Re: Alphabets with logographic symbols

Arthaey Angosii wrote:

> As I'm working on adding more glyphs to my font* for the Asha'ille
> alphabet, I'm finding that I want to add special glyphs for some
> common prefixes, suffixes, and circumflexes, and even some words.
> English has "&" instead of "and" sometimes, but otherwise English is
> pretty strictly alphabetical. Are there ANADEWs for alphabetic writing
> systems with a sprinkling of logographs thrown in?
Dunno about ANADEW, but how's this:

I'd an idea for a script that was something like this. The idea was that the
script was originally for a language that worked in a manner not entirely
unlike that of a Semitic language, but later ended up being used by languages
not entirely unlike plain vanilla IE or Ugric languages.

Words in this script[1] consist of two parts: the root/radical and a
logographic determinative. The original language just had consonants in the
root, and the determinative, ahem, determined the rest of the shape of the
word.

The script was later adopted by other languages, which complicated things
quite nicely. Some of the consonant glyphs were repurposed to represent vowels
in the root (similarly to what happened the the Greeks repurposed the
Phoenician alphabet), added and dropped determinatives as needed, &c., but the
basic idea stayed the same: root + determinative.

K.

[1] And that script was derived from a simplification of an older script
     *still*, which was purely logographic, and the symbols used for letters
     and determinatives were derived from this script. Think Bopomofo or,
     better yet, Kana.

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