Re: An Alphagraphic Language
| From: | Nokta Kanto <red5_2@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 30, 2004, 23:27 |
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On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 21:33:24 -0800, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
>What I propose is an alphabet of letters designed not to represent sounds,
but designed to be as visually distinctive as possible, and designed to fit
together side by side on a line so as to make graphical word forms that are
as easy as possible to distinguish from one another. The letters that make
up a word are neither phonetic nor ideographic. They are abstract
squiggles that fit together to form longer abstract squiggles. These
abstract squiggles are assigned arbitrarily to words, just like we assign
the 'f' sound to 'gh' in "enough" and think nothing of it.
>
>Just because two words sound similar doesn't mean they would be "spelled"
in a similar manner. Imagine using the Roman alphabet and spelling "book"
qIy and spelling "hook" JuuI, not because they sound like those letter
combinations, but because they are easily distinguished at a glance by
their shape.
>
>Any thoughts?
>
I would imagine such a language would have more use for spaces; there might
be condensed spacing in which letters overlap, and many words with single
spaces in the middle of them.
Some words arguably benefit from similar appearance. How would you handle
conjugated words? Would "write" look anything like "written"? How about
words with similar etymologies? Would "illuminate" look anything like
"luminous"?
--Noktakanto
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