Re: Kjaginic: 8 points of articulation

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.

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