Re: Language of Tetril

Heather Rice wrote:
>
> That is a really cool script. I like your idea about
> the script reflecting waves of water.
>
> I am looking forward to seeing the phonetic
> equivalents and how you put the script together.
I am working on it. It's just that I had the idea and wanted to see how the
script looked, before I developed the acual language/ But I am working on it
as we speak...

> One question, do these elves HANDwrite the script?
Yes, typically.

> If they do, how do they keep each hump and valley looking
> sufficiently different from the next without it all
> running together?  Do they have some sort of set of
> lines, like a music staff, on which to write the
> script?
Well, children use a pencil guidline in the center. Each charcter starts and
end on this guideline, and although the wave may cross a guideline in
mid-character, it can never fall flat on the line in mid-character. There
are two exceptions, but they are actually combinations of earlier simpler
glyphs.

> Or, I suppose, if these elves are so good at
> studying the water ripples, maybe this skill is used
> for reading and writing.
Well, only the priest really know how to translate between the writing and
the water bowls. For the average intellectual elf who knows how to write
(literacy is fairly high thouhg, among elves on Almaran), it is just a
script like any other.

> But what if someelf wants to write something in a hurry?
Well, the elves recognzie the specific pattern of words like you would
recognize a signature. The only complication is that the language itself is
quite inflecting, so that a little dip instead of a peak might mean the
difference between past and future tense.

Maarten