Re: "Ideographic" writing systems for the Millions

On Monday, August 9, 2004, at 06:29 , Nokta Kanto wrote:

> On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 00:03:57 -0500, Patrick Dunn <pdunn@...>
> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone made a serious effort to create a writing system like Chinese
>> or Hieroglyphs for one of their conlangs?
>
> Chinese or Hieroglyphics? They don't have a lot in common, those two.
They don't, do they? The only common factor, as far as I can see, is the
use of determinative + phonetic component. But the way this is realized in
the two systems is different.

In Chinese, as we have seen, single compound characters (or logograms) are,
  for the most part, composed of a determinative part and a phonetic part.
That suits the language in which, for the most part, morphemes are
monosyllabic (yes, I know there are exceptions).

In Egyptian the determinative and phonetic elements were written as
separate characters. The phonetic characters represent  either one, two or
three consonants - the language having s structure not dissimilar to the
Semitic langs.

If it weren't for the subject line, I would have assumed that Patrick was
asking about a system of determinatives and phonetic elements that we have
in Chinese, ancient Egyptian, as well as in Akkadian, the so-called
'Hittite Hieroglyphic', Mayan (a fascinating system) and, probably, some
others. I have, indeed, toyed with such systems but never developed them.

> You
> are thinking of something pictographic, perhaps?
The subject line suggests 'ideograms', but as ideographic is put in quotes,
  I am not sure what Patrick means. As John Cowan recently pointed out no
written system for natural languages has ever been, as far as we know,
ideographic. That doesn't mean, of course, that no system had ideographic
elements - indeed, we still use ideograms - but they've not been a major
element.

The only truly ideographic system I can think of is the Bliss Symbols, to
which John referred, and 17th century schemes like George Dalgarno's "Ars
Signorum" and Bishop Wilkins' "Real Character" and other similar
'pasigraphies'.

[snap]
>> I have toyed it with, on and off,
>> but the major problem is bookkeeping, of course.  Any technical solutions
> to
>> that problem?
Until I understand the problem, it's difficult to answer. But one imagines
some sort of solution like Nokta's:

> I keep a list of characters with their translations. They are organized by
> stroke count, but otherwise arbitrary; not as organized as Shannon's
> LOTEP.
> On the other hand, I don't have to worry about not having a line in my
> dictionary to insert a new character...
>
>> Also, I have a penchant for very analytic languages, like Indonesian,
> which aren't
>> popular it seems among conlangers in general -- which may be another
> reason
>> other than the practical why logographic writing systems also aren't
> popular.  Still --
>> are there any synthetic natlangs that use a logographic writing system?
> (well,
>> with the exception of course of ancient Egyptian, which was about as
> analytic
>> as Hebrew, I believe)  It almost seems that logographic and analytic go
> together
>> well -- I'm not sure why.
By 'logographic' I assume is meant each character denotes a morpheme. In
theory such a system is possible for most languages, though those that use
infixes would clearly have a problem. The only consistently logographic
script, I think, is Chinese where, for the most part, each morpheme is
monosyllabic.

I would guess that in languages where morphemes can be polysyllabic or,
indeed, just a consonant, the system is less satisfactory.

But, as I say, I'm not at all clear what Patrick has in mind.

Ray
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