Re: new font creator

michael poxon wrote:

> As you divine, I'm no fan of the Japanese syllabary - I much prefer Amharic.
Neither am I. I find it over-complicated. I never can remember the symbols.

> Omeina has both above- and below- diacritics, generally based on purely
> calligraphic principles. Writing in Omeina is seen as an art rather than as
> a functional means of communication.
Apparently, the (even undefined) conculture which goes with your conlang is
a relatively primitive culture. On the contrary, my conculture is a
futuritisc one. Writing by hand is very important, even if my aliens seldom
do it because of all their computers. I do it for them.  ;-)  I write lines
of the same symbol until I find the definitive shape, then I grab my mouse.

> The only permissible CVC sequences are
> when C2 = l, n or r, and there is a diacritic which shows this.
        [---CUT---]

My syllabary allows much more freedom thanks to the mute vowel and its
clusters. I can have CVC(v), SVC(v), CCVC(v) CSVC(c), CVS(v) and CCVS(v).
(I'm not sure if SVS(v) and CSVS(v) should be allowed.)

> To your sentence:
> some of the symbology I found a bit confusing - are you using the IPA or
> some version of it, since I notice the words are enclosed in square brackets
        [---CUT---]

Well, in Mozilla when you enclose something in between slashes, it appears
as italic. A well known behavior of mail software from the old days of BBS
glory. And that was illegible... I just changed the font and it's not a
problem anymore. Any way, I always use X-SAMPA on the list, even in between
square brackets which are IPA style. So [t_h] is an aspirated [t]. And [j]
is the german one. The double parenthesis is a mistake; I mixed Branner's
ASCII IPA with X-SAMPA. I was meant to represent a top ligature. X-SAMPA's
one (the underscore) is confusing. Is [k_w] a labialized [k] or [k]+[w] with
a ligature? Well, I'm still working on the way to phoneticize my alien
conlang and I think that I will make the whole thing as simple as possible.

teoth'ska tökyoe jishso ; göko ; teoth'ra tökyoe dötvëe.
/teot_h^ska: tO.kwoe jis.so/
/gOkO/
/teot_h^xa: tO.kwoe dO.tvEe/


 >That
> said, the grammar looks interesting,
It's an all-noun conlang.

> and our syllabaries don't appear to be
> too different - unsurprising I suppose, given that syllabaries will only
> tend to work with certain phonetic structures.
Generally, syllabaries always contain CV symbols plus diacritics of some
sort which may include the V symbols. Not much imagination is allowed...

> I can understand your confusion over the Omeina symbols for n and a. They
> are alike, apart from the fact that a is always preceded by two dots (a
> colon if you will),
Come on! I know you can do better than this!  ;-)

> but your analysis is excellent considering the material
> you had to work with!
        [---CUT---]

My super-IQ serves some purpose once in a while. It was so easy...  :-)

> The basic form of any
> symbol is the "consonant+a" version,
        [---CUT---]

Very common amongst the natlangs. I don't know why I followed the japanese
way instead of having a default vowel. Maybe am I more jealous of it than
disliking it?

> Can I see your
> syllabary? I think they are the natural way to write a language!
Please, I haven't seen it in action yet! I finished the font only yesterday
and don't even know if it will work as expected (although I think so). Wait
until monday and I may have something online just for you.

Until then, go here:

http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm

You'll see a lot of (natlang's) syllabaries amongst other interesting
scripts. I inspired me from none of them cause I wanted something really
alien but they inspired me unconsciously or maybe by precognition. Manipuri
has symbols that look like some I invented years before to know this script
existed, at a time my script was still alphabetic. And that little circle in
between symbols! It's so shaquean! (Although it has no phonetic value in
shaquelingua, it's only a grammatical symbol.) I really like Manipuri...
except its diacritics system.

See ya,

=====================
Remi Villatel
maxilys@normandnet.fr
=====================

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