HELP 
If you're subscribed to my Newsletter, you'd know that I made a half-conlang half-magic-system simply titled 'Runic'. I wanted to post an announcement about this using my newsletter (and I might still do that) but due to the weekly post restrictions, I'd rather not post it and potentially miss the date for the actual big Monthly letter, so for the moment I just wanna try making a post and seeing where it goes.
I just wanted to ask people to help me speak this language to see how to improve it! It's pretty simple I think, so I can teach it fairly easily (and I will attempt to attach some supplemental material at the bottom of this post), but all I ask is that you guys try talking to me in Runic and I can try talking to you. Basically I just want to stress-test the language and see what's missing and what's fine. I feel like through natural conversation it will sort've expand overtime when suggestions and new words and whatnot are necessary.
Also, it's just fun to speak Runic :]
Anyways, just doing this sort've thing over forums is probably hard so I also wanted to ask people to try and PM me and stuff, and potentially have faster means of communication set up or maybe some kind of place set up specifically for this kind of thing - although I'm not sure where that might be.
We can try using the forums anyways though
RUNIC 101: There's 32 runes. They do have shapes but they're hard to convey in text, so each Rune's number is usually used in place of the rune itself (although I'm working on getting a way to display these anyways...). Using these numbers in place of the runes themselves is called 'number notation'.
(Sorry for the messed-up word wrapping on 'Rune' there's nothing I can do about it) Here is a table containing every rune and what they mean, as covered in my newsletter:
| (Rune) | (General Meaning/Definition/Vibe) | (Notes) |
| 1 | 'Destroy' | Not always literally. Can mean 'not' or 'the absence of'. But also sometimes literally :] |
| 2 | 'Line/Range' | Like, the geometrical concept of length and also lines and whatnot. |
| 3 | 'Point/Area/Square' | Pulls triple-duty as the geometrical concept of area as well as points *as well as* squares. |
| 4 | 'Energy/Literal' | This is a tricky one. It usually means 'boiling something down'. It's also frequently used in place of the phrase 'magic' |
| 5 | Red, Fire, Anger, Attack, Continuity... | This is one of a few that don't have an English 'counterpart'. It's a concept that exists in Runic but can only be described in English with multiple words. (contd.) |
| 6 | Yellow, Electricity, Happiness, Speed, Instantaneous... | Depending on the context in which they are used, they can mean any number of things although are technically all at once. The words used in the 'definition' column are just some suggestions to what they 'really' mean... (contd.) |
| 7 | Blue, Ice, Sadness, Defense, Patience... | Basically these are tricky because they mean a lot of things at once. There's some basic rules to help you interpret them anyways, though, later. |
| 8 | 'Help/Reinforce' | To help or enforce something. It might seem like a direct opposite of rune 1, but I disagree. |
| 9 | 'Emotion' | Self explanatory. For describing how things make you 'feel'. |
| 10 | 'Mind' | Also self explanatory. For describing what you 'know'. |
| 11 | 'Opposite' | For describing the flip-side of things. A lot of runes seem like complete opposites - and some might be (lack of planning on my part  ) - but they are not necessarily so. This rune is helpful in describing everything which 'isn't', I guess. |
| 12 | 'Perpetuation/Survival/Is' | The most complicated of the first 16 runes (runes are split between the first 16 and last 16 for reasons but you don't have to care). It's sorta just like the word "is". It also is used to describe the perpetuation of something. Do care to note it is not 'life', life is encapsulated in it sort of but it's a little bit more difficult than just using this rune to describe things like plant-life and animals. |
| 13 | 'Even/Smooth' | This rune is for 'balancing' something out, or smoothing it out, whatever. Sometimes you just want something, but only a bit of it |
| 14 | 'Atmosphere/Surrounding Area' | Okay... 'atmosphere' is maybe a weird way to describe it, but basically it's like rune 3 but 'bigger'. It's all-encompassing, it's the whole thing, it's the big deal. In a 'smaller' context it usually means the atmosphere of the room your in, or sometimes just the room itself. On a 'bigger' context it means 'global'. Everything, everywhere. It's all around. |
