Re: Tesawa update: text in Balalatu alphabet online

On 09/06 18:20  Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>  --- Thomas Leigh wrote:
>
> > Continuing in my ever-procrastinated quest to put all my old stuff
> > online since I haven't had time to create any new languages for years, I
> > finally scanned the Tesawa translation of "The North Wind and the Sun"
> > written in the Balalatu script:
> > http://thomasleigh.tripod.com/tesawa/ingoisbl.html. I find the alphabet
> > rather unwieldy now, but I thought it was cool when I was 19! Anyway,
> > there it is, for whoever cares to take a look. Feel free to comment if
> > you feel like it, though I should mention that I stopped working on this
> > language years ago, and I'm putting the material online for
> > archival/illustration purposes, so suggestions for improvement and the
> > like are liable to be ignored. :)
>
> Well, the language looks VERY Indo-European to me, and as you might know, from
> me that can be considered a compliment. I like it. And the script is nice, too.
> Reminds a bit of written Armenian, I think. Or perhaps un-written Georgian :)
>
Really?  When I looked at the graphic illustrating the sounds of the
Balalatu alphabet at http://thomasleigh.tripod.com/tesawa/balalatu.html
I thought it showed influences of Demotic and Hebrew.  Not so much an
alphabet born between Haifa and Pireus as on a boat trip on the Red Sea,
Sinaitic perhaps?  I had translated Wesley's signature line as an
exercise into 2.0 and it was very easy to transcribe it into Balalatu.
If this is an alphabet going spare, then I would like to continue
playing with it and see if I can adapt it.  The consonants corrolate
closely between both languages, but 2.0 has 13 vowels rather than 6.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                         hobbit@griffler.co.nz
alias Mungo Foxburr of Loamsdown
http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html

It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race
of divinely inspired toolmakers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus
would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of
impassioned after-dinner speech-makers.
                           - Walter Miller Jr, A Canticle for Leibowitz