Re: Tolkien's elfish script (was: Re: demuan identifiers re-visited)

At 13:21 -0700 31.8.1999, wayne chevrier wrote:

>I was being humorous with the classification of English, but it is
>not a purely alphabetic system. the characters are alphabetic,
>but the words are a combination of phonetic (from various sources),
>morphophonemic (constant spelling for root even though they often
>change their pronunciation due to changes of stress and affixes,
>also found in modern Korean), and a handful of words which are logographic
>(e.g. e.g., &, of, &c., 23, and others whose pronunciation is completely
>unpredictable from the spelling).
All this is also true of Middle Persian writing -- scribes even wrote some
words in one language (Aramaic), but they were read aloud in another
(Persian), as if French words in English had been read out as their
Anglo-Saxon equivalent, /kau/ for _beef_ etc. --, but the script is no less
alphabetic for that.


/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)