| 15 | 'Light/Confusion' | This rune can literally mean light, but it also means confusion. After all, too much or too little of it will blind you, right? Sometimes you can throw a quick rune 15 to just mean you're asking a question. |
| 16 | 'Evil' | Pretty self-explanatory. Do note, it is not a direct opposite of 15 in any way. There can be good 'dark' things, and there can be bad 'light' things. And of course other way around too :] |
| 17 | 'Size/Ratio' | The first of the 17-32 runes... originally I had planned this one to only mean size but it ended up meaning ratio too. If you want to talk about a lot of things, use this I guess (although rune 29 usually works for that as well). |
| 18 | 'Time' | Y'know, time. Use it to talk about how long you've done something, how you're going to continue doing something, what time you've done something, etc. |
| 19 | 'Space/Cosmic' | Space stuff. Planets, stars, moons, comets, blackholes, all that jazz... fun fact: Earth in runic is "19 4 23 4 24 4 25" I believe, if I remember correctly. Quite a mouthful, right? |
| 20 | 'Freedom/Ability' | Whether you can or cannot do something. Use to describe your freedoms, but also powers. After all, a 'power' is just the choice whether to or not to do something specific. |
| 21 | 'Sound' | Noise!! Sound! What'chya hear with ya ears. You can probably assume the long and short from this one. |
| 22 | 'Liquid' | Y'know, liquid. Do note, does not necessarily mean water. If you want to talk about water, try '4 24'. This just means non-descript liquid, that could be water or it could be mercury or even molten gold. Y'never know. |
| 23 | Brown, Earth, Stoicism, Spiritual Defense, Patience... | More of the 'vibe' runes. The 17-32 versions are like 'subdued' versions of the 1-16 ones. Calmer, stoic, more focused... they're also more physical in everything but 'attributes', which are ironically less physical to 5 6 and 7's more literally physical attributes. |
| 24 | Pastel, Water, Calmness, Spiritual Offense, Continuity... | See above. |
| 25 | Faded, Wind, Focus, Spiritual Speed, Instantaneous... | See above. |
| 26 | 'Pain' | Y'know, ouchie. Another fairly self-explanatory one, though seemingly underused so far. |
| 27 | 'Love' | For when ya like things. 
Also used to describe attraction in various forms too. |
| 28 | 'Craft/Create' | Although seemingly similar to rune 8, I think 28 is pretty important (one of the top two most important runes you could say... eheheh...). It's creation! It's making! It's going from nothing to something! Rune 8 is taking what's already there and making it better, rune 28 is making it in the first place. |
| 29 | 'Similar/Order' | For talking about specific groups of things, but also obviously order in general. Use it to describe your family (your own 'order'), a flock of birds (an order of birds), or two chairs that look really similar... |
| 30 | 'Physical/Object' | Things and stuff. Objects, items, but also just physicality and the real world. |
| 31 | 'Power' | This is probably the most tricky rune... there's quite a few ways to describe something as 'greater' in Runic - each with their own flavor - and this is one of many, but do not write it off just yet. It's sorta like amping something up to a 'legendary' degree. This is the POWER of something... so in that sense it's also kind of like rune 4. In Runic this is probably one of the most-used runes, because it's kind of like drawing out the 'alternate strength' in what something can mean. I'll explain more later. |
| 32 | 'Nil/Nothing' | It's... nothing. Nada. Zero. Emptiness. The absence of something. Sorta counterpart to rune 28 (they even look alike!)
Tricky to use in the magic system side, helpful for the conlang side. |
Phew, that's all the runes. Break time.
Go get yourself 30 4 24!
'Kay, back at it!
The basics of writing Runic as a language is similar to making spells with it, actually! As a general rule, runes on the left affect runes on the right. For example, what if someone yelled "1 1 1"! That's "Destroy Destroy Destroy!" Scary, right? But actually, they're really saying something like "Destroy the Destruction of Destruction!" which is weird and a little less scary! It's a good example of what I mean I think. Another example: "4 5" is "Energy of ~Red", which means "Fire!" Now, "4 5" would be a much scarier thing to hear someone yell!
