Re: CHAT: Fonts (Re: CHAT: Constructed maps)
| From: | Ollock Ackeop <ollock@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 6:50 |
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On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:21:58 -0700, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
>Ollock, something very bizarre happened to your message
>when it was sent, so I'm not sure if all of it got through. Here's
>what came through on my end:
>
><<
><<<< Do you have ways to create fonts that can make character into
>two or three different glyph types and arrange them into syllable
>blocks? >>> I don't quite understand what you mean. If you use a
>Windows computer, there's considerably less freedom in how many
>glyphs you have, and where you can put them on the keyboard.>> I'll
>give you a description i did for zompist forum to illustrate: Yeltax
>has a really strange syllabic system called Kedeke (from an archaic
>term for "scratch"). Each character stands for a single V or CV
>syllable, which would be enough if Yeltax if it were like Japanese,
>but it isn't. Yeltax syllable structure is roughly (C)(C)V(C), so to
>write "complex" syllables, various characters are clustered into
>blocks. To get an idea of how this works, I'll give a couple of word
>examples. Gogo /gogo/ (= egg) is two simple syllables: "go" + "go" .
>tya'ke. For example,in do'Kajex /do?kadZex/ (= "the Mind" -- the god
>of the Xala):
> >>
>
>I found your thread on the ZBB, though, so I see what you mean.
>
>The first question I would have is, how did the language evolve
>codas and complex consonant clusters? If the current system
>evolved from a previously (C)V system, then it would make
>sense to have only (C)V characters. It would also tell you how
>each character was spelled already. So, for example, you have
>a word for crystal:
>
>sgE (with some tones)
>
>If the older proto form were...
>
>*sigE
>
>...then the word would be spelled "si" + "gE" (or "ke", or whatever
>the original syllable was). The vowel from "si" wouldn't be there
>anymore, but one would expect the spelling system to be conservative.
>
>Now, if over the years these vowels became redundant, you
>might expect that something would happen to those characters.
>So, if you had a rule that, for example, deleted all /i/'s in between
>two consonants, then the "Ci" characters could be thought of as
>consonant characters, and you might write them above the
>writing line, or below, or smaller, like the little characters that
>tell you the consonant is palatalized in Japanese (or a geminate).
>
>Depending on how many of these types of consonants you had,
>it'd be a relatively simple matter to do the font. You'd have your
>ordinary syllabary, and then a list of special characters that were
>small, or whatever. And, yes, it's relatively simple to create a
>character that, if typed, appears over or under (or even to the
>left of) the previous character. This is what I did for the Proto-Drem
>font.
>
>I've also created a syllabary for a language with consonant
>clusters, though it's not a font. Essentially, what I did was I
>created a glyph for every (C)(C)V possible. In Gweydr (the
>language it's for), a word may begin maximally with CrV, ClV,
>CjV or CwV. Thus, for each consonant, I created five different
>sets of glyphs--e.g., for m, mrV, mlV, mjV, mwV and mV.
>In addition to this, a word may also begin with an /s/, making
>the max onset sC(r/l/w/j)V. All I had to do was create a
>modified /s/ glyph that could be attached to the front. After
>that, the codas were a simple matter. I simply created a smaller
>version of the basic shape of the ordinary onset glyphs for
>each consonant, and they're stacked at the end.
>
>Here's what that system looks like:
>
>
http://dedalvs.free.fr/gweydr/stone/