Re: Alphabet

> speaker looks at Greek writing.  My "phonetic
> discoveries" consisted of deriving p, b, and m (as well
> as other similar sound relationships) from the same
> basic letter,
Don't feel too embarrased by that.  When I first started learning
linguistics a friend tried to explain to me the difference between voiced
and voiceless.  I couldn't get it for a long time, though, and so I made
rediculous claims like [wj] is somehow a "voiced" [w], and [Ng] is a
"voiced" [g].

> with a "hard (voiceless)" marker and
> a "don't open your mouth (nasal)" marker to
> differentiate.
Why do people often think of the voiceless sounds as "hard" and the
voiced ones as "soft"?  I've always thought of it the other way around.

>  I might still try to do something like
> that, but in studying more languages, I've realized
> that (at least to my own knowledge) no writing systems
> in existence actually do that.
That's not true, as other members have pointed out.  Several alphabets,
especially Asian alphabets, actually have a fairly good correspondence
between letter shape and sound, though it's rarely perfect.

> Perhaps I can play historian and have archaic versions
> of the letters that are similar to what I created
> before; and then later, more evolved versions that give
> each letter a more distinctive feel.
This is actually what I tried with my Yivríndil script, and the result
was the best script I've ever made.  I'd never been satisfied with
earlier scripts for my conlang Yivríndil, but this one works well enough
that I've decided to keep it.

> I see a lot of people discussing ways to write their
> languages using Roman letters.  Do most people here
> tend to create new alphabets or do they stick to
> established writing systems?
I usually work with Roman letters first, and then eventually make an
alphabet as an afterthought, if at all.  Honestly, making alphabets
hardly interests me at all, which is why I put it off to be the last
thing to ever do in designing a language.


Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax@ juno.com
"We couldn't all be cowboys
Some of us are clowns" --Counting Crows

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