Re: Optimum number of symbols

~Patient is the procrastinator.~

>From: Kendra <kendra@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>Subject: Re: Optimum number of symbols
>Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 14:08:07 -0700
>
(snip)
>The idea of diacritics for something other than vowels interests me! I
>probably never would have thought of that on my own. Do any ('natural')
>systems use something like that? (I can only write fictional ones, which
>might be the source of my problem.)
Well, for conlangs, Esperanto is a very good example. It ONLY uses
diacritics on consonants (examples: cx, gx, hx, where x represents ^ above
the letter. Also, as far as natlangs ("natural languages"), french has a c
with a diacritical mark (as in Francoise). At least I think so, though I am
not a French speaker.
>
>Also, Is there any evidence that syllabic writing systems might be more
>intuitive to create?
There is a linguistic theory that all alphabetic writing systems developed
from syllabic ones, though this was never proven. Also, it depends very much
on the language. Japanese, for example, is a perfect language for a sylabic
writing system (it does have one) because it has a very limited number of
phonemes and the always fall in very regular combinations. For example, the
word "katakana," the name of one of its alphabets, is written ka-ta-ka-n-a.
However, Englsh, on the other hand, has thousands of possible sylable
combinations, and would be very hard to learn if it were written
sylabically.
>I say this mostly because the roman alphabet is named (ay, bee, see, dee,
>ee, eff, gee, etc...)
All the Roman letters were originally named as the sound and "eh" (from
bet), but english pronounces them as it does because of a glide. The letter
"h" comes from the french who named that letter by its shape (there is no
french phoneme for [h]).
Once again, anyone correct me if I'm wrong on this, it's only what I've
read.
>I would agree that syllabic systems are easier to learn (i've retained a
>remarkable amount of Hiragana and Katakana and can read it somewhat,
>despite
>having never actually used it,) though cumbersome when 'importing'
> >words...
Once again, those alphabets are wonderful for Japanese, but I dare you to
try writing French in katakana! Sylabic writing is VERY case sensitive by
language, and could not be half as versatile, as, say, the Roman alphabet
has been.

Jake

~Patient is the Procrastinator.~

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