Inventing an alphabet, real or pretend

New alphabets keep cropping up. Some are invented for practical reasons, and some just for fun. About 500 years ago, Korean was written using Chinese characters. But King Sejong of Korea (1397-1450) wanted more of his people to be able to read. He invented a 24-letter alphabet still used today.

Alphabets have been invented in America, too. A Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah (1776-1843) didn't know how to read, but he did know that white people used marks on paper to show sounds. In 1821, Sequoyah invented an alphabet for the Cherokee language. Many of his people learned to read and write very quickly.

Filmmakers know that make-believe worlds seem more real when they have their own languages and writing. Linguist Mark Okrand invented a language for the third "Star Trek" movie ("The Search for Spock," 1985). He even published a Klingon dictionary. With its sharp, slashing letters, Klingon looks like a warrior alphabet.

More recently, Dr. Okrand made up a language for the Disney movie "Atlantis: The Lost Empire." The movie's creators invented a special alphabet for it.

When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings," he was only trying to entertain himself. He loved his Elvish language and alphabet. Tolkien once told a friend that he'd wanted to write his books in Elvish!

Some of Tolkien's characters are dwarfs. In "The Hobbit," the dwarfs follow an ancient treasure map with instructions in dwarf runes. Runes are the letters of an alphabet used hundreds of years ago by Vikings and others. They look a bit like our ABCs, but they have very straight lines. (Tolkien's "moon runes," above, are very close to Anglo-Saxon runes.) In old times, rune letters were often carved into stone or wood. If you've ever tried to carve letters into wood, you know how much easier it is to carve straight lines than it is to carve curvy ones.

Tolkien also created a beautiful, curvy alphabet for Elvish. When a young boy, Hugh Brogan, wrote to tell Tolkien how much he enjoyed learning about hobbits, dwarfs, and elves, Tolkien used sharp dwarf runes and curvy Elvish letters to send Hugh a special Christmas greeting.

Next month, a new movie version of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" will open. Keep an eye out for dwarf runes!

The simplest way to invent a secret alphabet is to make up new symbols to replace our 26 letters. You could also:

Make up new symbols for some combined sounds, like 'th,' 'ch,' and 'str.' Or invent different letters for the long and short sounds of vowels, so that the 'a' in 'cat' and the 'a' in 'cake' would be different letters.

Play letter 'switcheroo.' A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on. 'CAT' would be spelled 'DBU.'

Get rid of vowels altogether. (When Tolkien wrote Elvish, he added marks to the consonants to indicate vowel sounds.) An 'm' with a dot over it could be 'ma.' An 'm' with three dots could be 'mi.'

Use phonetic spelling in your alphabet, as in: 'uz fonetik speling in yr alfabet.'

Write the words up and down, or right to left - even back and forth (first line left to right, second line right to left, and so on).

Use one of the invented alphabets we've printed here. Teach the alphabet to your friends, and you'll have a secret code!

Author J.R.R. Tolkien (of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" fame) wrote this Christmas greeting (below) to schoolboy Hugh Brogan in 1948, using different styles of Tolkien's made-up Elvish alphabets.

It reads: "dear hugh: this iz just to wish you a very happy christmas in two styles of elvish script: i am sending some explanations, and I hope you wont find them too complicated."

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