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Re: Con-scripts

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Thursday, June 21, 2001, 7:09
En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

> > Are the differences in orthography a matter of religious controversy, > then? :-) >
No, as long as only the already existing ideograms (there's a limited number of them, but I cannot remember how many :) ) are used. The Sky People consider writing not as a way to keep things on stone or paper (except for ornamental value), but as a reminder of things you learn by heart. I mean that, at least in the time I describe the Sky People, they value memory more than writing. So everything has to be learnt by heart, and writings are there only for help to remind people of what they've learnt. Thus writing needn't be accurate, as long as the principal things to be reminded (the stems) are accurately representated. So the quarrels between the different writing schools are rather about what is best to trigger memory: phonetic writing, semantic writing, or a mix of both. Is there any example of a human civilisation that has writing but values more learning by heart and uses writing only as a mean to help and refresh memory when needed? Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr