Re: Hairo Script Brainstorming

Christian Thalmann wrote:
> OK, I've started assigning letters to phonemes now.  It's
> vaguely featural and reminds me too much of Tengwar.  Seems
> like Tolkien wasn't too original after all, ripping off his
> Elven alphabets from ancient inscriptions found in Central
> Europe...  ;-)
>
>    http://www.cinga.ch/reference/alphabet.jpg
I certainly like the look of these letters. I think they suffer
from the same problem as do Tolkien's letters, as do many featural
writing systems.  Letters that represent similar sounds resemble
each other closely; in your script, the voiced and unvoiced plosives
differ by a single stroke, for example. It seems to me that this
would make fast reading and writing more difficult, that little
slips of the hand or eye could seriously confuse the meaning.

Of course, I don't know how the language works; if words with similar
sounds are usually of different classes, there would be less room
for error (if 'pat' were a verb and 'bat' were a noun, the similarity
of their written shapes would only confuse the readers eye, not
their language send.  Alackaday, in English, both these words may
be noun or verb)

Of course, I assume prodigously literate people who use writing
everywhere.  If writing were used more rarely, as only in inscriptions
and important documents, then reader would be slower and more
careful, and the similariy of shapes would help them remember the
meaning of the letters. How do your people use their letters?

	Erich

Reply