Kassi wiritng system (was: A writing system for Kayasanoda)

--- Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> The Kassi syllabry's characters all have names with
> meanings.
Similar to Thai, then.  My favorite Thai character is
_yayak_ (I believe it was _yak_ which refers to a sort
of demon-like being, one can see his image anywhere in
Thailand!)

> They traditionally
> ordered their syllabry by the meanings of the
> characters, e.g., words
> referring to kinds of humans were placed in the
> first group.
This concept is remotely related to the Chinese
characters (kanji/hanja/hanzi).  In Japanese, one
might ask what the radical of the character is -- this
radical acts as a sort of link for each individual
character to a grouping, which often has a meaning.
For instance, "nin-ben" is the left-hand side radical
(looks like katakana _i_) for humans.  Another example
would be "te-hen" for things related to the hand.

> Within
> these groups, the order was by importance of the
> entities referred to
> (which is, of course, semi-arbitrary), and then for
> words perceived as
> equal, it went by perceived complexity of the
> character.
Hmm, and who perceives what is of which importance?
Well, we're all subjective!  I just wish I could have
asked the inventors of kanji what the hell they were
thinking when they conjured up ones like _teitou_ in
Jpn (meaning, "mortgage") -- I mean, I understand
tehen of _tei_ and the _tou_ being the character for
_atari_ -- which is understandable too... but why the
right-hand side "hikui" part ??  (For those who can
read the characters, I mean ’ï“– )@

Anyhow, that's my two cents for the week...

M.E.S.




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