Considering that we can have different levels of complexity in scripts, being them alphabets (one letter per symbol), syllabaries (one syllable per symbol) and logograms (one word per symbol), is there any script, natural or constructed, that can represent an entire sentence per symbol? Is it even possible to compress information to such a level?

I've been trying to think in ways this could work out, but I'm not sure if it can even be done yet. If something comes out I'll post here

One sentence is one idea basically. There are symbols for ideas.

Or do you mean for just for MtG use?

I'd say that certain symbols or artworks could represent full sentences, but only loosely. A white flag says a lot, but different interpreters would "translate" it as slightly different sentences. A painting would be much more complex than a simple symbol, but could get across pages of information about a given concept.

I think OP might be a spambot (my apologies if I'm wrong), but the question is really interesting. I think it would be possible to construct such a script, but the best way I can think of would be to make different parts of the symbol represent different parts of the sentence, but then you are basically just using logograms but attaching them to each other, which almost seems like cheating.

Holy ****, George Harrison is alive, and he's learning to code.

Its my understanding that stenographers like court recorders often have shorthands for common phrases, so that they can represent a phrase like "ladies and gentlemen of the court" with a single chord. the representation of the chord as a symbol would normally be done using a combination of letters, though.

signs sometimes convey ideas complex enough that it might require a sentence to convey the idea, although at that point a word could often come to do the same. as an example, for someone unfamiliar with magic terminology basically means "turn this card sideways", but in addition to creating a symbol to describe that sentence, they also adapted the word tap to mean the same thing, so the idea can now be described with a single word just as easily.

words and letters or words and syllables are probably categorically different in the sense that words typically represent entire ideas whereas letters and syllables are typically meaningless on their own and just used to construct words, which then represent ideas. A sentence is then a combination of ideas presented in sequence that conveys a more complex idea, but there's no reason any arbitrary sentence couldn't be represented with a single word (or a single symbol). Realistically people can probably only remember or use a limited quantity of symbols though, and so in a system where symbols represent ideas only the most commonly expressed ideas will become symbols, with the less commonly expressed ideas probably being expressed via a combination of ideas represented by symbols.

what arggh said reminded me about the galifreyan language from doctor who, which basically just ciphers roman characters into a magic circle type shape

This was definitely a bot. I have removed the url that it edited into its post and banned the bot, but if you folks would like to continue with the discussion, be my guest.

Go Go Gadget Linguistics!

- GobO_Gadget

The trademark, copyright and rights reserved symbols convey an idea hieroglyph-style. I think they're considered punctuation though. When do us regular folk get our new punctuation?


I feel this turn of events is probably a good sign of a functioning online community.