Re: Optimum number of symbols

En réponse à "Mike S." <mcslason@...>:

If anyone *has* designed a
> complete
> syllabic system, I'll bet my hat that it implements markers or some
> similar
> regular device
> to correspond directly to final nasal, vowel length, or some other
> phoneme-level distinction.
> Possibly without knowing it, they are, in fact, conceding the superior
> efficiency
> of the phonemic system.
>
Well, I first had invented a syllabary for my conlang Notya (which has a
phonology about as restrictive as the one of Japanese, so it was easy :)) ),
and it was a true syllabary, without the markers you describe. In a similar
way, my Azak is written with two scripts: an alphabet for the roots and a
syllabary for the grammatical endings. And here again no concession to
the "superior efficiency of the phonemic system", for the simple reason that in
this case a syllabary was far more efficient! (if only to parse correctly the
suffixes in a strongly agglutinating language)

Later I scrapped the syllabary of Notya and made an abugadi instead, but that
was only for aesthetic reasons (the syllabary was dead ugly, and I had just
discovered Devanagari :)) ). On the other hand, I never changed anything of the
Azak scripts. They are ugly too, but no system would fit better the language's
structure (especially not an alphabet. I have a Roman transliteration for use
in e-mail or on Internet, but it requires a constant use of hyphens if I want
it to be readable, to cut the stream of letters into readable and parsable
syllables).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.