Re: Non-phonetic alphabets?

>From: Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
>Can anyone here think of a reason for a language to develop a kind of
>non-phonetic alphabet--that is, one having no relation whatever to the way
>it is spoken?
Sorry, it's been done already.  It's called English.  ;)

>The only ways I can think of it might occur are
>- pictograms (not actually alphabetic, but...)
>- a kind of extreme borrowing (the written language borrowed entirely from
>an other, preferably unrelated language).
Other than the obvious Chinese, there's a script out there called
Blissymbolics, which uses a pictographic/ideographic symbol system in many
juxtapositions to indicate many different lexical meanings.  Works a lot
like Chinese too!  I forgot where the homepage was that I found, but do a
Yahoo! search and you'll find some good info.  It's pretty neat, except I
have no use whatsoever for it (I use a modified Arabic with Devanagari-like
borrowings for a personal shorthand).

Danny
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