Re: Divergent Scripts

> Arthaey Asked;
> I'd like to know how believable/likely it would be for them to develop two
> totally different scripts that were both originally based on an alphabetic
> script. I want one of the scripts to remain alphabetic, but I want the
> second script to be like Chinese (what's this called? logographic?).
Barbara Babbles;
I'm an amateur scriptologist (someone who studies the nuts and bolts of
writing systems and their development) and historically it'd be very
unlikly that an alphabetic script would develop first in either case
unless the idea of an alphabetic script was introduced to them from
elsewhere The alphabet has only been invented twice in human history.
Once in mesoptania (which died along with cuneiform) and once by the
Egyptians as a part of the hieroglphic system - all the world's
alphabets are decendents, direct and indirect of the hieroglyphic
alphabet.

Alphabets *could* develop from two main basics, the rebus principle or
the
syllabic principle, - a third is the conceptual principle (ie one
culture adapts the *idea* of writing from another culture and simplifys
it creating an alphabet, or the idea of an alphabet is adapted from
another
language which already uses one).

The most plausable scenario would be for there to be two isolated groups
of speakers of your conlang, for convinience call them A and B, one of
whom developed a mixed syllabic/logographic script like Minoan Linear B
(lets say A did this) and when B came in contact with them they took
away the *idea* of writing and created their own uniquie alphabet. Later
when the cultures melded the two systems could become mixed with the
main writing being alphabetic but the logorgaphs retained for
convinience. The
outcome would be similar to modern Text messaging in which the need to
reduce the number of letters has meant that even numeric ideographs and
capitolised letters  have been utilised as logographs. A short
sentence such as "what for?" can be written "? 4" or "are you going too"
as " R U going 2?  or a word like "hatstand" becomes "h@st&".

It is possible for a logographic script to include an alphabet (eg;
Ancient Egyptian) or a syllabary (eg; Mayan) and develop a mixed script.
Or for a syllabic script to include a large number of logographs (eg
Minoan Linear B). When "phonetic" systems are independently invented -
ie in isolation - syllabic scripts come first. This stems from the
difficulty in pronouncing consonants in isolation (ie without a vowel)
so the first instinct is to intellectually conect consonants with a
vowel and think of sounds like ta, te, tee, tih, toh, toe, tuh, tou,
too, as requiring seperate graphic representation. As vowels can be
pronounced in isolation they get their own symbols and are used at the
begining of words or after a syllabic like "ta" + "I" = /taI/ to make
diphthongs.

No alphabet has ever been independently invented, they have always
either evolved from logographic/syllabic scripts, or some genius having
been exposed to these forms of writing has concieved the idea of
representing each phoneme independently (eg Phonician, and Protosinatic
were born from Ancient Egyptian, Phonician inspired the Greeks (who
developed the idea of representing vowels as well as consonants), and
the Later Egyptians (Copts) were inspired by Greek to an alphabetic
system (although they borrowed some characters from anicent egyptian
demotic for phonemes greek didn't have). Greek inspire the Etruscans,
who in turn inspired the Romans, and the rest as they say is history.

The ancient inhabitants of India came closest to independently inventing
an alphabet, but end up with a compromise. There are seperate signs for
vowels, but each "letter" has an inherent "a" vowel unless either
changed to another vowel by a diacritic or ommited by ligature (the so
called conjunct consonants of Devangari for example - of which there are
several hundred) or by a "null" diacritic (usually used in the final
position). Ethiopian had a similar solution for their syllabary; all "t"
syllables for example have a similarity - the same basic shape - the
vowel indicated by a ligatured "tag" shape. These are not "true"
syllabaries (ie where every "letter" is different and unrelated in shape
to any other) and are called "syllabets" by scriptologists.

In the Egyptian case only consonants were written and this led to an
over abundance of written homophones, and as vowels determined case,
tense, etc so an extra character was added to the end of a word called a
determinative; thus [wns] which in written form could mean Open, Hurry,
Mistake, Hermopolis (as so called by the greeks), to become Bald, or
Light; were sorted out by thier determinatives (which in "stand alone
mode" were logographs) for A Door, Walking Legs, A Wren (associated with
evil), Crossroads within a wall (inhabited place), Hair, and The Sun.
When the egyptians wanted to use the Determinative as a Logograph they
placed a single stroke beneath it which told the reader to read it as a
logograph and not an unpronounced determinative (this type of graphic
signaling is part of a script's orthography).

