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Pikotika in written form

There are three ways to write any Pikotika sentence. One is for teaching only; the other two are both real writing, and they say exactly the same thing.

Latin — the everyday form

Words are written as they sound, in a 15-letter alphabet:

p t k v s r m n w y   a e i o u

No other letters, and no letter is ever silent (see Pronunciation). Sentences begin with a capital, names are capitalized, and periods, commas and semicolons work as in English. Compounds are written solid, with no hyphen and no space — fish is akupeste, not aku peste.

Gloss form — for teaching, not communicating

In gloss form, each word is replaced by its keyword in your language. It's a temporary measure to help a learner see the roots that make up a sentence, before they have memorized the Pokitona word associated with each root. To be useful, these keywords will necessarily be localized into whatever language the learner already knows. That is why it should never be used to communicate: the person you are writing to may not share your keywords.

Most roots carry two keywords, and a learner memorizes both. One English word can only point at part of a root's range; two point at it from opposite sides — eko is I and me, vin is finish and close, moto is manner and road. Either may be written, so pick whichever fits: road RI finish reads better than manner RI close for ‘the road is closed’.

Han — one character per root

Every root also has an associated Chinese character, and the three particles are written with symbols borrowed from mathematics:

Names stay in Latin and numbers stay as digits, which is part of what makes Pikotika obvious on sight. Unlike Chinese, words are separated by spaces or particles — but a compound is one word and gets no space inside it. Punctuation is as in English.

Han form exists for two reasons:

1. The Han character for each root gives speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) a mnemonic hook to make Pikotika easier to learn — similar to how the Latin/English etymology of each word makes them easier for Western speakers.
2. Han form is considerably more compact, and can be written vertically, which is often convenient on signs, in comics, on T-shirts, etc.

If you have never read Chinese or Japanese this form looks arcane, but you do not need it to speak the language. But if you want to learn it, it's easier than you think — there are fewer than 200 characters in the whole system, and once you have them, it is compact and very fast to read.

Note that in vertical form, none of the characters (including the particles) rotate; they are simply stacked vertically, top to bottom. If there's more than one line of vertical text, these will be arranged right to left, just as in CJK languages.

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