so i may have possibly done a full breakdown of the circular on the doctor’s cot. oops. before we start, let’s talk about the cot. it has the doctor’s name on it. it also doesn’t have the doctor’s name on it. bit of an oxymoron, right? until you remember a certain gallifreyan nursery rhyme whose subject, as it so happens, became part of the doctor. this is the first two lines of it: zagreus sits inside your head/zagreus lives among the dead. now, in gallifreyan, that looks like this:
der’zagreus reialíca reyosticorás
der’zagreus sorofizuryica firyoas
the fact that the translation rhymes is, i would like to add, a point of immense pride for me. the literal translation of that works like this:
[name: zagreus] [hivemind][one part][you][physical] [be][they (pt 1)][anti-time][of and necessary to the functioning of][they (pt 2)]^[inside of]
[name: zagreus] [alternate][removed][death][several (more than 7)][physical] [life][they]^[with]
gallifreyan is not a simple language. mind you, that’s not the only way to say it, either in structure or morphemes, but it’s both the most accurate and the closest way to say it verbally to the way that the written form is constructed, so that’s the one i’m giving you.
there are several gallifreyan writing systems. the one we’re working with here is simplified patrex circular. yeah, you heard that right: simplified. believe me when i say you wouldn’t want to see the traditional form.
in circular, while loanwords and names are spelt out, the majority of it is logosyllabic, each part of the larger complete circular sections (of which there are five) constituting one of those morphemes, or rather, several different morphemes, the intended of which can be divulged via context, or, even better, telepathy. this orthography is something of a simplification; as you can see, there are nine sections in this example: the two tiny ones that sit unconnected from the others, on either side of the centre circle, are linked to that. it’s not allowed in spoken gallifreyan, but if it was, that centre circle and its satellites could be transliterated as der’zagreusticora: [name: zagreus][anti-time][of and necessary to the functioning of]. “anti-time”, in gallifreyan, is sticor, which is a combination of sti ”negative” and cor “time”. because sticor is a satellite of zagreus, it’s not necessary to say reyosticorás; reyoas works just fine.
the two incomplete circles are words which are not actually words: in spoken gallifreyan, prepositions are purely telepathic. in written gallifreyan, they aren’t necessarily required, but they tend to make it a bit prettier. aesthetics are very important to the patrexes.
now this is where it gets complicated. this is written is a very specific way: the two lines are connected from the central circle, zagreus, with complex/temporal (consisting of two circles) directional modifiers used in a somewhat… esoteric way: denoting word-order. the higher directional modifier is read first, so you would read this centre-to-left, then centre-to-right. the word zagreus itself is read interior-outwards, with the vowels read the same way. because zagreus is a being of anti-time, the vowels are also arranged in such a way that they’re read anticlockwise. this is not a requirement, it’s just a patrex thing. at the very centre is some ornamentation to ensure that the centre circle is indeed the largest. after that we see the z-based morpheme. za is the guard caste, and thus connected to life and death (in written form, life, or fir, differs from death, zur, by lacking another circle inside the circle that has the connecting circle. we don’t see zur used at all in the written form of this rhyme, oddly enough). this shape is also used in a more metaphorical way in der’, making it translate more as “being” than “name”. for another word, then, this would be read as an existance morpheme. with the der’ satellite, however, we know that this is simply the letter z. attached to the z is the vowel a:
the next consonant is r, taken from the form which would in another context mean “hivemind”, rei. then we see the vowels i and u, without a consonant dividing them. the line which crosses the entire circle is our last consonant, s, which is linked to movement in alternate timelines and variation/mutation in the web of time (so) and separation (sei). the full name is surrounded by the logograph denoting space, cel, which closes the name and shows that it’s a physical being.
next up: reialíca; “your mind”. here we have a simple/spatial (consisting of a single circle) directional modifier, with [s] on both sides, here denoting separation. fir appears here clarifying that this separated thing is alive, rather than a clump of psychic profile in the matrix. these are superimposed on the vowel i, here used metaphorically. i denotes second-person: “your”. then we have another directional modifier, inside a thick band, meaning that the you the rhyme is speaking of is a member of a chapter, and not an outsider or celesti. next, rei.
the semicircle has at its centre the cel morpheme, surrounded by the modifier denoting that there is an action, enclosed itself by another cel. “inside”.
the last on the left is reyosticorás, or perhaps more properly reyoas. at the center, cel, with a simple directional modifer: “above”, enclosed by a thick band which specifies that “above” as more properly “on top of”, with an action modifier around it: about as close as you’re going to get as “to sit” in the metaphorical use we see in the english version of the rhyme.
the [s]s we see between reialíca and reyoas aren’t strictly necessary, something between ornamentation and technically grammatical indication of movement.
now back to centre. i have to apologise for a mistake here: in this first right-hand circle i accidentally used red where i should have used hot pink and hot pink where i should have used light pink. this was the last circle i coloured, and i didn’t feel like starting over. at the centre, fir. next we have a complicated logograph: a half-circle of cel with lines of [s] on each end, denoting seperation, and a complex directional modifier linking that with the action modifier: this translates to something close to “once-living persons from an alternate timeline which has been removed from the web of time”. in english, you’d just say “dead”.
and then back to proper colours, with another preposition. at the centre, fir, enclosed by cel, with an [s] linking a directional modifier sitting outside of the semi-circle, denoting the fact that while connected (alternate and parallel are, after all, different things, although gallifreyans follow this through a bit further than humans do), the being in question (zagreus) is not inside or part of, but in association with the dead.
the final circle is another example of the patrexes being a bit opaque. action modifier, with two “a”s linked to it. as with the i in the other line, this isn’t meant literally. a is the base for a subject. enclosed by cel, this circle doesn’t exactly translate out to firyoas, but we got that indication of life in the preposition. this is just the pronoun, really.
tl;dr writing and reading circular gallifreyan when you’re not telepathic consists mostly of guesswork and weeping.
