I don't have any direct suggestions, just a few resources that may be of use as a basis for ideas:
a system for handling metamagic with special components instead; you don't want too many, but you could perhaps picka few of the best ones and just use those for a lot of spells.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/ma...Components.htm

As for determining dcs/balancing stuffs; while epic magic can be abused; the dc numbers and modifiers used for epic magic stuff conform pretty closely to the ingame spells; so they could be used with some tweaking to get a good sense of what numbers things should be.


The verbal part of your system reminds me of the spell system from dungeon master; easy enough to google, though i didnt' see any systems which contained the explanation of what each symbol (and its associated syllable) meant; i could only find spell lists.