Hello, friends, and welcome back to the A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series. In today’s post, X is for:
XENOGLYPHS
When I teased this post yesterday, I said that space aliens have their own alphabet. I should have said alphabets, plural. There are so many alien species out there, each with their own multiplicity of languages and writing forms.
The Hykonians use lots of triangular shapes, at least in their standard Hegemonic dialects. The Gronogians prefer ovals and curlicues, and Vorpon writing looks like a mad frenzy of scratches and claw marks (which makes sense if you’ve ever met a Vorpon).
But even in the future, as members of a highly pluralistic galactic society, humans continue to take a rather geocentric view of things, and we continue to use geocentric terminology. So all those different alien alphabets—from Zeblonian to Crolon to ancient Acelera—get lumped together under the word xenoglyphs, a word formed by analogy with the word hieroglyphs.
There are even some humans who think all xenoglyphic alphabets look the same. Even if you show them the block-form text of the Dakons and contrast it with the flowery script of the Curocaroburomotopogo, some humans will still claim they can’t tell the difference. “It’s all xenoglyphs to me!” I guess some humans are just stubbornly stupid like that.
Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, we’ll visit one of the most colorful planets in the known universe.
Planet Pailly 
Oh, I would love to seethe flowery script of the Curocaroburomotopogo ;))
X is for…
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They’re a delightful people. Totally obsessed with beautiful things. I very much look forward to telling their story.
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I’d love to see all these xenoglyphs. Have you made them up for your different peoples?
(Click the Blog link on the second row) : X is for Cross
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I was planning to include an illustration with this post, but then I realized that my illustration might spoil something kind of important for book one.
Sadly, no, I haven’t worked out all these alphabets or languages. I just know a few key words, phrases, and symbols. Eventually, I will have to put more thought into these things, especially for the Hykonians.
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Perhaps during the Curocaroburomotopogo age of resurrection xenoglyphic alphabets were made out of wood in which case we need to have a xyloid celebration! 🙂
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Oh, I am down for any excuse to celebrate xyloids!
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Wow! The things you have thought of!
It reminded me of how in India, a north Indian cant distinguish between different south Indian languages even if they have been living in the south for decades. The south Indians on the other hand think all the North Indians are more or less the same..this is all inside one country! So, across the galaxies…
Question: is there racism there?
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Things like this seem to happen all over the world, all throughout history. So it seems like something like it will still happen in the future. In the era of the Earth Republic/Earth Empire, I think humans have outgrown their prejudices against other humans, but a lot of people have developed fresh prejudices against alien species.
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