Valyrio Bardion: Logograms
High Valyrian logograms come in several different varieties. The simplest ones are very literal – they are visual representations of the objects (or actions) they represent. Examples for these would be:
| bartos | dēmagon | ondos | qilōny | vala | zaldrīzes |
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It does not take a lot of fantasy to see that these mean “head”, “to sit”, “hand”, “whip”, “man” and “dragon”, respectively. Generally speaking, these simple logograms make up a relatively small part of the characters used to write High Valyrian, but they are important because they are building blocks used to create the more complicated logograms. These are about the same size as the simple ones, but consist of one or more of them combined in various forms. Some examples:
| āeksio | gūrogon | kepa | nēdenka | sēnagon | zīragon |
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“Man” and “whip” are combined to create “lord” or “master”. The symbol for “hand” is used in the symbol for “to grasp”, the one for “man” in “father” and “head” and “dragon” combine to form “brave”, while “body” and “knife” become “to kill” and a symbol for change and “snow” combine into “to freeze”. One of the common elements used in the creating of new logograms is a circle or a square being used to enclose another logogram. This usually means the new sign has a related but probably more abstract meaning (especially in the case of the enclosing circle, which is usually more abstract than the enclosing square). This is used – for example – in relexicalized paucal and collective nouns, but also to create adjectives. Very rarely, you’ll find a doubling of the symbol instead, for example in these cases:
| blēnon | blēnun | mentys | mentyn |
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There are quite a few of these combined characters, and they make up the bulk of logograms in High Valyrian. There are, however, some cases where two logograms are used to represent one concept. One example – “dorzalty” – I already mentioned above. It consists of the logograms for “no/not” – a raised hand – and the logogram for “to burn”:
Other examples include verbs that contain the compound “emagon”, which is a verb on its own that means “to have”. For example, “sÅvemagon” – “to make fly”:
Very, very rarely, there are also combinations of three characters, but so far, the only example for it is “dovaogēdy” – “the Unsullied” – a combination of “no/not”, “dirty” and “man”:
Although even in this case, the latter two logograms might be combined into one, to shorten it.