Qio’ao Script   

Qio’ao (pen writing) script was invented on June 7th 2005 by Zach
McVay as a means of writing the Iqalu language. Iqalu (pronounced:
ih-gwa-loo) was initially written with a Javanese based abugida
which was not very efficient as it could not represent some of
the compound vowels used in Iqalu. For example, the word for
writing in Iqalu is qio’ which would have been almost impossible
to write in the original system because the shapes and placement
of the vowels would not allow for more than one vowel to be used.

The next orthography used for Iqalu was called the Nai’ao (rain
writing) script was a Turkish-like form of the Latin alphabet that
is now the official script for transliterating Iqalu into the Latin
alphabet. All Iqalu words have their Iqalu spelling, and their Nai’ao
spelling.

Nai’ao

Aa Áá Ââ Ãã Ää Ee
Êê Ëë Gg Ðð Hh Ýi Îî
Ïï Iý Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Ôô Öö Pp
Qq Rr Ss Tt Vv Yy Zz

The Nai’ao script ceased to be used as the official script for Iqalu
because it lacked aesthetic value, and could not be used for calligraphy
or art because of the blizzard of diacritics that were used in the script.

Therefore the third and official script, the Qio’ao script, was
developed using concepts from Trantanese
and Korean Hangul, and characters from
Chu’nom and Chinese,
with a little bit of Japanese Kanji.

The way that Qio’ao was started is quite interesting: Zach took a
short text of mixed characters from Chu’nom, and Chinese and worked
out a sentence using every sound in Iqalu and said, what if these
symbols represented this sentence? So he proceeded to divide up the
Chu’nom and Chinese characters into parts and started assigning each
part a sound to make it so that the sentence really could be represented
by those characters. Since the sentance had all sounds used in Iqalu,
we now had every character-piece that was needed to create completely
new Iqalu characters.

Notable features

• Each Qio’ao character can be divided into phonetic components
• Closely resembles the Chu’nom script
• When written with a brush, makes very beautiful calligraphy.
• Could, in theory, be used to write certain other languages.

Used to write:

Iqalu – a conlang created by Zach McVay in March
of 2005 based on Latin, Portugese, Turkish, and Chinese.

Iqatza – a relative of Iqalu, created in May 2005
to serve as an interesting dialect of Iqalu.

Qio’ao Script

Sample text

Transliteration

Iqua teini alse q’sa’st’n. Sip’res seithis vuyem nao sip’res.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)