Alatras

This is another oldie. My very first script that is not based on the latin alphabet. The idea behind this script was to create something that is very hard or even impossible to use. Since the Elven were a sophisticated and complicated people, their language and script were supposed to be that, too.
Alatras words are usually written from left to right, but the sentences are written from top to bottom.


Alatras, the "old language", is the original script of the Elven. Each glyph can be an entire term or a syllable, and some can be a single letter as well. That makes it flexible, but also very hard to speak or read. While it is no longer a living language, it is still often found in names of people and places. Alatras is considered a scholar language. Many mages cast their spells in Alatras as a matter of principle.

Many words are logical or descriptive combinations of glyphs. For example, "iaveer" (dance) is a combination of "ijar" (graceful, elegant) and "veer" (water, movement, sky). Therefore, "dance" is literally translated to "graceful movement".

The meaning of each glyph is defined by its context. Same goes for groups of glyph.
For example: the combination of "veer" (water, movement, sky), "faran" (direction, flow) and "lehin" (fall, down)
The combination "veerfale" (veer-fa-le) means "water falling/flowing downwards" - waterfall.
The combination "vefaranle" (ve-faran-le) means "above direction (direction if viewed from above) down" - south.
My username is a combination of "irove" and "lantale". It means "rough diamond".

While a number of glyphs also have a special meaning when standing alone and without context, this is rarely used.
Symbols are inverted if surrounded by a circle. The symbol for "entrance" surrounded by a circle would mean "exit".