The Making of Somka
How the Code became a language: what came first, how it was drafted, who checked it, and who owns it now. Each entry is dated. New entries are added as things happen, never before.
How it was made, plainly
The forty-eight signs came first, as ornament for the book. A small program models a broad-nib pen and draws them; every sign on this site is drawn by the same program.
The sounds, the grammar and the first 150 words were drafted in the ten days before the book was published. The author chose what to keep and approved it. Nothing in the language was published without his approval.
Native readers of Arabic and Persian review the script before it is used in public, because its hooks resemble Arabic letterforms.
From November a professional linguist owns the language and reworks it.
Somka is invented, for a novel. It is not an ancient language, a secret tradition or a sacred script.
The language is drafted
With the book ten days from publication, the sound values, a grammar sketch and 150 words were drafted. The rule was that every mark already printed had to stay true: the five signs on the back cover had to read as the book’s own tagline, and the chapter signs had to be words their titles could gloss.
The author chose the values and approved the core.
Approved, with changes
The author approved the language core with a handful of changes that keep the books’ own questions open: a phrase lost its answer and kept only its question, and the last row of the course became The Walker.