Converting English to Artisan's Script

[First of the Tide He/him]

I wanted to make a version of the artisan's script that converts from nalthian script (or what we know of it) to color. So, lets review what we know abt the artisans script
From the coppermind, we have the folowing:

Quote

The artisan's script is a form of writing in the nation of Hallandren on Nalthis. Unlike most writing systems, which are based on form and shape, the artisan's script is based on color. Each color represents a different sound in Hallandren's language. In its most basic form, simple dots are used. More advanced writers use lines that gradually shift in color, or glyphs that form pictures.^[1]

To use the artisan's script to its full potential requires perfect color recognition granted by the Third Heightening

however, most phonetics don't have so many distinct sounds that it would require the third heightening to tell them apart. (there are abt 2^24 distinct colors in Hexcode, and even the phonics with the most distinct sounds have less than 2^9 , and even I can tell that many colors apart despite being slightly colorblind) 

Instead, we'll encode both the nalthian script and the hexcode color into binary, and then convert between them. We'll use the table seen here (by @TheKingofCrimsonesia) to convert the English into nalthian script (and then into binary) and a binary-to-hexadecimal converter like this one to convert it from there into a base 16 number, which already represents a color in hexcode.

Table Incase the link is wrong:

Spoiler

Since the table is already an 8 by 4 grid, we can use 3 bits to represent the x position on the grid, and 2 bits to represent the y position. That gives 5 bits per letter. Since hexcode has 24 bits (8 in the red, 8 in the green, 8 in the blue), we can fit 4 letters in each number, with 4 extra bits. We may use those four bits later, but for now well leave them blank. 

Lets convert one letter to start. We'll do the letter V, or  

In order to convert the x position on the table to a 3-bit number, we'll use a binary split, and repeat three times. If the letter is on the left of the table, we'll start with a 0, and if it's on the right, we'll start with a 1. V is on the left half, so we start with a 0. then we repeat.

Within the chosen half, if it's in the leftmost 2 columns(L,H), we'll add another 0, if it's in the rightmost 2(A,B), we'll add a 1. V is in the B column, so we'll add a 1. (01)

Within the chosen quarter, if it's in the left column(A), we'll add another 0, if it's in the right(B), we'll add a 1. V is in the B column, so we'll add a 1. (011)

In order to convert the y position, we'll do the same, with up being 0, and down being 1 (V's value for this is 10)

So, V's value is 01110

With the table and this method, we can turn any letter into a 5-digit code in base 2.

we'll use 4 letters per color, and we'll add some extra nuance with the extra 4 bits. I'm using a positive/negative toggle, a me/you toggle, a emotion/apathy, and a null toggle

+/- the word(s) prominent here has a positive connotation if this is 1, opposite if 0

m/y the word(s) prominent here refer to me if this is 1 opposite if 0

e/a the word(s) prominent here matter to the speaker if this is 1 opposite if 0

null if this is 1, nuance toggles from this color are null. no matter what they are set to they have no value either way

So, to convert from English to artisan's script, you 

- convert to nalthian letter grouping (write W as uu, and group Th into {eth}(like in bathe) or {theta}(like in bath) group sh and ch into single letters, also I am choosing to remove silent letters) I LIKE TO WIN becomes I LIK TO UUIN 

set in four letter groups (One group per color) I LIK TO UUIN becomes ILIK TOUU IN

fill extra groups with a soundless letter (I'm using sign & to represent space 11110) ILIK TOUU IN becomes ILIK TOUU IN&&

add nuance  ILIK TOUU IN&& becomes ILIK+me0 TOUU-ya1 IN&&+ma0

convert to binary ILIK+me0 TOUU-ya1 IN&&+ma0 becomes 00011,00000,00011,00111,1110  10010,11100,11111,11111,0001  00011,11001,00010,00010,1100

convert to hexadecimal 00011,00000,00011,00111,1110  10010,11100,11111,11111,0001  00011,11001,00010,00010,1100 becomes 18067E 973FF1 1E442C

convert to color:  18067E 973FF1 1E442C becomes 

Edited April 13 by First of the Tide

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, First of the Tide said:

I wanted to make a version of the artisan's script that converts from nalthian script (or what we know of it) to color. So, lets review what we know abt the artisans script

Interesting thought experiment, but I feel like it missed the basic premise of Artisan Script - that every letter has its own color. Converting a four word phrase to only three colors doesn't seem to work, because you have to know the "translation" for the colors to be read. 

I envision something like this (using your example phrase):

Spoiler

Where the simple ovals here could be any shape the artisan wanted to use.

Just food for thought. YMMV.

Hope that helps

Edited April 14 by Treamayne
SPAG

[First of the Tide He/him]

1 minute ago, Treamayne said:

Interesting thought experiemnt, but I feel like it missed the basic premise of Artisan Script - that every letter has its own color. Converting a four word phrase to only three colors doesn''t seem to work, but cause you have to know the "translation" for the colors to be read. 

