Re: +AFs-CONLANG+AF0- Vowel romanization

On Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 03:10 PM, Joe wrote:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>> Quoting Joe <joe@...>:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Indeed.  And, if his argument is correct, English doesn't use the roman
>>> alphabet - w?  j? u?
>>>
>>> Svrely, vve shovld all vvrite like this.  That vvay vve vvovld be
>>> staying vvithin the bovnds of the roman alphabet as vsed by Ivlivs
>>> Caesar.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> We-ell, those Roman bastards wrote in ALL CAPS. We very much should not
>> do
>> that ...
>>
>>
>
> Ah, yes, forgot that.  Did they even use all caps on paper?
Rather difficult not to do so as the current dual alphabet (upper & lower
case) hadn't been invented then! (Accepting, for the moment, that papyrus
sheets are a form of 'paper').

In fact, the dual alphabet system is an odd aberration, found only, I
believe, in the modern Roman, Greek & Cyrillic systems. Older alphabets
knew of no such system and, till the present day, the Hebrew & Arabic
alphabets have no such dual systems, nor do the abugidas of India &
Ethiopia, nor the Korean hangul alphabet nor, AFAIK any other alphabet,
abjad or abugida.

The strange western dualism arose, apparently, from the Carolingian
reforms of the late 8th & early 9th centuries CE. The Carolingian
minuscules, with the ascenders & descenders, became the norm, but the
older majuscules, in which all letters were of equal height, were retained
for initial letter of paragraphs, headings etc., and so gave birth to our
dual alphabet.  The parallel development in Greek was influenced by this
and the dual alphabet of Cyrillic came, I believe, much later s part of
Peter the Great's reforms.

In "Novial Lexike" (1930) Otto Jespersen proposed using only a single form
of the modern Roman alphabet for Novial:
"In an international language we might, perhaps we should, write
everything with small letters, as the rules for capitals are more or less
arbitrary in all languages - at present, however, I dare not propose that
reform."

BTW, V was the shape of the old Roman majuscule; in the Carolingian &
post-Carolingian miniscule the letter is 'u'. The use of lower case 'v' is
relatively modern. The Roman alphabet of the guy spelled Gaius Iulius
Caesar in the post-Carolingian alphabet wrote his name GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR.
================================================
On Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 03:38 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]

> The various handwritten forms of the alphabet didn't look much
> at all like the engraved capitals.  For a good example take a look
> at the Vindolanda tablets at http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/.
Yep - but they weren't using the dual alphabet system of us modern
westerners. It was a handwritten style of the _single_ alphabet. The
present Hebrew alphabet I believe has different forms for the printed and
handwritten styles.  The later Carolingian miniscules were derived from
older cursive styles of writing the Roman capitals. But the dual alphabet
system was not known to the ancient Romans of Vindolanda or anywhere else.
  As indeed Mark wrote:

In another mail on Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 03:46 PM, Mark J. Reed
wrote:
[snip]
> . . . but to answer the question, it's true that they used "all caps"
> even on paper (or whatever they used.  The Senators may have used paper,
> but the common folk wrote letters on wood).
Rectanglar tablets of wood covered in wax, in fact. You wrote on the wax
with the sharp end of your stilus, and erased writing with the blunt end,
i.e. the things were re-usable. Even the Senators, when they actually
wrote and didn't get a slave to do it for them, would've used the waxed
tablets for ordinary, every day stuff. Papyrus paper was expensive and
used only for writing that was intended to be permanent.
>
> It'd be more accurate to
> say that the alphabet they used - in all its various incarnations - had
> only one form, or a few similar forms with no systematic alternation,
> for each letter.  The idea of capitalization as we think of it came much
> later.
Absolutely!
================================================
On Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 03:41 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
> Well, paper wasn't en vogue back then, but on papyri, basically yes.
> Written..
and
On Saturday, February 21, 2004, at 04:45 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
[snip]
> THEY DIDNT VSE PAPER - IVST PAPYRVS AND PARCHMENT
..and waxed wooden tablets (and, possibly, other media).

But, hey, what is it with you Swedes? It seems to me a wee bit pedantic
not to allow papyrus sheets as a form of paper? After all, what is the
origin of the word 'paper' if not the ancient Greek 'papyros'?

My English dictionary gives:
"a material made in thin sheets as an aqueous deposit from linen rages,
esparto, wood pulp or other form of cellulose, used for writing, printing,
  wrapping and other purposes, extended to other materials of similar
purpose or appearance, as to papyrus, rice-paper, to substance of which
some wasps build their nests, to cardboard, and even to tinfoil ('silver
paper')."

Must all our cookery books which tell us to use 'rice-paper' be changed &
all the natural history
books that tells us certain wasps build paper nests be changed?   :)

Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
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