German with Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja?
From: | Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> |
Date: | Thursday, July 31, 2008, 12:39 |
Hi!
A few days ago I was discussing with a friend that I want to try
making a Hanzi-based writing system for German. German is not really
suited for this, even much less than Japanese. 'not suited' here
meaning it will probably be fun. :-)
My idea was to write the stems with Hanzi and the inflection with some
sort of morphophonological script. I have not decided about
derivational endings, maybe they could be written with Hanzi, too, if
there is some more-or-less clear semantic concept behind it (e.g.
write _-bar_ ('-able') with the Hanzi for _können_ ('be able to/can').
Dunno whether I should use a fully phonological one for inflection,
however, or whether it would be better to use a morphologically-based
system, and maybe a good mix.
One question that arose was whether (and if, how) one should mark
umlauts:
Nouns:
[Hund] dog []=Hanzi
[Hund](e) dogs ()=Script for inflections
[Haus] house
Häus-er?? houses
Or ablauts:
weak verb:
[koch](en) to cook
[koch](t) cooks
[koch](te) cooked (past)
(ge)[koch](t) cooked (perfect participle)
strong verb:
[lauf](en) to run
läuf-t runs
lief ran
ge-lauf-en run (perfect participle)
There is a combination of ablaut+umlaut, even, in the Past Condition
forms, which are usually umlauted from the past forms (with a few
exceptions, of course):
komm-en
komm-t
kam
ge-komm-en
käm-e <- umlauted from 'kam'
And then, irregular form:
[geh](en) to go
[geh](t) goes
ging? went
ge-gang-en gone
Any ideas?
Bye,
Henrik
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