Re: Kuraw - Handwritten

En réponse à Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>:

>
> But, for now, i prefer to script to remain as an alphasyllabary. It's
> great to ponder such things though ;) (IMHO, there are not enough
> con-alphasyllabaries, most seem to be alphabets)
>
He he, you can even do stranger, like I did for Itakian. Itakian has its native
script, that could be called an alphasyllabary, but turned around: the basic
letters are the vowels (actually the vocalic sounds, it includes also the
liquids r, n, i and u), and the consonnants are considered embellishments of
the vowels, and are thus written as diacritics over the vowels! (except one,
which is considered naturally part of the vowel sign, like the /a/ is always
considered part of the consonnant in devanagari. This is of course the glottal
stop /?/).

Of course, this is not so simple: while it's true that the remaining
consonnants besides the glottal stop are written as diacritics over the vowel
signs (not too difficult, Itakian has only 8 phonemic consonnants,
including /?/), the vowel signs themselves are not that simple. In fact, each
syllable has one of the following structure: CV, CL, CVV, CVL and CLV (where V
is a vowel: a, e or o, and L a liquid: r, n, i and u), and it's the whole
vocalic group V, L, VV, VL or LV which is written as a vowel sign (simplified
by the fact that the groups of two sounds are merely ligatures of the simple
letters), and this sign receives the diacritic for the consonnant.

Of course, this script has one defect: it doesn't mark tone whatsoever, despite
its importance even for the grammar :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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