From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 25 Oct 2000 - 01:53:49 EEST
Peter Larsen, on losing ideograms:
> Well, yes. My point is that the various "big cultures" of Glorantha
> (Westerners, Pelorians, Orlanthi, Kralorians, Artimali, etc) all went
> through this process (assuming they have writing) at different paces and to
> different degrees.
Sure, and in different directions, also. Where you go "after"
pictograms is conditioned not simply by an inevitable historical
process, but (among other things) by what your language is like.
And contrariwise, there can be some effect in the other direction,
too.
> So it seems pretty unlikely that they have all ended up
> at the same point in their writing systems.
Sure. But equally, even if they were all alphabetic (which I
don't suggest) they wouldn't be all at the same point, either.
That category hides the proverbial multitude of sins...
> There are, however, more places to stop between
> ideographs/logographs and letters than one end or the other. I think that,
> as in the RW, successful systems have tended to spread. In Glorantha, the
> Bright Empire should have had this effect, so should the Middle Sea Empire
> and, to a lesser extent, the EWF.
Note that some systems spread "better" than others. Syllabaries
A popular sport is, who has rebus-writing, and who's logosyllabic?
and logographic systems have obvious "issues" in adapting to whole
new languages, even more so than the odd loan-word. (Obviously
alphabets are not without their own complications, as a quick survey
of a few mappings of the Roman (and modifications thereof) characters
reveals, but it's significantly more open-ended and adaptable,
as a rule.)
Come to that, who has a "pure" syllabary? I certainly see the
East Isles as having a non-alphabetical script, and not an outright
logographic one, so it (or they) could be any of the above. Pamaltela
is bound to have a hatful of funky scripts, I don't doubt. If you
want a Sanskrit analogue, maybe either Fonrit or Teshnos might
serve... I still suspect Peloria has, or at least once had, a few
more whacky types of script. What do (or did) they use in Rinliddi,
for example?
> >I suspect it [New Pelorian] can be written both ways.
[Dara Happan alphabet and Wendarian(ish) glyphs]
> This doesn't seem too likely to me, or various literate people aren't
> going to be able to read each other's writing
Potentially, yes. Lots of fun! (Though note that in Japan, you're
only "literate" if you know two systems which are about this distinct.
(Indeed four, all told.) Conversely, Serbo-Croat is in much this
position, being written in one of two different scripts (both alphabetic
and with a common ancestor, admittedly, but still impressively
perverse, you must admit.)) Being a smart-arse that knows both isn't
that unlikely, but granted some people would only know one, or the other.
> (and remember, there aren't that many fully literate people).
True. The main culprits are the Buseri, who for reasons of both
pragmatics and religious bigotry are going to use the DH alphabet.
That's why I think it's logical that most use of the glyphs would
be by the semi-literate, or the ostenatious.
> >> Pelorians, whose systems should resemble each other's more than they do the
> >> West.
>
> >Why? Their cultures are remarkably disparate, why not their writing
> >systems?
>
> Because you use what's close and what has developed to meet the needs of
> your language family. The cultures of Peloria are diverse, but they have
> more in common with each other than they do with the West or the Orlanthi.
Not sure how true that is. The Pelandans and the Dara Happans seem to
> Lastly, John Hughes reveals that the Orlanthi script is borrowed, but
be pretty radically different, though granted they've also had quite
an influence on each other, one way or another. I don't think you
can try and take the logic of adjacency too far. Look at China and
Japan, just to confuse matters intensely; near neighbours, essentially
the same script, _utterly_ different languages.
> a relatively unaltered Western script, southern Manria gets something
> dreamed up by an Aeolian St. Cyril, the Aggarites use a Pelorian script,
> and so on....
That's largely what I was thinking. There's no "true" Heortling
script, aside from a limited icongraphy for largely sacred purposes.
Myths, law, and lineage are the main thing you need to 'record',
and there the tradition would be largely oral, historically.
Nevertheless, some people persist in writing to write down that
which god never intended to be written down, and do it "phonetically"
in whatever the dominant or most convenient writing system tends to be.
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