Re: Optimum number of symbols

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>>>
Most westerners seem to take it for granted that a script where each
grapheme = 1 phoneme is best, i.e. an alphabet of a some 'paltry few' 20 to
30+ symbols.  That view is clearly not universal.  It would interesting to
know if Hanuman Zhang regards our Roman/Latin script as paltry; and Mathias
has shown a healthy questioning of western assumptions.
<<<
um, thank you very much for dropping my name into this muddy water ;-) as a
westerner i'd have to say that phonemic script is more efficient and neutral and
easier (phew!) but i still prefer ideoshoobeegrams (gasp!). of course
chinese/japanese idoobeegrams are far from a bless since their phonemic
components don't help anymore half of the time and they often are puzzling
polysemic like for "china/flower/splendid" or "life/beget/raw". they're usually
more difficult to learn too. but they add something beyond efficiency or
grooviness that's difficult to grasp. i can't think of japanese without kanjis,
that would be a nightmare with so many written homophones. shoobeedoograms are
also handy for deaf people and with them anyone could read your roots in their
respective languages. their universal comprehensibility (i just made up this
one) among so many eastern civilizations proves enough doobigrams' superiority.
like one of my japanese prof once foretold: "kanjis will be a main international
means of communication in the 21st century, even in space"...erm, well, i'd find
anything to justify ideograms in an IAL ;-)
but--ok, honestly i would find it inconvenient to write an IAL with ideograms
unless you're into mystical universal concepts. and even then, why would you
need shebangrams? also you never know what new roots would pop out and then
would you make up other doobeedoogram? that's what japanese did a few times with
"ateji" like "tooge" or "hataraku"--as if there weren't enough chinese ideograms
to express "mountain pass" and "work" :-)

>>>
1. What is the optimum number of symbols?
2. If the optimum number is in the hundreds (or thousands!), what would
each symbol represent?
<<<
isn't an alphabet enough?

>>>
I know some artlangers have devised their own scripts.
3. Have such scripts been alphabetic (like JRRT's Tengawr and Dwarvish
runes), or have you used some other system?
4. Were you motivated by any thoughts of 'optimality' or just doing it for
the fun of creating?
<<<
wow! you really want to start a prolific thread, don't you? :-)
i made alphabetic, logographic, syllabic scripts shaped like arabic, chinese,
burmese, maya, inuktitut, mongol, khmer, coloured, spaghettish, blotted, griddy,
etc. but unfortunately the only conscript i write and read fluently is the first
alphabet i made when i was 12. it's a dumb 14-letter alphabet (i had very few
phonems from the very beginning :-). it's pretty quick to write with although i
didn't mean to make it so--i remember i didn't mean to do anything special when
i made it. it looks very much like the hebrew cursive script (only a coincidence
because i'd never had seen cursive hebrew)--except that it's plain ugly. but
it's still alive and unchanged after almost a quarter of a century.

>>>
Finally:
5. Have any designers of auxlangs and/or engelangs devised a special set of
symbols for their languages? If so, why?
<<<
each Tunu plereme root may be written with a kanji. the cenemes are written with
my dumb alphabet. but i lost the list of the respective kanjis and i can't write
japanese ok anymore without a wordprocessor.

Mathias
http://takatunu.free.fr/tunugram.htm