Re: Received Wisdom on Waponi (LONG)

Re naming, Barry Garcia wrote:
----->I dont know how much help this would be, but perhaps they could be
named
>after some striking feature of the island where they are mostly settled?
>Tagalog is actually from the words "taga ilog" meaning "from the river"
>since originally Tagalogs were centered around one of the rivers in the
>Manila area (IIRC). I took a similar approach with Saalangal, which is
>from the words saal - island + angal - people (no special flowery name
;)).>>

All reasonable ideas.  There's that volcano, of course. Or "people of the
"Great/Strange Ship".   Or "wiNa watsine"........"wiNa fwaka" (that's
awfully close to _fuaka_ 'pig'.  Hmmm.)


Chollie:
>>    As for the writing system, I have an idea.  Let us assume that the
>>original inhabitants of the ship were illiterate, and that literacy, on
>>the
>>island of Waponi Woo, was limited to the Priestly Class for several
>>generations.  Then, some enterprising Waponi, using the texts at hand
>>(which
>>would have been, no doubt, a variety of Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and
>>possibly
>>Ogham) might devise a syllabic system for writing his language -- without
>>any reference to the original meanings of the signs (ala Sequoyah).  The
>>priests would, of course, continue to use Aramaic and/or Ogham, although
>>they might have to adapt the script to accomodate the sounds of Waponi.  I
>>would probably pass these scripts through a Redjang filter to give them
>>the
>>right look.  How does this sound?>
Also reasonable.  Perhaps the ship's log, or a navigational guide, could
become a religious text.

Barry:
>No doubt you should take into account the materials they would use to
>write with, since that would affect the shapes of the letters. In South
>East Asia, the letter shapes for the various scripts were very curvy and
>round because they wrote on bamboo or palm leaves with a stylus (round
>shapes were less likely to tear the cured leaves). >
        Those who wrote on bamboo/wood I think incised the characters, then
rubbed in soot-- so Batak, Redjang are much more coarse and angular than
Javanese, which is very rounded and fine and very detailed, even though it
too may have been incised on the palm leaves.   Buginese resembles Redjang,
and from what I've been told, was written with a reed stylus and soot-ink
(you could also use squid or octopus ink) on palm leaves.  I have a couple
"old" Balinese palm-leaf "books"-- each page about like a 1-ft long section
of mini-blind slat.  Very stiff; I wonder if they mightn't have varnished
them.

>They could use bark
>paper for writing if Broussonetia papyrifera (paper mulberry) is grown on
>the island. Ink could be made from candlenut soot, and pens from whatever
>material is on hand for making pens. But, i dont know how well bark paper
>absorbs ink, so a regular ink made of soot might not work with it. A
>stylus could be used to etch lines into the bark paper, and then soot
>rubbed in, as i believe was done in South India, if they have access to
>metals.>
Paper Mulberry probably grows there.  Bark cloth certainly can be dyed, so
it could probably be written on too. Perhaps not too durable; but then,
nothing is in that climate. So constant re-copying, with each new copy full
of new errors.   No metal, unless by some miracle; but they could use reeds
or quills; or make a sharp stylus with a shell or bone tip.