Words: Endless Memorization?

Thousands of Combinations?

You might be wondering if Majok requires the memorization of thousands of glyphs, similar to Chinese or Japanese. Well, you're half correct. These lessons do list countless glyphs and glyph combinations. But as long as you memorize the 22 base glyphs, you can probably write most anything in Majok!

"Wait, what?"

Yes, all other words can be made by combining the glyph and meaning of those 22 base glyphs; you do not have to write things the same way as presented in the lessons; these lessons provide the most commonly used variant of a word, but are only suggestions. As long as a combination of glyphs make sense, it's valid. Here's an example with another combination for "snow".

This makes Majok similar to a game of charades or taboo; you try to convey something by describing it, and there is no "right" way of describing the thing.

Combining? 

As you may have noticed, new words are made by combining other glyphs and words. The resulting new glyph can only have up to four base glyphs (note: jishek: "into" and toshek: "out of" are considered single base glyphs).

Order or Rules to Combining?

Each quarter of a glyph must contain at least half and at most one base glyph; acceptable patterns are listed below. (Note that for four glyphs, order is usually naturally specified by it's components, but can be indicated by embellishing the first and second glyphs.)

If you are using a glyph / word that you've already used or you often use, and it's already made of combined glyphs, you must use it as is (e.g. if you're combining another glyph to the end of a glyph that matches the side-by-side 2-glyph pattern, your only option is the last 3-glyph pattern, where the third glyph is the bottom half).

Also, it's more common to just write the fourth glyph off to the side with a join character (see below: Longer Words) if combining it with a 3-glyph pattern. 

Besides that, all that matters is if it makes sense and you like how it looks! Here's some ways you can write "snow" (assuming you haven't used the word "rain" yet).

Reading Words

If you have created a word, the result is pronounced by reading the component glyphs in the combined order. But since names can quickly become quite long, they are often shortened by taking the first syllable of the 1st and 3rd glyph and second syllable of the 2nd and 4th glyph, so that the resulting name has four syllables. The younger generation commonly shortens even more. For example, "snow": Panil-Hisis-Egar -> Pasis-Egar -> Piseg

Longer Words

If more than four base glyphs are necessary, simply write the components next to each other (instead of combining them) and add a join character under the spaces between the components. (The join character is usually not used in block print.) The "changer markings" (see: Shortened Words) are either placed above the last glyph, or above the center of the word. The resulting word is read by simply reading the names of the components. Words tend to be four components or less. Here's an example of how you could write "chocolates": loHiwish Mishek-Hiwish wiMishek-Asud Mishek -> loHimish Hiwimish Amish

Embellishments

When writing in script, some glyphs are commonly given embellishments when combined into a single glyph. Here's a short list of some common embellishments:

They're optional and mainly for decoration, but can help differentiate between similar combinations, or show that separate combinations share a common theme. Here's an example with the glyphs for "cloud", "rain", and "body of water". Notice how the first two share the same embellishments, which I personally chose because both are related to weather.

Next Lesson: Basic Sentences