Re: Colored Scripts

On Tuesday 22 January 2002 11:46 am, Wayne Chevrier wrote:
> For a real world example of a "cromatographic" script, check out
> http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Chroma.html
        Hmm...interesting. Although I don't give it much chance of being adopted
into wide use. The web site claims that this comes from the Benin and Edo
people in southern Nigeria, but it doesn't say if it has been widely adopted.
I wonder what the human eye is better at: shapes or colors? The eye can
distinguish millions of colors (not that you'd want to have several thousand
words based on various shades of deep blue, no matter how intelligent it is),
and color is used to convey certain concepts (red: danger/stop, green: go,
yellow: warning, etc.)
        Back to the script: I'm guessing that the words are those used to describe
letters, much like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, 'Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, etc. Alas, no
explanation for the dots are given. Perhaps if I knew Edo it would be obvious.
        This would be an interesting experiment: invent a small phonetic inventory
(or steal it outright from Hawai'ian or Maori) and produce three "alphabets":
one something along the lines of this script (colors), one that is like
traditional scripts (shapes), and one that is both shapes and colors. Get a
fairly large group of people together, split them into three groups, teach
them all a different script, and then see who can read the fastest. Possible
objections: since shapes are so often equivalent with word and meaning in
most literate societies, the test would be less biased if the groups were
composed of illiterate people. Well, there's a PhD for somebody...
        :Peter