Let's say you wanna give something a name. You might try to talk about, like, Pikachu or something but... how are people supposed to differentiate words you're saying and the name of a thing? For that, you'd use vertical bars, |like so| (although I don't know anyone named 'like so').
To talk about Pikachu, a good idea would be something like... 4 6 12. Or literally, 'Electric Thing'. But if you just said that, people just think you're talking about an electric thing! So you'd have to say "|4 6 12|" which I think is reasonable enough for Pikachu. It's the thing *named* Electric Thing, instead of just the electric thing. Feel free to come up with your own rune name, if you're a geek! I warn you though, the more 'fitting' the name is the more it's like a pun name
not every Blacksmith is named 'Smith' :]
I promised earlier that I would have some rules to make runes 5, 6, 7, 23, 24, and 25 easier to understand; so here they are!
Generally...
Rune 4 before - Means the 'element' or substance. 4 5 is fire, 4 25 is wind, etc.
Rune 1 or 8 before - Means an increase in the 'attribute' or the reduction of it. 8 6 means something's speed has increased and 1 23 means something is now weaker emotionally or magically or spiritually.
Rune 9 before - Means the emotion. 9 7 is sadness, 9 24 is focus, etc.
No 'Context' Runes - Means the associated color, usually. Just 5 means red, just 6 means yellow, just 7 means blue, etc.
Runes 24 and 25 can get weird with this I suppose since instead of having associated 'colors' they have associated 'affects'... and, 'fade' and 'pastel' are pretty similar concepts too... it's okay, try not to get confused.
Finally... if Runic was just these runes, it would be pretty hard to speak (but still possible). However, there's much much more! All you need are 'halfwidths'. 'Halfwidthing' is when you take two runes and smoosh em' together, because you're making them half the width and then combining them into a new rune
That means there's, like, 1024 words! Plus or minus a bunch probably since you can't halfwidth two of the same rune together and the order of the runes doesn't matter and the original runes still exist for use too. Halfwidths are the bread and butter of speaking any real runic. They're obviously hard to convey as-is in number notation, so we use colons. For example, 12:31 is a halfwidth between rune 12 and 31. That's a halfwidth you're gonna be seeing and using a lot, so you better get used to typing it! I know I sure have
Attached is a link to a Spreadsheet.
DO NOT CLICK ON THE SPREADSHEET IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING RUNEFREE...I think there's only like... one or two Runefree players actually on this forum though so it's fine. If you don't know what that means you are fine.
Anyways,
here's the link.
AGAIN. DO NOT CLICK IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING RUNEFREE thanks.
You'll notice the spreadsheet is not entirely filled out. I know, that is why we are having this test in the first place. Feel free to suggest ideas for what words should fill what spots, or what words are missing from Runic that I could potentially add to this sheet. Thank you.
Finally, I leave you with some starter questions to answer in Runic, or English if in Runic. This is if you have no idea what to talk about :]
~English to Runic:~- How are you today?
- What'd you do over the weekend?
- What's that you got over there?
- So, two trains leave at 6:30 AM, they are 65 miles apart. The first train is moving 25 miles per hour and the second is moving 128 miles per hour. When do they collide? (Note: answer does not have to be accurate)
- Can you tell me a little bit about your favorite science subject?
- I have trapped you in my evil magic cage! Muhahahah!! In order to leave, you must win my dark and evil games. How do you respond?
~Runic to English:~- 12:31 |15:16 26:27 14:15|. 11:16 21:31, 1:32?
- 15? 11 12:31 1:7? 11 12:31 9:7?11 12:31 9:7 4:24?
- 2:12... 11 31:12 1 9:15 31:21 8:22, 2:12...
- 1:10 11 12:31! 12:31 1:10 11 12:31! 6:9!!
- 12:31 1:25 6:18
~Runic to Runic:~- 15 11 12:31 21:31? 4 10:21, 9:31.
- 15 11 21:31 9 |3:9 3:11 3:12|? 9:6 9:31, 12:31 4:16 '|3:9 3:11 3:12|'.
- 1 9. 115:20... 10:21 12:27? 12:31 13:27 12:27. 11 12:31 13:27 12:27?
Have fun, and always remember:
28 12!
~
|4 5 3 1|
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