Re: Optimum number of symbols

> Well, I was partly inspired by the hangul system of combining letters
> into syllabic clusters.  The diacritics are historically derived from
> characters that represented consonant-schwa syllables (the classical
> language had just 3 phonemic vowels, whereas the ancestral system it
> comes from had 6, schwa being one of the 3 that were lost).  In Common
> Kassi (the ancestor), to write _kasë_ (ë is used for schwa) you'd write
> simply _ka_ followed by _së_, but to write _kas_, you'd write _ka_ with
> _së_ underneath it.  Eventually, these characters were simplified and
> reduced in size becoming diacritics which go underneath the character.
Ah, that's cool, and efficient! :) It must be a lot clearer to read, than,
say, japanese, where (if, for some cheese forsaken reason, you decided to
write english in it) you'd end up with a lot of vowels between consonants
and be generally confused for a good few minutes...
My friend Jeff's new alphabet thing (I think it's syllabic, but I'm not
really sure) has characters for possessives and plurals and such, but he
only ever uses his to write in English. I thought it was an interesting
idea, but I'm not sure how well that would fare in languages where the
plurals aren't...well...stuck haphazardly on to the end of a word, and he
hadn't thought of it until I asked, so... I'm not sure where I'm going with
this. Time to move on!

> Actually, the Uatakassi syllabry has some variation.  [snip]
Despite the fact that I have trouble wrapping my head around  the rather
mystifyingly erudite way people speak around here... ;) That does make a lot
of sense, and I'm kicking myself for not remembering before. I guess a
syllabic alphabet WOULD have to seperate the syllables the way they're
spoken and not just in sequence.

> Uifkal (book) = u- (gender 6 singular; variant of ua-) ifkal;
>    written U-If-KA-L
> Uafifkali (books) = uaf- (gender 6 plural) ifkal -i (plural);
>    written U-Af-If-KA-L-i; a purely phonemic spelling would be expected
> to be U-A-FIf-KA-LI; however, that would lead to only one of the three
> characters used to write the root remaining the same, as the I would be
> replaced by FI and the L by LI.
> Uifkalaf (of a book) -(a)f = genetive
>    U-If-KA-L-Af - rather than U-If-KA-LAf
> Uatiki (arm) = ua- (Gender 6 sing) tiki
>    U-A-TI-KI
> Uaftikii (arms) = uaf- (G6 pl.) tiki -i (pl.)
>    U-Af-TI-KI-I - rather than the expected U-Af-TI-KIi (i.e., long vowel
> diacritic)
>

Would you then 'spell' things differently for different dialects, then? If,
for instance (please pardon my butchering, I'm simply curious) someone
pronounced "uifkal" with an o instead of an a sound, would it still be
written U-If-KA-L?
On the one hand it makes sense that people would spell a word the way it
sounds, but on the other hand if they pronounced a like o, then they'd read
it as that sound...?
Or something. :)  ( I really have no idea what I'm talking about, but I
WOULD like to know :)

-Kendra
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com/other/theatre -- Vade Mecum (comic)

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