This is an idea I had a while ago while I was reading about flower language. I don't know if it's different elsewhere, but Western flower language is pretty vague. You can put together bouquets to symbolise feelings but you can't really form sentences with that. So I thought to myself, what if there was a language like that? I ended up deciding to use bracelets instead because of the customisation options they offer.
This is very much a work in progress so everything is still subject to change, but here are some ideas I've had so far.
My idea is that each bracelet (or armlet- is there an English word that encompasses both?) encodes a single sentence. I thought of the following factors to determine meaning:
- Shape (bangle, charm bracelet, bead bracelet, you name it)
- Material, both of the base bracelet and of the decorations used
- Placement of the decoration
- Placement of the bracelet (left or right arm, on the wrist, above the elbow, near the shoulder?)
Decoration is the most versatile component here- placement, number, category, color, maybe others I'm not thinking of right now- so it will probably be the "vocabulary", whereas the rest will form the grammar.
Random hypothetical example! Say that left means negated, and wrist means first person. Also say that a single blue glass gem means "to talk", and a wooden bangle means "to want". So, if you wore a wooden bangle with a single blue glass gem on your left wrist, that would mean "I don't want to talk" (or "we don't want to talk" as well, if I end up not distinguishing number).
There are limits to what I can do with this- elaborate subclauses would be difficult to incorporate, I imagine- so this will almost certainly be less versatile than a normal language, but this is intended to be a companion language rather than standalone, so I think that's okay.
Comments, suggestions, feedback?