I envision something like this (using your example phrase):

  Hide contents

Just food for thought. YMMV.

Hope that helps

That was my first thought too, for sure, but my big issue with that is that it says that you need the 3rd heightening to fully understand it. even I can tell the difference between the ~30 colors that would represent 30 different sounds. (I kinda glossed over this in the original post) combining sets of four means that 0ffe3a and 0afe3a are very different sounds, even if I can't tell them apart. I agree that I kinda got caught up in the project, and over-combined things, but I think one color per letter isn't elitist enough (not that i'm trying to be, just that that's the nature of the language) 

Also, at least the coppermind (which is admittedly quite faulty on occasion) only says one color per sound, not per letter, so maybe its still grouped, just not quite as cryptography-like as I had originally done?

Interested to see your thoughts, and grateful for the critique. Thanks for being awesome as always

[Treamayne]

31 minutes ago, First of the Tide said:

That was my first thought too, for sure, but my big issue with that is that it says that you need the 3rd heightening to fully understand it. even I can tell the difference between the ~30 colors that would represent 30 different sounds.

Right, but that assumes that the letters we have translated are the full alphabet. I think of it more like IPA - sure, English has 26 "letters" but phonemes to accurately represent the various sounds those letters make. . . 

Well, you've already jumped to, at least, 64 phonemes (not including dipthongs and consonant clusters). If the base consonant/vowel is <color> and we know that Vivenna describes the colors of Lightsongs Palace as "shades of red" (see below), then similar derived phonemes would be steps of that base color (up or down). 

To me, Artisan's script is less an "alphabet" and more of visual depiction of how the language sounds

Warbreaker Ch 14:

Spoiler

Feeling a little more secure, she glanced at Parlin, who seemed more at peace now that they were away from the larger crowds in the city below. “Interesting buildings,” he said. “The people wear so much color, but that palace is just one color. Wonder why that is.”

“It’s not one color. It’s many different shades of the same color.”

Parlin shrugged. “Red is red.”

How could she explain? Each red was different, like notes on a musical scale. The walls were of pure red. The roof tiles, side columns, and other ornamentations were of slightly different shades, each distinct and intentional. The columns, for instance, formed stepping fifths of color, harmonizing with the base tint of the walls.

It was like a symphony of hues. The building had obviously been constructed for a person who had achieved the Third Heightening, as only such a person would be able to see the ideal resonance. To others…well, it was just a bunch of red.

 

Annotations to Ch 14:

Quote

Vivenna Enters the Court

Color harmonics are one of the things in this book that, I think, have some very interesting philosophical implications. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of perfect pitch. Pitches and tones are an absolute; music isn’t just something we humans devise and construct out of nothing. It’s not arbitrary. Like mathematics, music is based on principles greater than human intervention in the world. Someone with perfect pitch can recognize pure tones, and they exist outside of our perception and division of them. (Unlike something like our appreciation of other kinds of art, which is dealing with things that are far more subjective.)

However, I wondered if—perhaps—there are perfect steps of colors just like there are perfect tones, with color fifths, sevenths, and chords and the like. In our world, nobody has the ability to distinguish these things—but what if there were someone who could? Someone who could tell something innate about color that isn’t at all subjective?

I’m not sure if I explained that right, but it intrigued me enough to become part of this book.

 

After all, how many people can pick out Zomp from Chartruese from Mindaro on sight. . . 

Edited April 14 by Treamayne
SPAG

[First of the Tide He/him]

7 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Right, but that assumes that the letters we have translated are the full alphabet. I think of it more like IPA - sure, English has 26 "letters" but phonemes to accurately represent the various sounds those letter make. . . 

Well, you've already jumped to, at least, 64 phonemes (not including dipthongs and consonant clusters). If the base consonant/vowel is <color> and we know that Vivenna describes the colors of Lightsongs Palace as "shades of red" (see below), then similar derived phonemes would be steps of that base color (up or down). 

To me, Artisan's script is less an "alphabet" and more of visual depiction of how the language sounds

Warbreaker Ch 14:

  Hide contents

Feeling a little more secure, she glanced at Parlin, who seemed more at peace now that they were away from the larger crowds in the city below. “Interesting buildings,” he said. “The people wear so much color, but that palace is just one color. Wonder why that is.”

“It’s not one color. It’s many different shades of the same color.”

Parlin shrugged. “Red is red.”

How could she explain? Each red was different, like notes on a musical scale. The walls were of pure red. The roof tiles, side columns, and other ornamentations were of slightly different shades, each distinct and intentional. The columns, for instance, formed stepping fifths of color, harmonizing with the base tint of the walls.

It was like a symphony of hues. The building had obviously been constructed for a person who had achieved the Third Heightening, as only such a person would be able to see the ideal resonance. To others…well, it was just a bunch of red.

 

Annotations to Ch 14:

 

After all, how many people can pick out Zomp from Chartruese from Mindaro on sight. . . 

Iiiiiinteresting. not sure that I agree, but food for thought for sure.

