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

----- Original Message -----
From: Fabian <rhialto@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 1999 7:55 AM
Subject: Re: Tolkien's elfish script (was: Re: demuan identifiers
re-visited)


> daniel san kakimashita
> >Myself, I think the tengwar look suspiciously like Sanskrit,
> >at least as far as the way it is systemized. Bilabial, dental,
> >etc. to the right and plosive, nasal, etc. downwards.
> >It forms a neat table. Just like Sanskrit. And then some
> >extra symbols for the phonemes that didn't fit into the
> >table.
> The tabular form is very Sanskrit (and Devanagari, and many other indic
> scripts).
> I was referring specifically to the way diacritics are used to indicate
> vowels. afaik, only Hebrew, Arabic, and Tengwar have this feature. In
terms
> of script classification, this characteristic of being primarily a
> consonantal writing system, puts it in the same class.
Actually, Devanagari and other Brahmi-derived scripts such as Tibetan are
the same way. Like Tengwar, each consonant has its own basic shape, and the
vowels are added as diacritics. Also, Devanagari characters without any
vowel marking default to /a/, whereas marking /a/ is optional in Quenya.

I've seen Devanagari called a "modified syllabary," but I'm not really sure
what seprates it from consonantal scripts such as the Semitic ones.