Re: The Ajkrip alphabet

I.Penzev skrev:
 > On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:12:11 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson
 > <bpj@...> wrote:
 >
 >> An alphabet
 >>
 >> <http://blog.melroch.se/?p=30>
 >
 > Hi. I strongly doubt about using the rotated letters,
 > except "ә", of course.

The one I doubt most; it looks too much like an a.

You really shouldn't think Soviet linguists' extended
Cyrillics here. This is a whole nuther thing. Rotating
letters is the one easily available modifications available
with moveable type. It was very popular in early phonetic
alphabets up to and including Ellis's Palaeotype; e.g. there
was one French around the turn of the 19th century which
suggested rotated j for /S/ -- not, I can assure you,
because of similarity to ʃ, but because it was an
'inversion' of French /Z/. It's not that this trick makes
for readability (I think the opposite rather) but it's
realistic in context.

 > "Ԑ" and "Ɔ" seem really out of place.

The idea is that the missionaries wrote these sounds with З
and С, which Ajkrip just took and turned around.

 > "Ԑ" is confused with handwritten "E". too.

Obviously the handwritten E would need to be changed
(to square form).

 > He might have added Latin chars sooner.

He might, if he had had them available.

 > "Ё" was always available.

Are you sure?

 > "Ѳ" and "Ѵ" won't hurt, either.

Except that he'd have very few of them in his typecase! I'd
really like to use Ѕ and Ѳ for /D/ and /T/, but the
question is whether Ajkrip would have known their origin in
Greek δ θ, or their assosciation with these sounds.
Besides he'd have no Ѕ available unless he'd had a Church
Slavic font! I've for better or worse been assuming he used
the civil script.

FWIW he might just as well have adapted the Mongol script,
since he was a Buddhist monk (so, now that cat is let out of
the bag), but he choose Cyrillic because so many laymen
among his people could already read it.

 >
 > -- Yitzik
 > P.S. Yes, I'm alive,

Happy to hear that

 > just terribly busy....

Sorry to hear that


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)