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Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?

From:Joseph Bridwell <zhosh@...>
Date:Sunday, May 8, 2005, 17:14
> A non-linear system could use this ability to > present us several words in a semagram which > would induce a mental image. In a linear text,
Interesting. There's a limited form of this in Nenshar (a conlang I played iwth after reading _The Languages of Pao_ by Vance. In the book, there's a language which is all nouns, pornouns & their states. I wondered how far this could go re: a real language, and began working on Nenshar. I've not worked on it recently. I found myself thinking of it as consisting of a set of spoken panels or paintings, each one describing a snapshot, and a series of panels describing a story. There is however no 2D aspect in it.
> BuT this is no kind of writing system that can > you read aloud. You can only read it for yourself > then tell what you read with your own words. Speech > has only one dimension so any non-linear writing > system can logically only have an indirect relation > with it.
Which raises the question of how the writing system developed.
> I wrote a little 2D fairytale to illustrate my purpose. > (I hope that the list allows an attachment. It's only HTML.)
Very cool!!! I believe it came through well. To my mind, starting at columns 4 or 5, a few misconceptions arise: Yferosia... made of light ... burning all; southern island... forged by magic.

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Remi Villatel <maxilys@...>