Franabudiga

Franabudiga   
Franabudiga

Franabudiga is an alternative way of writing French invented by François
BOULLION, who was inspired by the scripts of Northern India, especially
Devanagari, and who found the idea of representing both the consonant and
its vowel together in the same symbol mind-blowing.

Notable features

  • Type of writing system: Franabudiga is technically an abudiga, although it shows some features of a syllabary
  • Direction of writing: left to right, top to bottom.
  • Used to write: French with (almost) as much phonetic accuracy as the IPA
  • Designed to look attractive and to be easy to remember

Franabudiga

Stand-alone consonants

Stand-alone consonnants are letters that inscribe themselves in the space
between the two imaginary horizontal lines in which we write our Latin letters
such as “a”, “c”, “x” or any of all these letters that have neither upstroke
nor downstroke. They transcribe the consonnants that are not followed by a
vowel (except schwa). They may transcribe a word-final consonnant, the initial
consonnant in a consonant cluster, a consonant in the middle of a consonant
cluster or a consonant followed by a schwa. The three French approximants [j],
[w] and [μ] are considered consonants, for simplicity’s sake.

Franabudiga stand-alone consonants

Stand-alone vowels

Stand-alone vowels are letters that have an upstroke or a downstroke.
They’re used to write word-initial vowels or vowels following another vowel
(except schwas, of course, schwa-initial hiatus don’t exist in French).

Franabudiga stand-alone vowels

Combinations of a consonant and a vowel

Combinations of a consonant and a vowel, which make up all the possible
C-V possible combinations in French. In most cases, the stand-alone consonant
receives an upstroke or a downstroke representing the vowel. The system works
like adding a diacritic but it doesn’t look like a diacritic. Graphically,
it’s more like a ligature of the consonant with the vowel.

For aesthetic reasons, some (but not many) consonant-vowel combinations do not follow this logical pattern, and receive a different shape (often free from up or downstroke).

Sample text

Sample text in Franabudiga

Transliteration

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en
dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de
conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit
de fraternité

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)

  • Categoria dell'articolo:Lingue
  • Tempo di lettura:3 minuti di lettura