ABCs and Apologies

Creating a new alphabet.

I need to apologize to JRR Tolkien.

I remember the first time I came across the Simarillion, and I clearly remember thinking, "Do we really need to know this much about the world? Just tell me more stories!" I also thought his focus on linguistics and languages was strange for a world he was creating to tell stories for his children.

Friends, these are just a couple examples of how I was young and dumb. The perspective of a few more years and a lot more thought helped me see that, but creating Kabos with my daughter has helped me deeply understand Tolkien.

The stories you tell with the kids are just the beginning. They ask questions and plant seeds that grow wild, fed by youthful invention, and their curiosity can take you wonderful places. Kabos is proof of that.

I've mentioned before that her ideas are slowly accumulating into a history, from the love between two gods that created the world, through the Kingswar that shattered the land, and to the modern day and its threats like Lord Bad and the bicycle pirates. But a big player among them lately has been the Jum, standing in for the role the ancient Egyptians and Greeks play in her understanding of our own history. Some of the earliest children of the Nine Nappers, the first humans, the Jum were eager to learn about the world and became monk-scholar-artists who mastered knowledge now long lost--and some that most definitely is not.

The alphabet evolution chart that inspired us…

Their first appearance in our Kabos stories was when she drew the Circles of Jum-Chi on our map, which she told me was a maze of turning crystal circles, with strange symbols written on the glass walls. 'Clearly an analogue to the Egyptian pyramids', I thought as I wrote notes.

Then the Jum returned when we talked about the stars, and constellations, and calendars. It turns out the Jum were the first ones to study the stars, and they drew the constellations in the stars and gave them their names.

For a week or so we were the Jum, as we talked about how calendars related to the stars and the seasons, and then we were gods as she decided that our calendar was too complicated and that the one in Kabos should have months and weeks and days that are all the same length. And there would be six seasons, one per month, but really only the traditional four or the Season Queen would go crazy.

Then she left me to play monk and solve her problem--which I did, but I think a full explanation laying out the days, months, seasons, and annual festivals of Kabos (and how they connect to her fortune-telling, game-playing coins, as per her request) is another entry.

She came back when it was time to name the constellations, from the Girl, which includes Yokula, star at the sky's celestial north, through the major constellations of the Jum zodiac depicted on the coins like the Plant and the Unicorn and the Bug, through to minor ones like the Seed, the Vulgin, the Apatasaurus, and the Mirror. All 42 of them. She likes naming things.

My Seasons and Constellations table in the MONSTERVORE section of my phone’s Notes app.

And of course, after all that, we decided that since the Jum did all the work they should get some credit--and so the calendar still used in modern-day Kabos is the Jum Calendar.

Then the Jum went missing from our stories for a while--until today. We've talked before about how language evolves, just like animals do, and I showed her a cool chart I found online of how our alphabet evolved from Proto-Sinaitic thousands of years ago to our modern Latin alphabet. A couple months ago, she got into codes for a couple week, and I think the Secret Fox helped her understand even better how symbols can connect to the letters she knows.

Today, looking for something she could doodle during an online class time, she told me, "I'm going to make up an alphabet." So I made a chart for her, and at the end of the class she gave me her rainbow-scrawled symbols. "They aren't letters yet," she said. "We have to evolve them."

Her proto-alphabet.

So we dug up that chart, and spent an hour between classes evolving and formalizing the letters, talking about how people using them would find quicker and more easier ways to write letters, or might use common shapes and strokes as the alphabet evolved.

Working together to start formalizing the glyphs into more regular shapes.

The formalized alphabet.

We also talked about the history of the letters--and since the Jum are both the Egyptians and the Greeks of the world, she decided they both created the proto-glyphs and formalize them. Proto-Jum, and finally, the Jum alphabet still used in Kabos today. They really were clever people, it turns out.

Several generations of evolving the glyphs toward letters and a unified alphabet.

Looking at our papers spread out all over the table, that was when I realized where Tolkien's passion came from--not just telling the heroic tales that broke and shaped a world, but shining a light into minor corners and taking joy in what you find there, so much joy that you can't help but try and share your excitement and passion with the rest of the world, even if it makes you look a bit mad to the young and dumb.

The ‘modern’ Jum alphabet.

“Make another letter chart, but without our letters, so that nobody will know what it means until they study it!”

So, to Professor Tolkien: I finally understand, and I apologize. And to all of you, thank you for coming along on our journey, and sharing in our passionate madness.

Writing her name in her new alphabet.