Re: Kjaginic: 8 points of articulation

Ideally, to create such a font you would assign a range within the
Unicode private use area to Kjaginic, and leave the rest of the glyphs
alone.  That way a single text file can have the Kjaginic alongside
the IPA transcription and the translation or plain Roman
transliteration, with no font-switching required. To a reader without
the font, only the Kjaginic itself is missing.

The issue of typing Kjaginic is a question of the keyboard definition
and input method, which are logically independent of the font.  Rather
than change the glyph for U+0041 A, you configure the A key to send
the appropriate Unicode character code when you're in Kjaginic mode.



On 9/29/08, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>> It seems to me like Kjaginic is best regarded as
>> similar to the Tengwar: a basic grid of symbols
>> where the columns can be assigned to PsOA and the
>> rows to MsOA according to the needs of the
>> language to be written! In Tengwar practice this
>> mostly means that column three of four varies
>> between palatal and velar and column four between
>> velars and labiovelars, that one row varies
>> between plain and prenasalized voiced stops,
>> another between voiced fricatives and voiceless
>> prenasalized stops, and that the labials and
>> coronals of two other rows sometimes are used for
>> geminate nasals and simple nasals rather than for
>> nasals and semivowels, but Tolkien stated that in
>> the original theory the rows and columns could be
>> freely assigned to MsOA and PsOA according to the
>> needs of the language to be transcribed.
>
> That may turn out to be the best way to think of writing systems like
> this. Even with the IPA, there are conventional spellings that don't
> always correspond with the chart: e.g., eth for the Danish alveolar
> approximant, while the turned r symbol is used for a range of American
> English "r" sounds. Still, I need an assignment of glyphs to characters
> that makes sense, in order to create the font for Kjaginic. So far I've
> been using mostly IPA characters, which has the advantage that text
> written in Kjaginic is still readable without the Kjaginic font. I could
> continue filling in the gaps with capital letters, accented characters,
> and so on, something like this:
>
>              1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8
> stop        p b  ŧ đ  t d  ʈ ɖ  c ɟ  k ɡ  q ɢ  ʡ ʔ
> nasal       M m  Ń ń  N n  N̢ ɳ  Ɲ ɲ  Ŋ ŋ    ɴ
> trill       B ʙ  Ŕ ŕ  R r  Ř ř  Ŗ ŗ         ʀ
> tap/flap                ɾ    ɽ
> fricative   f v  θ ð  s z  ʂ ʐ  ç ʝ  x ɣ  χ ʁ  ɦ h
> lat. fric.            ɬ ɮ  Ł ł  Ļ ļ
> approx.     Ʋ ʋ  Δ δ    ɹ    ɻ  J j    ɰ
> lat. appr.       Λ λ  L l    ɭ    ʎ    ʟ
>
> Or I could come up with a different arrangement of the more commonly
> needded symbols for convenience in typing, e.g.:
>
>              1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8
> stop        Q q  W w  E e  R r  T t  Y y  U u  I i
> fricative   A a  S s  D d  F f  G g  H h  J j  K k
> nasal         z    x    c    v    b    n    m
> approx.       Z    X    C    V    B    N    M
> lat. fric.              O    P    {    }
> lat. appr.              o    p    [    ]
> trill         l         ;                   '
> tap/flap      L         :    "
>
> The vowels could use the top row of the keyboard; "Kjaginic" could be
> written "YB3y1c1R" (as Standard Tirelat uses the retroflex stop symbols
> for the alveolar affricates). But learning to type with this keyboard
> arrangement would be time-consuming and error-prone.
>
>> Interestingly fan usage has resurrected the rows
>> for aspirated stops which Tolkien mentioned as
>> being preserved as mere variants of the fricative
>> rows but did not include in his table for use as
>> affricates in languages like German!
>
> Hmm, that would work if the language only has voiceless affricates (or
> if Tolkien had symbols for both voiced and voiceless aspirated stops).
> Languages like Chinese (with both aspirated stops and affricates) could
> use the voiceless stop symbols for aspirated stops. Does any language
> have voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops along with affricates?
>
>> I've been thinking that languages like Tamil and
>> Malayalam which have up to many PsOA but few MsOA
>> (could be assigned to tengwar the other way
>> around, with the four columns as MsOA and the six
>> rows as PsOA.
>
> That might work, but it would take some getting used to if you're
> familiar with the more normal usage.
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>