Algothan was the most common language of the long forgotten nation of Algotha. There are no known native speakers of Algothan alive today. The few who know the language are scholars and even they are not entirely sure how the language would have sounded when spoken.
Unlike many languages that have alphabets or syllabaries, the Algothan writing system is made up of logograms. As a result, there are thousands of symbols to be learned to understand the complete writing system. The earliest found Algothan writings are fairly simplistic, with a small picture of a tree having the literal meaning of tree. As time went on, the system became more varied and the symbols more abstract, with many of the symbols not having an obvious literal meaning, especially symbols representing abstract concepts like love.
Mathematics and Commerce
Algotha's great minds were responsible for some of the great advancements in mathematics. The numbering system used by most cultures comes from Algothan writing. Not only did their numbers work quite well, the system was greatly expanded in commerce. This was done due to early Algotha doing commerce on stone tablets and later with papyrus and leather being expensive to use for writing.
Since a lot of trade was done with bartering, not with a monetary system, the most basic component of commerce was a bag of grain. It went up from there, with a goat, and a horse, and other symbols representing a given amount of grain. Using the Algothan logograms for these things allowed for lots of transactions and calculations to be done in small areas.
A typical transaction log would start with the writer's exchange rate of grain for any other items used and then following that would be many lines of transactions. While some may find the ancient records of Algotha to be primitive, records like these show how much more advanced they were than every other culture of their day.
