Re: Alphabet

On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, D Tse wrote:

> ja      ji      ju      je      jo
> as Hiragana, but /ji/ is from the character for "big", and /je/ is
> backwards Hiragana "yo", with the horizontal line intersecting the
> vertical.
>
> ...
>
> >>
>
> Wow, that's pretty good. I like the idea of made-up characters like
> that to supplete the Japanese syllabary... Though is there any reason
> you used those symbols for those sounds? No etymological reason?
Well, "fu" for /xu/ is because Nyenya'a doesn't have an /f/. /je/ came
before I made any of the kanji/hanzi-based ones, so I just flipped
"yo" around, because I had a vapourlock in my brain and forgot that I will
also need /ji/. But the kanji-based ones are more or less random, though
the word for "large, voluminous" in Nyenya'a is /jini?/, which is a happy
coincidence, as the kana for /ji/ is derived from the character for
"big". Perhaps I might discover some etymological relations for the others
too.

>
> Though it reminds me of the Japanese Ainu transcription method where
> they write syllables that don't usually have the maru-ten (circle
> thingy) with the maru-ten to denote syllables that don't exist in
> Japanese.
>
Like I used maru-ten to make the /l/ series out of the /r/ series?

---frank