Re: USAGE: Adapting non-Latin scripts

Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
[snip]
> On 15/07/06, Abrigon <abrigon@...> wrote:
[snip]

>> But major thing still is, is the Latin Characters all that good
>> for any language?
Quite good for Latin  :)

>> IPA yes seems to be alot better adaptation of
>> the Latin Alphabet for a wider ranger of languages, but how do
>> you do cursive in it?
>
>
> Well, when you say "Latin Characters", what do you mean?
> ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ (i.e., no J, U or W)?
And Y and Z are really Greek letters added to the alphabet in the 1st
cent BCE to denote Greek sounds in borrowed words.

But this is how the Latin alphabet has developed: by adding extra
letters (e.g. Y and Z) and adapting existing letters to give new ones
(e.g. J, U, W)     :)

>Well then, that's
> obviously somewhat limiting, but was adequate for an earlier form of
> Latin (forfeiting denoting vowel length distictions for some reason,
> but they did double consonants for consonant length
> distinctions---anyone know why?).
In fact long vowels were occasionally marked, either by writing them
twice or by using a mark similar to the acute accent. But the fact that
neither system actually caught on is indication that the Romans did not
feel that this made Latin significantly easier to read.

It should be remembered that the ancients knew nothing of phonemic
theory, not ever aimed to spell 100% phonemically     :)

> But if you mean the whole of the
> alphabet, only Cyrillic seems to be as flexible.
Exactly - the Latin alphabet has in fact proved remarkably adaptable.

[snip]
> Through use the Latin
> and Cyrillic alphabets seem to have acquired many options for
> extending themselves to novel environments, including through outright
> novel forms (e.g. ramshorns), borrowing letters from other scripts
> (thorn, gamma), diacritics, digraphs, ligatures, all sorts.
Exactly!

> As for using some of the IPA extensions in a regular alphabet, sure,
> some characters are hard to distinguish in handwriting
Some IPA symbols have in fact been used, e.g. ɛ and ɔ are used in some
African orthographies.

Surely there is evidence enough that the Latin script has been adapted
for a whole host of quite different languages; similarly, in the former
Soviet Union, the Cyrillic script showed itself to be similarly adaptable.

But, hey, isn't the subject line about adapting *non-Latin* scripts?

--
Ray
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http://www.carolandray.plus.com
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