Re: New Script

Barry Garcia wrote:


>CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>>Burmese. It really, really looks like it:
>>http://www.omniglot.com/writing/burmese.htm
>
>Burmese was in influence, as well as Malayalam and Tamil ;).

Indeed.  ooo96cooccccooo6ccoo

Old Javanese and Balinese, OTOH, evidently from a slightly different
tradition, look like mmmmnnnnnuuuuummmmmnnuuuu.  Of course I'm generalizing.
:-)

Batak, Rejang and Bugis/Makassar are more angular, but if you see a table of
all Indonesian and Indian scripts, you can see the relationships.  Batak and
Rejang, I think, were incised into bamboo; Javanese and Balinese on palm
strips (copper plates for permanent things like land grants and temple
endowments). The Jav. word _lontar_ is generic for these old "books" as well
as for the palm tree, and is from **ron tal 'leaf (of) tal (palm)', which is
an Indic word ta:la ~modern tal.  The lontar palm in Indonesia is Borassus
flabellifer (spelling not guaranteed).