Re: Characters (was: Nice comment, Adam! (was: beautiful scripts))

>From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
>Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 18:21:49 -0400
>
>Slightly OT: I found a Japanese-English New Testament.  The mixing of
>systems is especially obvious when you look at things like the genealogy
>of Jesus.  That page is filled with katakana for all the foreign names,
>and thus is, at a glance, very distinct from other pages.
>
I've always found it interesting how the Chinese Bible handles all the
foreign names by running a line down the right side (or under in
bi-linguals) of the characters as a notice to the reader -- Attention these
characters don't mean anything.  They're just sounds.  Does anyone do
anything like this in a conlang?  Punctuate to highlight transliterations?
I guess it would only be really useful for an ideographic/logographic system
like Chinese.

A related  question:  Those of you who have conalngs with bizarre
phonologies (or no "phon"ology), what do you do with foreign names?  I mean
if you come upon the name "John" and your langage has no vowels or stops
(just for example) what do you do?  What if your conlang is based on a
different modality?  ASL (not a conlang, I know) either fingerspells or
invents a new name.  TSL (Taiwan Sign Language) just uses the signs for the
Chinese characters used to write the name.

Questions, questions.

Adam

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