Re: Scripts

Christopher Wright wrote:
>How many of you have scripts?
Yes.

>How many of you use diacriticals as vowels in your scripts?
Originally yes, but hundreds (twenty in real life) of years ago, the Kash
changed from a syllabary to an alphabetic system.  The vowel characters are
still smaller than the consonants.  Only the letter "l" plus vowel is still
written in the old way.
(See my website http://cinduworld.tripod.com/contents.htm , link to
_alphabet_)
Originally the letter "a" (a circle) was the vowel carrier, but only in
initial position.

>How many of you have null letters (letters that don't represent a sound)
>to deal with the problem of diphthongs / multiple vowels per consonant?
The signs for "w" (in all environments) and "y" (in most) are essentially
silent, except for pedants.  That's because, in the syllabary, the
vowel-carrier couldn't be used word-internal, yet you couldn't use the vowel
diacritics alone, so a word like /sau/ 'water' was written "s(a)-w(u)",
/kai/ 'alive' was "k(a)-y(i)" etc. etc. These were not considered
diphthongs, though they are so pronounced nowadays.

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