Equestria's font? Writing system?

[Ittoni 538]

I don't know where it started appearing but at some point in the show but there's this writing style that I will call "equestrian writing" that began to substitute the chicken scratches the animators used as writing for the mlp world. There was then actual symbols that represented letters. 

Does anyone knows if that font can be find anywhere? Has it been done to use it as a font?

 

Also from a world building standpoint, could there be then different writing systems for different parts of equestria or for different races? I would guess that modern equestrian writing is a combination of the three original tribes of ponies since they seemed to have had different cultures and were separate as races until equestria was founded. 

It would be interesting to know if there's any examples of this in the show but that probably is too much to ask for it's limitations as a show and yeah this is just me wondering. 

[Vefka 1,499]

I'm not sure if these symbols actually mean anything, after all it's a cartoon for children, not game of thrones

But Equestrian world has at least two writing systems. Twilight mentioned ancient ponish when they were rescuing Star Swirl. But eventually they were able to understand each other mutually without any difficulties despite the difference between them in a few centuries. So I assume it's like in Japanese (I don't know Japanese, so correct me if I'm wrong), there's some writing systems, but one language

Another thing that proves my theory is that there's characters with pretty noticable accent, which means that there are another languages

[HeavenSunset 1,867]

I can write in ponish

This is an old document I re-wrote from the Canterlot Archives

thats what it looks like in the show

Edited July 25, 2020 by HeavenSunset

[Ittoni 538]

25 minutes ago, Vefka said:

I'm not sure if these symbols actually mean anything, after all it's a cartoon for children, not game of thrones

Oh I know they still mean nothing but I just would like to have the font with the symbols if they exist somewhere in this form.

Like, look at this and tell me it doesn't look more thought out.

Also, before someone mentions it, yeah I know it's written backwards, I'm not fucking stupid

 

Edited July 25, 2020 by Ittoni

[SasQ 1,376]

There are several writing systems used in Equestria.

First, there's the Unicorn alphabet that appears in the very first episode, in Twilight Sparkle's book about legends:

It is the most ancient writing system that was given to us by Ancient Alicorns. It works in a similar way to Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese ideographs. Each tribe of ponies received their own subset of the Alicorn alphabet, suited for their special needs, but many symbols are common to all three tribes (yet each tribe might pronounce them in a slightly different way). This writing system is now obsolete, but Unicorns still use it in their arcane magic books to write spells and ancient legends. Sometimes it is used for artistic purposes too. You can see how it works from the example in my sig

But it wouldn't be fun if you had to scribble such complex shapes every time you need to write a shopping list, would it? :q
Therefore this alphabet has been evolving with time, simplifying the shapes of the letters, to be better suited for fast & crude writing. This resulted in different outcomes ("font styles" if you will) depending on the writing technique / tool used.
For example, Earth Ponies were mostly scratching those signs with their hooves, either on the ground or on tree bark or stones. This ended up in shapes made of straight lines and sharp angles, and they become runes, similar to those inscribed on Ponehenge:

(More on that in this thread)

But if ponies were writing with pen or pencil in their mouth, the results were more squiggly. This is what you can find in Spike's cook book, for example:

But you can still recognize the same overall shapes of the hieroglyphs they originated from:

 

Those are the "chicken scratches" that you mentioned.
You can see how the hieroglyphs evolved through time into those more simplified forms in the table below (just ignore the pronunciation, it might be wrong):

The "random squiggles" mentioned by @HeavenSunset are just cursive version of that, made of long continuous strokes, because that's easier to write with a quill. They're kinda similar to this example of human writing:

which also might be quite unintelligible for someone who is not familiar with it.

But after inventing the printing press and movable type, there was a revival of those ancient hieroglyphs in Unicorn books (since now they became easy to print again). Yet it was the "simplified" version that has been made spiffier and turned into movable types that we use in newspapers and books nowadays (like in the newspaper you quoted in your post).

Some of those modern letters may seem oddly familiar to you, almost like they were those Latin letters used by many countries in Human World. I have to burst your bubble: they are not. They evolved independently into their current forms. It's not a coincidence that they are similar to Latin letters, though: both have the same common ancestor, from the ancient times when our worlds were still one, before the Great Divide. (You call them Phoenician, but the actual name of the place where they originated was Ponitia ). Since then, they evolved independently of each other, in quite different directions. But since there's only that many ways a certain shape can evolve without losing its original structure completely, they evolved in quite a similar way in both worlds. Some of them may appear flipped or upside-down, some strokes might be missing, some might be superfluous, and the pronunciation may differ (heck, it differs between different Human languages for the same letters too! :q ). But there are still many similarities if you squint your eyes enough 

There's also a different writing system used in Saddle Arabia that looks kinda similar to Persian / Arabic writing in Human World:

as well as a "square script" used in the Crystal Empire:

If you want to know more about the alphabets and languages used in Equestria, check out my threads:
"Alphabet of the Unicorns" in which I try to decipher the Nightmare Moon inscription from Twilight's book; and
"Unicorn Language" in which I present my attempts at reconstructing the language used by ponies, and if that would turn out impossible – create my own version of it that Bronies over the world could use as an artificial language, kinda like Klingon used by the Trekkies, or Sindarin used by Tolkien fans . (Keep in mind, though, that this is still work-in-progress.)

