Names in a non-linear full-2d writing system
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, May 13, 2005, 17:44 |
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On Thursday, May 12, 2005, at 09:22 , Sai Emrys wrote:
> Ray Brown:
>
>>> could be really good but also very hermetic. And it
>>> makes you feel like an Egyptian when it comes to proper names... Unless
>>> you
>>> create a unique logogram for yourself.
>>
>> Why? They are written with mosdtly _phonetic_ symbols and enclosed in a
>> cartouche. I don't see how this really relates to either ideograms or
>> logograms.
>
> Why should one's name by phonetic?
No reason - I think I may have misunderstood Remi, tho I am not certain.
Ancient Egyptian writing is linear and largely phonetic anyway; writing a
name is no different from writing anything else, that's why something like
a cartouche is helpful. I still do not understand what way ancient
Egyptians wrote names has to do with logograms.
> As for me, IRL, I have a "name" that is a glyph. I don't particularly
> identify with my legal or going names - Sai Emrys is... a nickname, of
> sorts; a useful thing to have, but not "My Name" (tm).
What is a name? Here in the UK you can assume assume any name you like, as
long as in doing so you have no criminal intent.
Of course you can. As to whether a unique logogram should be created for
every individual proper name is another matter.
> Cartouches: they just strike me as aesthetically displeasing, and
> wasteful of time.
But Egyptian hieroglyphics are as a whole 'wasteful of time' - it is a
most inefficient manner of writing as far as use of time is concerned. _In
the context_ of Egyptian hieroglyphs I find the cartouches quite aesthetic.
> If you're going to want a phonetic sub-orthography,
> then yes it'd have to be linear, but no need to bound it; you could
> just point to the start of the string.
Yes - but the Egyptian case doesn't fit this description - it is not a
phonetic _sub-orthography_. The whole darn orthography is shot through
with phoneticism. You could, indeed, have some way to point to the start
of the string, just as we in fact normally do with an uppercase letter;
but we would then also need a pointer to the end of the string (we do it
with 'white space' or punctuation - the Egyptians hadn't hit on either of
those techniques.
As for wanting a phonetic sub-orthography in a non-linear semasiographic
fully 2d writing system, _I_ have expressed no such wish. I just queried
why Remi said " And it makes you feel like an Egyptian when it comes to
proper names.." It must imply that you might be phoneticizing proper names.
Most certainly, I would not want the Roman script as its conventions for
phoneticizing the script are so diverse. It would indeed be very perverse
to transpose names normally written in a different script into Roman to be
used in an otherwise non-linear semasiographic 2d script. Of course, one
could simply keep the way the name is written in the person's L1 - Chinese
& Arabic names would then 'automatically' create their own logogram :)
Should one wish a phonetic sub-orthography in such a system, it might be
better served by something more akin to Alexander Bell's "Visible Speech"
or the "Earth Language Phonetic System." It should be possible to have a
system whereby the elements of the phonetic sub-orthography combine to
'automatically' form the logogram - sort of like the way Korean combines
phonemic elements to form quasi-syllabograms.
How does one devise proper name logograms?
Ray
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