From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Sat 15 Jul 2000 - 01:22:53 EEST
Henrix:
> Yes, many "logographic" scripts give syllabic contents to their pictograms,
> but, as in cunieform script (sumerian, babylonian and assyric) , the syllabic
> content, i.e. how you pronounce them differs with the language spoken.
Then that's not a syllabic script, so far as I can see. I don't know
the cases mentioned well enough to comment directly though, alas.
> Thus, the sign for "mountain" means mountain in all the spoken languages, but
is
> pronounced differentely and so given different syllabic content (generally the
> first part of the word).
>
> Whether this is unlogographic or not I leave hence. Most pictograms have a
> logographic _and_ a syllabic content, and could be used as either.
If it can be used as either, it's not logographic, it's a rebus-script.
I'm not sure how you determine this is true of 'most pictograms':
there's not much in the way of genuinely pictographic scripts left,
that I know of.
> (This is, as I understand it, true even for modern Chinese Languages.)
Chinese script is purely logographic, as I understand it. There are
> Anyway, I am basing this on the assumption that the West has age old texts in
syllabaries for languages in the Chinese 'family', though -- Yi,
if memory serves.
> common that have not been changed, only interpreted in varying ways. Texts
> still read in their original form, like, say, the Koran.
> That these texts have been kept in their original script.
> And that this written language is (one of) the oldest on Glorantha.
> Perhaps I am wrong.
I know of no such texts which are so old that there's some compelling
> Is written Western then always written Brithini/Tadeniti? Does, in essence, a
reason for them to be in a conspicuously antique script. (Though how
old that migh be is obviously highly arguable.) Note when the Abiding
Book was written, for example.
> Loskalmi have to learn Brithini to learn how to read. (This is different from
> how I understood it from the Glorantha Box.)
No, they have to learn 'Western'. What we have here is a semantic
question of whether alphabetic Western is (sufficiently close to)
a phonetic rendering of one Western language, conspicuously more than
any of the others. As I've argued before, this is largely besides the
point. You don't need to have a phonetic reading followed by a
'translation', just to read a non-phonetic alphabetic script. English
would be even more problematic than it is in any case, if this were so.
> No. The Brithini share the common Western script and would hardly go for such
> newfangled inventions.
I doubt Western is so recent. OTOH, I doubt it goes back to the Ice
Age, either...
[Dara Happan script]
> OK, I did not know that. Glorious ReAscent, I suppose? I think I interpreted
> that as to be syllabic script rather than true alphabetical.
It was clearly alphabetic (though I don't have a citation to hand).
Cheers,
Alex.
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