Re: SCript

>From: Balazs Sudar <conlang@...>
>
>I thought about a language - still not invented - based on the
>triconsonantal system.
>What's more important is the idea of its script. I had the idea of a
>script, that describes the triconsonantal roots, and has 1 sign for the row
>of vowels put between the consonants. That means an alphabet with only
>consonants, and another kind of signs standing for the vowels-combinations.
>Or I could write signs describing words (verb with its correct forms, noun
>with cases, numbers, or anything), but all this with 1 sign (this could
>mean sings standing for only one vowel too, so I can write words that has
>not the same root system, for example "yes", or anything). Do you think
>this thing has a sense?????
I think it has.

>I'd like the people who know arabic, hebrew, or any of these languages to
>tell me some opinions... Maybe it's too difficult to be useful.
>
>Balazs

Well, I do not know much Arabic, Hebrew or anything, but I do have been
planning on a similarish script, if I understand you correctly. :) Main
problem with it is that the language it should be based on - Camzic - isn't
actually even under construction yet, so I don't know if the script actually
works or if it needs some re-thinking. The first scetches look pretty,
though...

Camzic is only slightly Semitic-inspired. It does not have triconsonantal
roots. The number of consonants varies. However, it inflects by inner vowel
changes and so, I think, nicely fits this kind of script.

I decided to mark real vowels by signs placed at the beginning of the word.
I had also played with the idea of marking grammatical forms (like cases)
but decided against it. This way I can use one vowel sign for several
different forms or even different word classes, if they happen to get the
same voweling at some point. Besides, I just like phonemic ortographies. It
will also be more of confusion, when I'll write my other conlang in that
script. >:)

So, these vowel signs can mean for instance, "all vowels A", "all others A
but last one O", "A - some I's - O" etc. That'll probably be the most
practical way, if the words can be of various length - leaving the number of
some vowels unspecified.
After the vowel sign, there are the consonant characters in order.
Between the consonants are little diacritics which point the places where
the vowels go to. One that looks like an acute accent means unstressed
vowel, and one like a small, loosely drawn 9 is stressed vowel. So I don't
have to specify vowel places either in the first vowel sign, only their
order. :) Thus the number of different vowel signs will hopefully stay in
bearable limits.

Why to use such a complicated system? Well, it leaves the word root
unchanged, so it will always look the same and be easily recognised. Also,
if in past the consonants were invented first (as seems to be with many
natural scripts), this would probably be one possible logical direction of
development.


It is all written from top to bottom, by the way. This minimizes the
problems of left-handed writers. They can even write the vertical rows from
right to left, if that feels better (standard being to right) and it'll
still be quite easily readable.


Hope this gave you some ideas, so *cough* I'd have an excuse for chatting
about my script... ;)

---
- M. O. (now in ASCII)


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