Re: USAGE: Adapting non-Latin scripts

-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Adams <abrigon@...>
>
>Is the Latin characters really that good for English? As well as are they good
>for your conlang, or is there a form of "graphics" that could do your
>language better?
An alphabetic script is almost certainly close to optimal for English, due to the
range of syllable types allowed. Whether Latin is any more suitable than
Armenian is a matter best left to the ages, I feel. Either way, you're taking a
set of symbols, and assigning speech sounds to them more or less arbitrarily. I
do hate to use that word, since it has got me in trouble in the past with
people who have a strict mathematical definition of "arbitrary", but it's the
best word I know for the process. There's nothing (pace Kipling) inherently
sound-like about any of the symbols.

The Korean system, on the other hand, is also arguably alphabetic, and is (to me)
clearly mnemonic. I feel it could be handily adapted for use with English or
almost any other language. A sort of far-eastern analog to the IPA, perhaps?

>I know for my conlang, it does not fit well, or can be okay, but since my
>conlang is mostly things like
>consonant-vowel combos, then would the latin be better or .. soemthing like Sanskrit or what
>wring form?
Mostly CV syllables seems an ideal job for something like Devanagari (the Sanskrit
script), or any of the other Indic scripts. I suspect if you had overwhelmingly
CV syllables, you might prefer a straight syllabary like Japanese or UCAS. That
might also be the best route if you only have mostly CV syllables, but no
single vowel outnumbers the others in frequency of occurence.




Paul

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