Re: Romaji as syllabary

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:30:48 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
>On Thursday, February 24, 2005, at 02:47 , Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:27:35 -0500, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
>> wrote:
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Ph. D." <phild@...>
>>>
>>>> I think he meant it as a syllabary for a conlang.
>>>>
>>>> See the auxlang BABM,
>>>
>>> And, of course, Ray Brown's briefscripts.
>
> Yes, you do well to have briefscripts plural  :)
>
> If you have read the latest published version on my website, it looks as
> tho I have at last decided on a definite solution. but i am currently
> working on the morphology, and I am realizing there are some weakness in
> the scheme I suggested for Bax (I've also noticed some typos :)
What weaknesses specifically? I took a quick look a couple days ago. None
of the typos I saw seemed critical. I'm not sure I like the phonetic rules
for Bax, though the scheme looks OK otherwise. I had to guess at some of
the characters. My browser does handle Unicode and most IPA, if told to do
so, but what it _doesn't_ handle is hex values.

> So keep watching.
>
> BTW I also refer on on the page on Roman letters used as a syllabary, to
> one suggested by Dirk Elzinga way back in 1999.
I had forgotten that.

>>> Paul
>>
>> I also use the alphabet as syllabary, in 'Yemls:
>>
>> Syllabary to Romanization:
>>   {A}   ga, go
> [etc - snipped]
>
>>   {Z}   za, zo
>>   {z}   zu, zw, z
>>
>> The romanization is more or less phonemic, with |y| = /j/, |q| = /Z/, |x|
>>  =
>> /S/, |c| = /tS/, |j| = /dZ/, |h| = /x/.
>
> Interesting - of course using upper case as well as lower case gives more
> scope. So far I have resisted using mixed case systems as one of the ideas
> behind a briefscript is that it should be quick to write. having to keep
> using the shift key will slow things down a bit. I have often wondered,
> however, if the digit symbols could be included. If they were pronounced
> as single syllables it would not seem inappropriate. The modern practice
> of text-messaging seems to indicate that people do not feel the mix of
> alphanumeric symbols to be incongruous - in fact it seems gr8.
Having to use the shift key _does_ slow things down. That's OK for an
artlang such as 'Yemls, but not for a briefscript. The only problem I see
with using digits is that on some non-English keyboards, shift is required
(according to a handy MS-DOS reference). The location of other characters
varies even more. All this could be fixed with software, but (a) the
software might not be installed on a given computer, and (b) the user would
have to learn to touchtype according to the briefscript keyboard layout to
avoid getting confused. That's probably why I haven't made a serious
attempt to make my own briefscript.

Jeff

> Ray
> ===============================================
> http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
> ray.brown@freeuk.com
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