Casual Gallifreyan

Gallifreyan "language" (more of a code for us Earthicans) can be a bit of a challenge, especially to design the more beautiful words, sentences, phrases, and paragraphs we see wandering around the internet. These are lovely, but also difficult to do, especially when working by hand. Take this one for example. It's my name:

It took me about twenty minutes to get a good circle, put in the right letters, and erase the extra lines. It's my name. I know how to write my name, so very little of the time is spent thinking - it's spent making it look pretty. It's a bit like learning cursive in second grade, or learning calligraphy as an adult.

So it seems like the Time Lords must have had some type of shorthand, right? A short hand which allowed them to scribble notes to each other without spending hours desperately sand-blasting their message into the floor of some great hall. 

See image here.

Suppose some Time Lord had to desperately get the above message (I'm a little teapot, short and stout; here is my handle, here is my spout, etc., etc.) to another Time Lord and couldn't go back in time to cross her own timeline... Time Lord problems. You know.

So anyway, casual Gallifreyan - that's where I'm going with this. I started experimenting with a handwriting version of this, and while not as pretty, it's a heck of a lot easier. Unless Time Lords were born with the innate and unbelievable ability to draw perfect circles every time, then scribbly handwriting would probably be written in ovals. On the left are the three words in my name (Ariele Joy Sieling). On the right are the same characters written in ovals.

And no I didn't just take a picture of the page from a weird angle.

But then I began to consider the elements that might make one Time Lord's handwriting different from another's. The little dots, for example - some might just do them as dots, others might have the size change, and they can be placed differently as well - mine tend to be in the middle of the letter, but they could be on either edge. It's just like some people cross their t's low or high, some people dot their i's with circles or hearts, and some write in tiny or big letters.

Here is my name written in four slightly different styles. I'm the only one making the words, so the strokes all look the same, but the dots, tidiness, lines, and shapes are slightly different. With other people writing similar words, it would look completely different: 

I intend to keep experimenting with writing quickly, because I think that is really how handwriting is formulated - practice! Here is vaguely what I think my Gallifreyan signature should look like - a 3/4 moon having a seizure: 

For more practice, I wrote "Doctor" repeatedly: 

And of course, as any good Doctor Who fan would do, I tried to invent a signature for the Doctor using the word "Doctor," since we're not allowed to know what his real name is. Of course it should be as messy as a medical doctor's:

I would really like some nerd at the BBC to teach each of the doctors how to write "doctor" in Gallifreyan - then we could see how his handwriting changes, in addition to his face, outfits, and tardis!

Anyway, I intend to keep working on this - practicing my writing, getting faster and better at full sentences (not just words), and figuring out what shortcuts make it easier to write but not confuse the meaning. Stay tuned.

And send me any of your scribblings and I'll include them in my next post!

Practicing Gallifreyan

I've been practicing my Gallifreyan. It's quite fun. But there are some aspects of the not-quite language - it's really more of a code - that make it difficult. For example, a lot of the "rules" are purely aesthetic. How the dots look on the letters, or how long the lines are, can vary depending on mood or your particular style of drawing. It might, however, allow for the Time Lord version of "handwriting" I guess. I also find that the hard part of making sentences (and paragraphs, etc.) is the spacing of the letters. Some groups of words just seem naturally suited to each other. Others are less so. One strategy I've been using is to make the words separately to get an idea of what they look like. Then (because the size of the words can change to make them fit together) I will sketch the rough shapes out to try to get them all to work together.

I also attempted to cut out the shapes, but since you can't really change their shape or slightly move the letters around to make them fit together, it wasn't very helpful.

I have also tried using the computer (PowerPoint, if you must know, as my Photoshop skills are nil) to make the shapes. They are much cleaner, but lack the rough, artistic look of the hand-drawn characters. This one says "Gary." I hope :)

So here are my first to basic attempts at writing full sentences in Gallifreyan. This says "Give me liberty or give me death" (more or less).

And this one says "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first, invent the universe." Also more or less.

I highly recommend learning it. The alphabet/code is an easy learn and there are lots of resources online (http://timeturners.wikidot.com/circular-gallifreyan). And it looks cool. At very least, all you Whovians should figure out how to write your name!

31 Days of Planets: Gallifrey

Day 3: Gallifrey

I think there may be more orange on Gallifrey than on any other planet in the universe. If you image search "Gallifrey," you see a lot of orange. Now some of you may be wondering, "Gallifrey? Where is that?" It is located in a binary star system in the constellation Kasterborous, at "galactic coordinates 10.0.11 x 02." That is approximately 250 million light years away from Earth, probably within the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex.

I have never been to Gallifrey, but I hear it is beautiful - fields of red grass, mountains that shine with silver-leafed trees, and from the outside, it is so very orange. The reason we know about this planet, is because the Doctor, a Gallifreyan (also an alien), is really great about protecting Earth from impending aliens of doom.

Gallifrey is also called The Shining World of the Seven Systems.

Its inhabitants, the Time Lords, live for thousands of (human) years.

In conclusion, Gallifrey... is fantastic.

Pictures from http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_Wiki

Images of Gallifrey

David Tennant's famous quote is: "The sky is a burnt orange, with the Citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever... slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow..."

So I found pictures. I thought that even if we can't know exactly what it looks like, a combination of them all might give us a sense.

This one is just beautiful. I think this is the kind of image 10 had in his mind at the time of his quote.

This is pretty, with the snow, and the two suns. No red grass though.

Evil Time Lord overlooks his barren planet that is stricken by war. 

All of this images have an orange sky; but how do you make it look like it's not on fire?

It's interesting how the Doctor focuses on the citadel, and makes it seem so big, but compared to a planet, any citadel would be quite small. This picture makes it seem tiny... but giant at the same time.

It also looks like it's all about to go up in flames.

This is pretty, but somehow I can't imagine 10 and Rose going back and skipping through the fields of a planet that went up in flames and caused the Doctor so much distress.

This one is an interesting depiction, much more devoid of detail and more concept based. 

Also, the sky is orange, but obviously not on fire.

I like this one because it clearly depicts the two suns.

Also, this version of the planet has water.