Re: Optimum number of symbols

Wesley Parish sikyal:

> Any point in asking if there are any conlangers who have built scripts
> similar to the Indian systems?  Monophonemic syllabary, representing
> [character] + /a/, with subscripted or superscripted marking for the other
> vowels, and including a postscripted letter to indicate /aa/?
Yep.  The Yivríndil script, while looking nothing like Devanagri, has a
similar concept behind it.  When written with vowel points, every
consonant is read with a following /a/, and a special muting mark is used
to indicate consonant clusters.  The other vowels all require diacritics,
often in conjunction with another letter.  Final /a/ is written with a
special mark, and all of the other vowels also have word-final variants.

However, Yivríndil is normally written without vowel points, which
complicates things considerably.  Without vowel points, a plain consonant
can represent /Ca/, /Ce/, or /Ci/, and a consonant followed by the
grapheme |y| can represent /Cai/, /Cé/, or /Cí/.  A consonant followed by
|w| is /Co/ or /Cu/, and a consonant followed by |wy| is /Coi/ or /Cui/.
Then there are some silent letters which can only take certain vowels,
used primarily to disambiguate pronouns, and some ligatures for common
letter combinations.

Someday I'll get all this up on my website.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/yiv.htm

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
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--G.K. Chesterton