Re: made-to-order alphabets

Adam Parrish wrote:
>         Quick question on ordering schemes for alphabets: is it
> necessary to have one? For some reason it strikes me that the Talin (the
> writing system for Doraya) doesn't really have any particular "order,"
> and that the thought of sequencing them would seem odd to the speakers
> of Doraya.  Is it a required thing for alphabetic systems to have a
> perceived "order"?  Does something similar happen in other writing
> systems (e.g., syllabaries)?
Well, many times, when a writing system is ordered, it's just a
conventional order, a mnemonic aid, and it's not used for ordering.  I
don't know if all systems have one conventional order, there might be
some alphabets/syllabries with variable order.

As for syllabries, an example is Japanese, which orders the kana by
consonant and vowel, so that, for instance, vowel-only ones are first, a
i u e o, then ka ki ku ke ko, then s-, t-, n-, h-, m-, y-, r-, w-, and
syllabic n.

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