Re: Featural scripts (was Re: Now trying to decide on a Tech abjad/alphasyllabry....)

Staving Jorg Rhiemeier:
>Hallo!
>
>On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 22:36:58 -0600,
>Danny Wier <dawiertx@...> wrote:
>
> > [...]
> >
> > I have considered and am still considering a featural script along the
> lines
> > of Tolkien's scripts, and also Hangul. I just can't come up with something
> > that pleases me! [...]
>
>I understand very well what you mean, as I have been experimenting
>with various featural scripts myself.  It is not easy to come up
>with a featural script that (1) looks pleasing and (2) avoids
>having letters that look all to much alike.  But the script that
>I now have under closer examination for Old Albic pleases me
>quite well (unfortunately, I don't have an image file available),
>so it stands a good chance of becoming canonized as the Old Albic
>script.  It is a featural alphabet written from bottom to top.
>
>Obviously, designing a script (featural or otherwise) becomes more
>challenging the more phonemes the language has, because you need
>more disctinctions with a large phonology (except when the script
>is logographic).  Old Albic with its 18 consonants and 7 vowels
>is certainly less of a challenge than Tech ;-)
I have an idea for a featural script based on animals. The type of animal
portrayed indicates the type of sound, eg birds for vowels, monkeys for
voiceless stops, and the posture of the animal indicates the sound within
that category, eg bird flying = i, bird calling = e, bird perching = a,
bird preening = o, bird on the nest = u. This gives the scribes great
potential to vary the style of the characters within the document, and thus
make it harder for enemies to read (the culture that uses this script was
oppressed by an Aztec like culture for centuries).

Pete