[First of the Tide He/him]

OK. I think I came up with a new system that not only addresses the issues raised, but also fits the description a little better.

The System

Spoiler

Instead of depending on arbitrary binary stuff, we represent each base (columns in the original table) as a color vector, (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Magenta, blacK, White since those are natural poles, instead of just random ones Newton chose) and we represent each accent type (rows) as a magnitude for the vector(their ratios

might be like going up or down a half step in music but color). each individual vector will have a relatively small magnitude on its own, but as we increase the length of the word, we add the vectors from each successive letter to the current color. then, we draw the gradient from the color at the start of the word through each color that occurs as we build the word, and end on the final color.

I am not gonna do the math for this right now, since it sucks to add vectors in polar coordinates (which i'm likely to use since this system is reminiscent of HSV, which essentially uses polar coords), but it seems like it'd be super easy for a person with perfect color recognition to do just by pure instinct

Addressing some things:

Spoiler

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Right, but that assumes that the letters we have translated are the full alphabet. I think of it more like IPA - sure, English has 26 "letters" but phonemes to accurately represent the various sounds those letters make. . . 

 

Good point, but I think it's very plausible that what we've deciphered is very close to the full alphabet (or at least we know the number of letters there will be) The alphabet seems to, for all of its letters, take a base symbol and add 0-2 accent marks in a very specific way each time. This is part of why I used that table in the first place, because it arranges the letters by those bases and symbols. It's possible we're missing a critical base or symbol set, but with the number of letters we have seen, I don't think it's implausible that those are all of the letters. Also note that there are already some guesses in the table, which go beyond what we've deciphered.

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

To me, Artisan's script is less an "alphabet" and more of visual depiction of how the language sounds

I think this solves it a lot better. this version takes the nalthian script (which is at least to an extent  grouped by sound, hence why BVM are in the same column, which is discussed in the nalthian language thread I linked earlier and is why I made each column a direction), and turns it into a distinct change in visualsness (technical term) I think this is giving off much better "calligraphy, but only if you have UV glasses" vibes

Quote

Every letter has its own color vs needs 3rd awakening to really get.

this still gives each letter their own color, while not having it be so obvious a simpleton can read it, and also seems to depend way less on random ideas exclusive to our earth, like hexcode and the ROYGBV system

Interested to see your thoughts. will do some math and give an example (hopefully with susebron, but we'll see) tomorrow, unless somebody comes and either tells me all the 180 ways I made a mistake, or does it for me

[Myst He/Him]

So. I do not know enough to be able to comment here, maybe if I think through it enough I could add something.

However, I just want to say that I really hope this comes out with a script, cause then I can digitally write with this a feel so proud of myself for knowing it.

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, First of the Tide said:

Interested to see your thoughts. will do some math and give an example (hopefully with susebron, but we'll see) tomorrow, unless somebody comes and either tells me all the 180 ways I made a mistake, or does it for me

I think the other thing to keep in mind Is that Hallandren is not working with a cast of colors as deep as the Pantone Color Pallette - they have the colors available in Nature and medieval dyes and the derivitives. Agree that Hex is probably the least-compatible color system (along with CMYK). The main reason I never went far on a project like this (despite tinkering off and on for a decade) was because I didn't feel like I had enough information to convert the alphabet we do know into a phoentics system to assign colors and steps.

What I can say from experience is that hearing the difference between letters (for a language student) can, depending on the language, also be very difficult and time-consuming. In Korean, it took over six months to hear the difference between 애 and 에. (Omniglot - Hangul) (IPA).

For any given set of sounds we would then likely have (where applicable) a color shade for  voiced/unvoiced, stressed/unstressed, aspirated/glottal stop, etc.
Another Korean Example (both, because that was what I studied, and what Brandon studied that influenced his writing) we have ㄱ,ㄲ, and ㅋ where:

• ㄱis the normal g/k sound, unaspirated
• ㄲ is the g/k sound, stressed with a glottal stop
• ㅋis the g/k sound aspirated

The whole alphabet was constructed by Great King Sejong's (세종대왕) scholars to be based on how the mouth makes the associated consonant sound(s) with vowels as vertical or horizontal system to go around and bridge the consonant sounds (and make dipthongs intuitive - see previous linked image).

Hope that helps

But we do have this WoI:

Spoiler

Joe_does_Calculus

Is there (or will there ever be) a key or something for the written color language/alphabet in Warbreaker? I have just started the book but it seems like it could lead to some cool fanart stuff with how it's described.

Isaac Stewart

We tried a few things to develop the color language/alphabet (Artisan script) for Warbreaker, but partway through, we realized that none of us here are of the correct Heightening to be able to read the script were we even able to develop it. (One has to be able to distinguish between colors in a way that we ordinary humans can't physically do.) However, if you look closely at the upcoming Warbreaker leatherbound you might find hints at how un-Heightened people in T'Telir and Idris might read and write.

Isaac Stewart r/Stormlight_Archive AMA (Oct. 1, 2019)