Edited July 25, 2020 by SasQ

[Ittoni 538]

@SasQHolly... stuff...

This is some analysis! 

I thought that there were only like parallels to our modern latin writting (pony latin being actualy mentioned in the show as a thing that exist in equestria) with some changes here and there but this looks like something that goes deeper and actually makes sense even if it's little references here and there. That Ponehenge image just blew my mind first and then the rest of the post. Jesus Christ. 

I love it though! I will check out the other threats. Thanks!  

[Splashee 28,563]

Fantastic research you guys, and non sarcastic as well 

[Sepul-Coloratura 762]

I don’t know what y’all talking about. This is the official Equestrian royal Canterlot handwriting.

[cuteycindyhoney 13,306]

12 hours ago, HeavenSunset said:

I can write in ponish

This is an old document I re-wrote from the Canterlot Archives

thats what it looks like in the show

Hey, this is an all ages site! Don't post naughty jokes in Ponish!

[Jesse Terrence 2,968]

In all honesty, I thnk they made those horse-themed hieroglyphs just for the aesthetics rather than actually using them.

I have the feeling the animators probably just copy pasted bits of lorem ipsum all over the place with their made up font, clopa.

[SasQ 1,376]

@Sepul-Coloratura Think of it like hardsubbed anime:

Japanese people don't text in English to each other quite often, and yet you can see English texts appearing on their cellphones or street signs in anime :q They are there for English-speaking people to understand what's written in there.

I think the same way of English texts appearing on the screen in MLP: as captions added by the creators so that Humans knew what's written there In that scene, there was no commentary, the gag required you to read it yourself, so they had to put English captions on the banner in place of the original Equestrian writing, or you wouldn't understand the joke :J

Also, those voice actresses from DHX do a pretty good job in dubbing those lovely horse noises of ponish language, otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand what ponies say either

4 hours ago, Jesse Terrence said:

In all honesty, I thnk they made those horse-themed hieroglyphs just for the aesthetics rather than actually using them.

That might be the case too. And most likely is, because I don't think they cared that much about the details.
But there are two approaches here:

1. Doylian, or "out-of-universe"
   in which you explain what happened in the story from the point of view of the writers or the viewers.
   You talk about plot convenience, plot devices, plot twists, fourth wall breaks, plot holes etc.
2. Watsonian, or "in-universe"
   in which you are trying to explain what happened in the story from the point of view of its participants, the inhabitants of the universe that the story is about.
   Here you pretend that magic is possible, that the rules of a fantasy world make sense, and you try to apply those rules to your reasoning in order to come out with an explanation that fits in the boundaries of those rules, even if it could be easily hand-waved from the out-of-universe perspective.

Surely I could take the first approach to the subject of Equestrian languages and writing systems, but in that case I could just end in the first post, by simply saying that the animators put some random gibberish in there that only looks like actual writing. That wouldn't be much fun though, would it? :q

That's why I went with the second approach, because it's much more fun and allows for much more in-depth discussion It's more creative. And even if there wouldn't be any possible way to explain those fancy hieroglyphs to make them make sense, there's still potential for creating a completely new language myself that would fit inside the boundaries of the universe and be based on its rules. And that's pretty much what I do :J

[Fluttershutter 2,421]

On 7/25/2020 at 1:41 PM, SasQ said:

If you want to know more about the alphabets and languages used in Equestria, check out my threads:
"Alphabet of the Unicorns" in which I try to decipher the Nightmare Moon inscription from Twilight's book; and
"Unicorn Language" in which I present my attempts at reconstructing the language used by ponies, and if that would turn out impossible – create my own version of it that Bronies over the world could use as an artificial language, kinda like Klingon used by the Trekkies, or Sindarin used by Tolkien fans . (Keep in mind, though, that this is still work-in-progress.)

Damn, major nerd respect!

Could you make Shyriirwook into a real language?

[SasQ 1,376]

50 minutes ago, Fluttershutter said:

Could you make Shyriirwook into a real language?

First I would have to know what the heck it is :J

Most likely I could, but such things require a lot of time – a resource that is in deficiency for me, unfortunately. I barely have time for my own projects and research.

But you can try it yourself Here's a nice source of information about creating your own language:

(Watch it on YouTube, there's a full playlist on Artifexian's channel.)

Edited July 27, 2020 by SasQ

[Fluttershutter 2,421]

19 minutes ago, SasQ said:

First I would have to know what the heck it is :J

Most likely I could, but such things require a lot of time – a resource that is in deficiency for me, unfortunately. I barely have time for my own projects and research.

But you can try it yourself Here's a nice source of information about creating your own language:

(Watch it on YouTube, there's a full playlist on Artifexian's channel.)

It's the Wookiee language. I've wondered if you could use the sounds made in the movies to come up with a real language. There's a pretty small vocabulary and a lot of the time Chewie's just roaring or laughing but it's probably about as much as you used here. I'd like to do it but I don't have the attention span. 

 

 

I immediately saw the runes and translated them but that's as much work as I've done on pony languages.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Fluttershutter

[CameoShadowness 251]

Is there a full dictionary (if this is still alive?)