Re: beautiful scripts

   I got out my book, "Writing Systems of the World", by Akira Nakanishi
(ISBN:0804816549, highly recomend!). Thai letters, according to her, all
have the "o" vowel.
   The Khmer script, however, is a bit wiggier. I will try to paraphrase
what she says.

   There are two "series" of letters. The "-a" are first series, and the
"-o" are second series. (I think the series affects tone, but I'm not sure.)
   The vowel diacritics create different vowels for the same diacritic
between 1st and 2nd tone letters. Thus, "da" is first tone, and "da" with
the tilde-thingy on top becomes "dei". However, "do" is second tone, so "do"
with the tilde-thingy on top becomes "di:".

   I have no idea why this is done, as I have not studied any language from
this area. I'm assuming it's either a tone thing, or because "it's always
been done that way".

-----Original Message-----
From: Amber AdamsSubject:
Re: beautiful scripts
I've looked at the Thai script, and I couldn't make any sense of it,
due to the similarity of the characters, both in their shapes, and in
that there seem to be multiple characters for the same sound.

This bothers me about Khmer, as well.  Because of sound changes, the
'ka kha ga gha' arrangement of brahmi-spawn has become 'ka kha ko kho,'
with no apparent rhyme or reason (other than tradition) as to when to
write a word with the a-vowel and when to use the o-vowel.

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