Re: Hi, I'm a new guy... not in the face!

From: "Hiro M."

> Anyway, the language I'm attempting to design is
> basically a
> synthesis of the Japanese and Korean languages. I
> already have the
> sounds mapped out, and now I'm working on a script.
> The script is similar to Japanese in that it's a
> syllabary, and
> similar to Korean Hangul in that its words are made up
> of letters
> arranged in a block format. This is where I've run
> into a problem:
> how do I arrange these letters in a word?
Well, the way kana are written is determined from the Chinese characters
they were derived from, ie. Chinese stroke order. And while I don't believe
Hangul letters are derived from Chinese characters (I've heard they were
based on the shapes of the mouth, but I don't know if this is an urban
legend), the way they are assembled follow the basic tenets of Chinese
stroke order. So you might want to use stroke order as your springboard as
well. Left before right, top before bottom. Great if nothing exceeds four
syllables, you just break your blocks into quadrants. But as Christophe
rightly points out, it'll get dicey if your language allows words like
"tabesaseraremashita". Nine syllables. Now calligraphy training paper breaks
the block into a tic tac toe grid, so it would fit there, but those are
mighty big blocks. Shrink the boxes down to the size that is found on
ordinary school essay paper (don't remember the exact number, but it's
something like 300 per page), and getting nine syllables in there would
resemble the great Chinese feat of carving an entire Chinese classic tome
onto a thumbnail-sized piece of ivory. And as Adam pointed out a while back,
even when innocuous 20+ stroke characters run up against a gooey printer or
an aging Xerox, they become all but illegible, and only context gets you
through. You don't want that, I imagine.

You might try morphemes instead of words. It'd retain your orginal intent
(as many words are morphemes an sich, but not all morphemes are words) and
would break long words down into intelligible, bite-sized chunks. So
"tabesaseraremashita" would become:
tabe-sase-rare-mashita
eat-causative-passive-polite past
(you could even break "polite past" down further, I suppose, but I'm having
trouble determining whether it should be "ma-shita" or "mashi-ta" [it all
seems so tightly intertwined], and besides three syllables wouldn't break
the bank). That way, many words and most word roots would get into one block
with affixes trailing along as you please.

Otherwise, get out your magnifying glass and micropen and go nuts. Writing a
shopping list will look like a cloistered monk writing in illuminated
letters.

(P.S. Just went to the links you posted. I imagine whatever you decide, even
if it doesn't look Hangul-ish, it will have a Hangul-ish feel or run on
Hangul-ish principles, but then I'm having trouble thinking outside the
box.... [pun unintended, but hey, we'll take it]).

Kou

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