Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Languages
By Qaeyious
@Qaeyious (2357)
United States
September 25, 2007 2:12am CST
One of my many distractions is developing ciphers - methods of "transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) The most common are in Dell Word Puzzle magazines, "Cryptoquizzes" I think they are called, where one letter is substituted for another, and the challenge is to find which letter is substituting for the other so you can determine the original text.
I prefer more complicated methods. My favorite so far I developed during adolescence. Basically it involved spelling the word phonetically backward, and changing all the consonant sounds from voiced to unvoiced, and vice versa. The liquid consonants L and R were also interchanged, as were the nasals, M and N. Also were H and W, and the vowels A and O, E and I, and U and Y. So my name, phonetically spelled "Maikul" became "Rygeon." Interestingly, "kat" became "dog," and "dog" became "kat"
Last week I had an idea for another system where all the sounds, including the short and long vowel sounds separately, are represented by two vowels. Also instead of spacing between the words, spacing happens at a stress in the sentence. I also use the apostrophe for schwa sounds and mostly unstressed syllables involving liquid or nasal sounds.
I played with the idea with using other alphabets but I never could develop something that I could translate back easily.
Any other cipherists? (my spell check complains - oh well, I like making up new words too)
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