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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

Replies

Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>
Carsten Becker <carbeck@...>
David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>