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Re: To Amber (wasRe: beautiful scripts

From:SuomenkieliMaa <suomenkieli@...>
Date:Saturday, October 13, 2001, 7:46
sorry, ignore this... I went to reply but hit the send
key!!

--- Amber Adams <amber@...> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 06:35:03AM -0700, > SuomenkieliMaa wrote: > > Hi Christophe, Amber, > > Hi! > > > At the moment, I'm learning Thai "for the fun of > it." > > I'm glad to see other people have the same twisted > idea of fun as me. :) > > > You may know that Thai, albeit a completely > separate > > language from Khmer, has imported a large bulk of > its > > vocabulary (and customs, it seems) from Cambodia. > > Yes, and vice-versa, as Cambodia's influence faded > and Thailand's grew, > many words entered Khmer from Thai as well. > > > Occasionally, I have glanced over this quite > consise > > manual of Khmer hand-writing I picked up this > summer > > while on vacation in Phnom Penh -- it does > resemble > > Thai in a lot of ways, and Thai, if you ask me, is > a > > piece-of-cake to master. > > I'd like to know your secret, then. ;) > > I've looked at the Thai script, and I couldn't make > any sense of it, > due to the similarity of the characters, both in > their shapes, and in > that there seem to be multiple characters for the > same sound. > > This bothers me about Khmer, as well. Because of > sound changes, the > 'ka kha ga gha' arrangement of brahmi-spawn has > become 'ka kha ko kho,' > with no apparent rhyme or reason (other than > tradition) as to when to > write a word with the a-vowel and when to use the > o-vowel. > > > After a couple of weeks focusing on the > mind-boggling > > manner in which the Thais write, you do catch on > > quickly! Let me tell you that, from the > perspective > > of a Westerner, Japanese 3-layered kana/kanji > script > > still takes the medal as "most difficult to master > > reading/writing"! After nearly 10 yrs (half of > which > > I've lived/worked in the country), I'm almost > ready to > > comfortably read a newspaper in Japanese... > > Aww, Japanese isn't so bad. Learning the kana > systems is no worse > than learning any other foreign system of writing > really, it takes some > time but it's not anything horribly painful. Of > course, the kanji are > another matter. However, in that, I don't think > that Japanese is any > worse than Chinese, or any other language that uses > characters. Characters > are just a headache. > > > By the way, my half-hearted attempt at my conlang > > (Vya:a:h) has left me stumped. The script appears > a > > pseudo-Khmer script written in form of Hangul, but > > also incorporates the Chinese/Japanes system of > > pictograms for up to the 500 most common concepts. > > I'm stumped, however, with how to keep the > > "3-to-an-inverted-triangle-set" concept I want, > > I had a thought about this, my inspiration came from > the way that Chinese > characters seem to cram in increasingly complicated > radicals into the same > space. Why don't you just squish the characters > down? > > For example, a basic word might just use three > simple symbols, arranged in > an inverted triangle. However, the nice thing about > inverted triangles is > that you can make a larger inverted triangle out of > three smaller ones. > So what if in the case of a word using 9 symbols, > you wrote three triangles > in the same pattern as the basic word, only each one > was much smaller, > squashed into the space meant for a single > character? That would mean that > some of your words would be much "denser" than > others (kind of like the look > of various Chinese characters on a page) but you > would preserve the > look of one triangle for one character.
===== Matt (suomenkieli@yahoo.co.jp/@yahoo.com) #205-4-27-4 Izumi, Suginami-ku, Tokyo 168-0063 Japan Home tel/fax: +81-3-5938-6733 Matthew E.H. Swadener Nikko Salomon Smith Barney Securities, Ltd. Work tel: +81-3-5293-7233 (direct) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com