In the case of the Chinese language's script Tones (which changed a
syllable's meaning) prevented the development of an alphabetic script.
Originally Logographs represented each word, however to have a logograph
for every word would be cumbersome and almost impossible to hold in
memory. The solution was to use two characters together, the first
character told the reader the syllable using the rebus principle - but
without a tone it could have several possible meanings, thus the second
character (called the "classifier") told the reader the rough "sense" of
the first by determining which "class" of words the first character
belonged to (eg flat things, animals, humans, wooden things, etc etc)
and thus the reader was informed which tone to use to properly pronounce
the first character. This system worked well and could travel across the
chinese regionolects even when the other regionolect used different
tones. Over 80% of written chinese uses [syllable/meaning] pairs.

This ability to represent more than one language was why no simple
system for tones was developed; because while [syllable/meaning] would
cross linguistic barriers [syllable/fall-rise tone] could not.

No Tone Language has ever *independently* developed an alphabet. In all
cases where a Tone language has an alphabet the idea of an alphabet was
introduced or taken from elsewhere and then adapted to represent tones
as well as phonemes.

However, having said that, there is no such thing as a "pure" writing
system. English for example uses a number of logographs and ideographs.
In the ideographic catagory we have most of our punctuation marks . =
end of sentence, Between " " = spoken words, ? = sentence was a
question, etc and all of our mathmatical notation which is universal
across all languages. In the logographic catagory we have, & = and, @ =
(at, each, or per), and % = "per centage".

> I don't know the history of how/when/why the Chinese characters got a
> Latin-alphabet tranliteration equivalent... could someone fill me in?
Missionaries developed ways of representing Chinese alphabetically so as
it could be taught to other missionaries - there were many systems - the
communist government of china decided that all offical latinization
would be in pinyin, which is based on a german alphabetization system.

> Do I need to have two geographically separated groups of Asha'illens for
> one of them to create a logographic script from an alphabetic one?
As we've looked at already the evolution would have to be the other way
around, that is; alphabetic from logographic/syllabic. However, even
although I used geography in my example geographical seperation is not
esential, but some form of seperation is; cultural or religious. Many
religions develop their own script in an effort to help foster an
independent group identity; Mormon script is a modern example and
Manichaean an ancient one as examples of "created scripts"; Mohammed's
insitance that the Koran was only written in the Arabic script and
language had a similar effect, even if that was not the declared
intention. The Copts of Egypt (who are christians) adopted and adapted
the greek alphabet in order to dispose of hieroglyphic writing (and its
derivitives of hieratic and demotic) because that system was intimately
connected to the regligious beliefs of the Pagan Egyptians. So when
paganism was ousted entirly in Egypt by christianity the knowlege of how
to read "pagan" heiroglyphs was lost too.


> Also, I really like having fonts for my conscripts. With an alphabetic
> script it's very simple for me to make a font, but I don't know where to
> start with a logographic one. Seems that however computers deal with
> Chinese would work for me. How do you type Chinese characters? What are
> the fonts like?
To alter and use a chinese font, because you'd be substituting one of
your character for a chinese one, you'd need to learn how to type
chinese, and memorise your substitution code!

A much simplier solution is to use more than one alphabetic font. You
must have played with fonts and found you can change fonts mid-word. If
you take for example the "Times" typeface versions of Roman, Cyrillic,
and Greek you can expand the "latin" alphabet (if you include the
scandanavian charater set too) by another 38 unique characters giving
you a 64 character alphabet, which you can double if the Capitols
represent different sounds to 128.

The standard keyboard (including capitols and symbols) has 94
characters, using four different fonts in the same "typeface" and point
size in the manner described above would give you 376 characters to play
with, four keyboard cue sheets, and no need to learn chinese before you
could type in your conlang ;-)

To invent a logographic script from scratch, and to do that
convincingly, would be no easy task. I'd advise you study some books
relevent to the subject first;
The Story of Writing, by Andrew Robinson
Lost Languages, by Andrew Robinsn
Understanding Chinese Characters, by Edoardo Fazzioli
Reading the Maya Glyphs, by Micheal Coe and Mark Van Stone
and
Decoding Egyptian Hieroglyphs, by Bridget McDermott.

The first two will help you understand how scripts evolve, and the other
three will help you understand how logographs are concieved and created
and the "logic" behind them - which is intimatly tied to both language
and culture and not in the least "obvious".

Another book wich will give you an idea of the sheer variety in which
language can be written is;

Writing Systems of the World, by Akira Nakanishi.

Have fun! ;-)

Barbara

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