Symese - Universal Symbolic Script

By: Tim Lee

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Paperback | 10 October 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
284 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
25.4 x 20.32 x 1.96

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$33.00

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Is it possible to express ourselves with symbols independent of their sounds in spoken language? To denote basic concepts using a reasonably small set of symbols, with a pictographic link to what each represents, that can be augmented or compounded to represent more complex concepts? To capture the poetry of words in the sound of silence? Yes, it is!

This book presents an outline blueprint for Symese, a universal symbolic script that is simple but not simplistic, with an elegance and coherence lacking in modern pictographic-rooted scripts. Symese is a writing system whose semiotics turns traditional alphabet-based linguistics on its head.

My quest has been inspired by how the Chinese script bridges many spoken dialects and appear even in other languages like Korean and Japanese. Notwithstanding syntactical and semantic differences in the use of Chinese characters across dialects and languages, can we achieve today on a global scale what ancient civilisations did at a local level? Yes, we can!

Industry Reviews

"The creation of an entirely new script is a rare event. Academics rhapsodize about how an illiterate Alaskan genius, Uyaquq, invented a script to communicate in his central Alaskan language Yup'ik. The Cherokee genius Sequoyah became famous for inventing a script for his native tongue which survives today. But Tim Lee is even more ambitious. Uyaquq and Sequoyah created scripts for their own languages. Symese could become a medium of communication uniting all cultures. In quest of this noble aim, Tim's claim to have developed a rigorously logical and intuitive system of communication deserves to be examined."

- Michael Cook, Author & Journalist

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