Re: Con-Alphabets & Real Languages

Quoting laokou <laokou@...>:

> From: "jogloran"
>
> > Christian Thalmann wrote:
>
> > > Inspired by the different modes of Tengwar, I added a few more
> > > characters to my original con-alphabet for Obrenje to allow more
> for
> > > more language modes.  It seems to work nicely with English, German
> > and
> > > Latin so far.
>
> > It's quite nice and all, but realistically, other than for the
> > enjoyment of the creator, is there any reason to adapt one's script
> > to other (natural) languages?
>
> Cultural proximity? Latin imported k, x, y, and z from Greek, no? I'm
> not a Latinist, but "x" seemed to catch on, while k, y, and z, were
> used mostly for Greek imports.
IIRC, <k> and <x> were original to the Latin alphabet straight
from the Etruscans.  <k> survived in some very archaic circumstances,
e.g. <Kalends>, but by the Classical period had been edged out
almost completely by <c>, which originally stood for [g].  When
Augustus instituted a spelling reform to distinguish /g/ from
/k/, he put a small slash on the <C> to give the capital version
of <G>.

<X> for /ks/ was a widely used variant in western Greece in the
archaic period, and was the version the Etruscans and then the
Romans picked up when writing their own languages.

> I guess, point of above paragraph: loanwords and cultural ebb and
> flow.
Agreed.  Personally, I agree with Tolkien that it doesn't make
sense to have a conlang without a culture to go with it. Hence:
Phalera for the Phalerophones.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>

             "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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