What's this, an artificial language? What's that doing here, where did it come from? Well, it's another one of my crazy ideas, and I'm glad you asked.
Back around 1983/1984, I volunteered to work at a Haunted House one Halloween. In volunteering to work at this Haunted House, I was tasked to come up with a room theme that would scare the bejeezus out of your typical teen patron. Well, I came up with a Demon Summoning. Not just any old Demon Summoning mind you. This Demon Summoning was going to include some rather original props, and a bit of audience participation. This language was one of those props. It was created for the person playing the 'Demon Summoner'. Rather than using English to summon a Demon, it seemed to me that the Summoner ought to speak some arcane language of forbidden lore. Thus, Hallowese (For Halloween) was born. The characters (of the language) were used as props throughout the room, and each character had a phonetic pronunciation used during the incantation of summoning. I came up with a rather humorous summoning text and converted it to Hallowese. Summoning the great Demon Mary Poppins, to bring me a Ham on Rye, became the inside joke for myself and all those who worked our room.
The room was a hit. The actors placed into the crowd scarred the crap out of the patrons, and the summoning seemed so much more real with the Hallowese incantation. Not only were hundreds of teenage girls scared into the arms of their boyfriends, we won the award for best room. We (myself and everyone who worked the 'Summoning Room') had a fantastic time, and earned a bunch of money for the non-profit sponsors of the Haunted House.
I had such a good time, I worked there the year after. But that's a different story altogether. In either case, now you know what Hallowese is, and where it came from. I'm not sure why I saved it, but I liked it so much I've used it on occasion as a prop in my D&D campaign. Perhaps you'll find some use for it as well. In either case, I hope you enjoy Hallowese.
Mathematical language. Feel free to use standardized Arabic,
Roman, and or Greek notations as necessary. There is no
Hallowese number set.
Some technical details: As far as artificial languages go, Hallowese is something of an oddity. It wasn't created as a communications method so much as it was meant to add flavor to a theatrical presentation (see above for more details on the origin of Hallowese). Because of it's nature, Hallowese in practice is a transliterative language. One would write a phrase in his/her native language, and then convert that into Hallowese. The result could be spoken and/or written (in Hallowese). English to Hallowese transliterations would of course differ from a German to Hallowese conversion. The written and spoken results would be completely different.
Keep in mind that Hallowese was created as a pronounceable transliterative language. In other words; The translation process should be based on pronunciation of the words in question. Translation could be performed intuitively, or by formalized pronunciation methodology. I use the intuitive method myself. It's far quicker, less complicated, and doesn't require a degree in linguistics.
Transliteration from pronounced english words into Hallowese doesn't have to be complicated. Simply sound out the words in their native language (provided it's not something consisting of clicks, hisses, and other guttural utterings), and select the Hallowese characters that correspond to the appropriate sounds. The result will be a Hallowese character string. That character string can then be pronounced by grouping together the accumulated sounds of the formed words.
Since I originally posted this web page, I've noticed a marked interest by universities and students of linguistics. I've even noticed that Hallowese has been included in the curriculum of some university linguistic programs. While it wasn't my intention to create a true artificial language with technically formalized rules, I am surprised by the level of interest. I will provide feedback and update this web page as necessary, in order to help those who are 'studying' this 'language'.
Creation of the Hallowese Font: On the weekend of Mother's Day (May 12-13, 2012), the company that allows you to make your own handwriting into a font (Your Fonts) gave away free fonts to all previous customers. I took advantage of that offer and converted one of my favorite 'Languages' into a font. If you're familiar with Hallowese, you know that it's a transliterative language that I created for use in a Haunted House skit on/around Halloween of 1983. I've got a web page where you can read all about it. Well, for many years I've had to render Hallowese by hand. Now (thanks to 'Your Fonts') I've got an actual Hallowese font on my computer. I created the font using the 'Your Fonts' website.
The website walks you through the seven step process in a pretty straight-forward manner. First you have to download some blank templates. Then you hand write your version of the characters into the downloaded template. This completed template then serves as the basis for your personalized font. Once you've got a perfectly filled in template, you scan it and save it as a JPG. It took me NUMEROUS tries to get it right, but I eventually managed to complete the template. I couldn't get all the characters correct on a single template, so I partially filled out eight templates. From that collection, I used GraphicConverter to cut and paste a perfect copy. Once you've got a perfect copy, you upload it to their website. After a preview, you pay $9.95 (This copy was free for me) for the basic font, and download it from their website.
Unfortunately, the naming and copyright options on their website are broken. No matter what you enter for the 'Font Name' and 'Font Copyright' they come out as 'Your Font' and 'Made with yourfonts.com. Copyright © 2012 YourFonts. All rights reserved.' I emailed them regarding this problem (all fonts made with the online 'Your Fonts' font generator have the same 'Font Name' - I'm not talking about the file name. We're talking about the 'Font Name'. That's the name that your operating system uses in order to install and manage the font. If all the fonts have the same name they're duplicates, and that causes some serious problems on most computers (mine included).
After downloading the font, I found that I need to execute a considerable amount of clean-up and modification. I had to correct the size of the characters, the shape of the characters and many other properties of every single character. My handwriting sucked! I downloaded numerous font applications (about 10 different applications) for my Mac (trial versions and free software). It took me considerable time to find the right combination of applications (I couldn't find one app that did everything I wanted) and learn how to properly operate the software in order to make all the necessary changes. After several hours (appx 20 hours total) of work, I finally managed to produce a usable font for my Hallowese language. I double-clicked to install it on my Mac. Now I've got an awesome new font for use with various applications (like my D&D campaign). I've even made the font available for download. I hold the copyright on this font (thanks to Your Fonts for providing the online font generation capability) and ask that if you download and use the font, that you not use it for any commercial purposes whatsoever.
If you've written anything about Hallowese, I'd really like to read it. Please send me a copy.
Download a copy of the Hallowese font: Hallowese-Regular_v6.ttf (It's free for non-commercial use)
Template of Hallowese characters. Font and Language are Copyright: Robert L. Vaessen.
Feel free to email me with your questions/comments regarding Hallowese.
Author: Robert L. Vaessen e-mail:
Last Updated:
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