Moya Abugida

Author: Carl Buck

MS Date: 01-26-2022

FL Date: 06-01-2022

FL Number: FL-000081-00

Citation: Buck, Carl. 2022. “Moya Abugida.” FL-000081-

00, Fiat Lingua, . Web.
01 June 2022.

a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Fiat Lingua is produced and maintained by the Language Creation Society (LCS). For more information
about the LCS, visit http://www.conlang.org/

Moya is a strictly calligraphic abugida for Kala. Adapted from my oldest script Moj. It can be written left
to right, or vertically, top to bottom. It should be considered the “traditional” script for Kala. Inspired
primarily by Tibetan, and the Masonic Pigpen cipher, it was first created in mid-1999 and has slowly
developed to its current form.

Consonants

The glottal stop character is only used intervocalically. When a vowel begins a word, the “la” character is
used. This does not cause confusion as “l” does not begin words in Kala.

Vowels

Basic Vowels

Labialized

Palatalized

Other Symbols

The plural mark is either /m/ or /lo/ depending on the preceding syllable. Gemination is typically a
product of derivation through compounding and is infrequent. The accusative mark is present in most
phrases with a transitive verb. The negative mark is either /k/ or /ᵑkɛ/ depending on the preceding
syllable.

Examples

iyoma na pasanko
today 1SG feel.ill-PROG
I am not feeling well today.

inkayo huesa namyo tsihuan pako kemamu
this.week company 1PL.GEN project-ACC new work-INCH
Our company will begin working on the new project this week.

Monogram

The above image is a monogram, referred to as yotsakua (the whole face), as it resembles the face of
someone in deep meditation. It includes the strokes for every letter and number of the Moya system.
Older versions contained the diacritic marks, but this version prevails as the stylistic representation of
the monogram. The moyamatse are also visible to the careful observer.

Numerals

Serif

A serif version of Moya was designed by Britton Watkins and is used with his permission.

Moyamatse

Given the calligraphic nature of Moya, the ability to combine certain “letters” to form “words” or at
least parts of words. This practice is called moyamatse, or “mixed writing“. These are a few examples of
common “mixtures”. Keep in mind, these can be modified with vowel diacritics to change the word.

More of these combinations are possible, but the process and result should be obvious with the
examples above.

Calligraphic Variation

Moya lends itself to calligraphic variation and artistic representation.

yama – mountain; hill

maua – flower; bloom

tsa’i – tea

nalo – smile; laugh

tanka – eagle; falcon

manka – cold; cool; chill

Other Styles

Thin Brush

The matsuenka (thin brush) style, used mainly in symbolistic calligraphy (words meant to resemble the
item).