Re: Deseret alphabet

Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
>I.e. too planned, too CONstructed?
Yes, exactly.

There's a difference between "constructing" a script and "CONSTRUCTING" a
script. What i mean is, constructing a script is of course cool, but when
you over emphasize and regiment the form and process, then it becomes
contrived.
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>That's your opinion. I like them.
Of course it is. You go right on ahead and like them. Who said you didn't
have to?
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>> What's strange to me is certain glyphs seem to show a phonetic
>> relationship (k and g),
>> but others, which you'd think would have the same
>> visual relationship (short and long ah) don't.
Read these as a unit, not out of context....

>Like P and B in the capital Latin alphabet.
Yes, but P and B are in a script that "evolved"
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>Like K and G in the capital Latin alphabet.
As are the above two, which also evolved. Deseret did not. So, it's not
invalid to think that whoever was creating deseret was seeing certain
relationships between sounds, but then ignorning it in others. That was my
observation, not my point.

My point is: If you're going to create an alphabet and use a lot of the
same shapes, use them for sounds that are related in articulation,or just
don't. If you must, instead of reversing or turning them, use diacritics
to alter the sounds, it looks much neater, and less haphazard and
schizophrenic (to me).

Reversing and or turning them is even worse, especially when you use them
for non-related sounds (like "short o" and "ef" in deseret). If you MUST
do that, then use it VERY sparingly (ba and ya are the only such examples
in the handwritten version of Kuraw (my script), but it's the only such
instance in the script).
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>If you want visual relationships, the Shavian alphabet is a possibility.
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>IMO if there was a visual relationship between the shapes of letters which
>represent similar sounds, the script would look again more contrived.
True, but that wasn't my point.


I actually dislike scripts where the letters look like variations on the
same form. This is why for instance, i dislike how Kharoshthi looks,
because the vowel glyphs are based upon the glyph for "a". I don't like
scripts where there's a visual relationship between letters of similar
sound.

And yes, i dislike all of those scripts similar to the one the Cree use
because of this.


I also dislike scripts such as Cherokee, which look like a bunch of Latin
letters and arabic numerals went into battle and came out with
amputations, mental problems, prostetics, speaking another language :).
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>:-) I've created my own script. And I did fancy diacritics 'cause I did
>want
>to.
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>In fact I didn't create a script for my conlang but a conlang for my
>script.

I actually have messed around with the Kuraw script far more than with the
Saalangal Language (which gathers dust, and is the language the script was
made for).

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