To Christophe (was Re: Vya:a:h)

Hi Christophe (& all)
Ugh, another 2 wks since I checked my mail...  All
1000+ emails in the trash except this one.

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse ESuomenkieliMaa <suomenkieli@...>:
> >
> > 2) More on Vya:a:h - First off, visas are not
> required
> > for Vaa:vy'yy as Christophe (jokingly?) inqueried
> > about.  Secondly, again in reply to Christophe,
> > Vaa:vy'yy may be a distant galaxy from ours but
> the
> > inhabitants are human beings (though they can be
> > considered truly "enlightened" ones who manage to
> > never war or even really deviate to criminal
> > behavior).
> >
>
> Well, I really want to build my house there  :) .
Well, we'd be more than happy to host regular
earthlings.  Let's get in touch with ourselves. :-p

> > *Now take a look at this purely Vya:a:hn
> "phenomenon"!
> >   eg. "I speak" ----> Fin. "puhun" - Vyh. "pun"
> >       but in Vyh. it must actually be written as
> the
> >       following: "puh'yi"
> >
> >       "you look" ---> Fin. "na:yda:t" - Vyh.
> "na:d"
> >       but in Vyh. it must actually be written as
> the
> >       following: "na:y'yu"
> >
> >   In Vyh. subject pronouns would be "yi, yu, yuu,
> >   yyi, yyu, yyuu" which correspond to "I, you,
> s/he,
> >   we, you(pl), they" respectively.  But these
> >   beautiful sounds, albeit indepedent of each
> >   other by sound length differences, would be
> >   treacherous to distinguish from each other esp.
> in
> >   rapid speech, etc.  So, they are reserved only
> for
> >   writing Vya:a:h,
>
> Reminds me a little of Tibetan (and to less extent
> of French) where the writing
> form reflects only remotely the actual spoken form.
> But Boudewijn knows more
> about Tibetan than I do so if you want more info on
> that ask him :) (BTW,
> Tibetan is one of the most beautiful script I ever
> saw. It's even more
> beautiful than the script it's derived of:
> Devanagari).
I searched my reference books for Tibetian but from
the very little I read, Vya:a:hn script differs
considerably. Vya:a:h forces one to write by an
inverted-triangle of 3's, where the 4th, 5th etc.,
phoneme can only be represented in writing by
"top-symbols" ["top-symbols" is the translation of the
Vya:a:hn name "ueh-kerioi"] as in ^ in the word
"hyyva:" which shows "a:", but which becomes "ox" in
the word "hivox".

As for French, I would say written Vya:a:h does not
resemble it too much.  For instance, in French I know
you can write the same sound in many ways depending on
tense, person etc (eg, parlais vs parlait vs
parlaient) - all 3 examples, as far as I know, are
pronounced the same [unless I'm mistaken, pls let me
know].  In Vya:a:h, however, this does not happen.  It
is all based on a group of set rules called vowel
harmony (^ - representative top-symbol) or consonant
harmony (‹- representative top-symbol).  There may be
some limited cases where written Vya:a:h would be
similar to written French -- namely, with verb endings
(written Vya:a:h always keeps the infinitive form
intack and just has the "written form" of the subject
pronouns added to the end, whereas the spoken form of
that would vary --- written: lehti'yi = spoken: lehtin
("I write"), written: na:y'yyi = spoken: na:ym ("we
see").  The representative top-symbol for verb forms
must be written in all forms, except 3rd singular as
it defaults to infinitive form, and it looks like a
straight bar.

> Extremely interesting writing system. Where did you
> get the idea of
> those "harmony" superscripts? From your own mind, or
> where you influenced by
> some natlang around?
Thanks!  More than talk of sound combinations
(phonemes and phonology, and all that stuff), I
personally relish in exotic scripts.  Some natlang
influences would definitely include Japanese, Korean,
Chinese, Thai, Khmer, and many Indian scripts like
Telugu [saw the earlier email too!] and Urdu.  The
"square-ish" systems I find most visually appealing
than the "squiggly" ones -- so I prefer Korean much
more than Khmer, although I do love some elements of
Khmer more than Korean.  Yet, Vya:a:hn script also
stresses the conculture (hence the triangle) and a
little element of Japanese in that the writing
frequently does not show the read how to actually
pronounce the word!  I'm still considering making my
own set of pictograms - like Chinese or Japanese - of
perhaps the 500 most frequent/obvious tangible
objects... but I'm not sure yet!

Christophe, thanks again for all your advice &
support.  I guess I'm not very active here, so perhaps
that is why I did not get much feedback.  But, no
problemo!

Tokkiouusd-MaththyyuusL hyyva: noxdj'oo
Tokyo+in   Matthew+from good   night+(wish)
(Have a good night from Matt in Tokyo)
Matt33


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