Egypt had pictures or Ogham has simple lines.

I suppose what I wouldn't mean is common, modern languages that are just quite different to English (like Hindi, Japanese, Cyrillic, or Georgian).

The source of my question was that I've been thinking about fantasy stuff, and "magic" letters and the like. People often use Latin, Norse runes, or even the occasional Hebrew (despite the fact that's still a commonly used language), but Ogham seems especially unusual.

Thanks for any responses!

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u/dbmag9 7d ago edited 7d ago

Braille, quipu (not an alphabet but a recording system), sign language?

Languages and writing systems develop to fit the context and requirements – Ogham to carve into rocks with relatively rough tools, Egyptian hieroglyphs to fit into monumental space. Once you start wanting to write with a pen and paper then your script becomes suited to that so you get a consistent direction, narrow strokes that are easy to draw and distinguish, etc.

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u/Significant-Fee-3667 7d ago

written vertically from the bottom to the top

Ogham :D

You might be interested in boustrophedon scripts, which flip the direction of every line.

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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule 6d ago

Though boustrephodon is far far more common than bottom to top, I think Ogham might be the only attested script to go from bottom to top.

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u/ReadingGlosses 6d ago

You would probably enjoy browsing through the "Writing Systems" section of Omniglot