Symese
A script that uses symbols to denote concepts independent of their sounds in spoken language
What is Symese?
Symese (pronounced "sai-mees") is a universal symbolic script that is simple but not simplistic. It has an elegance and coherence lacking in modern pictographic-rooted scripts whose glyphs (symbols or icons), stylised and expanded over time to denote sophisticated concepts, have lost much of their pictographic lineage.
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Rationale
The idea of a universal script that uses symbols to denote concepts independent of their sounds in spoken language is at least four hundred years old.
“Some people, beginning with the philosopher and mathematician Leibniz in the 17th century, even like to imagine that we can invent an entire written language for universal communication… independent of any of the spoken languages of the world, dependent only upon the concepts essential to high-level philosophical, political and scientific communication. If music and mathematics can achieve it, so the thought goes – why not more generally?” (from The Story of Writing by Andrew Robinson, Thames & Hudson 1995)
Sample of Base Concepts
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Philosophy
Without the advantage of historical evolution within a cultural context, a universal script must be simple enough for a non-linguist to learn without undue effort yet versatile enough to express a viable range of concepts, with a core set of glyphs that can be compounded to represent derivative concepts.