From: Loren J. Miller (MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Mon 01 Nov 1993 - 07:50:53 EET
America On-line RuneQuest Chat
June 9, 1993
Logged by Loren Miller (Ekron)
Part 3: Written Languages
WRITTEN LANGUAGES
Gray: Languages...
Some thoughts.
Written forms -
Darktongue - lumps, bumps, rough spots.
Stormspeech - Swirls, jagged runes
Pelorian - cursive script
Sartarite - runic
Dara Happan - Cuneform
Kralori - ideograms
Any thoughts?
Ekron: Is dara happa a river valley? That would control
who would use cuneiform
Gray: Dara Happa's civilization clustered around river
valleys. So it might make sense.
Ekron: Stormspeech has its own script?
Gray: In RQ2 it did...
Ekron: Sounds suspect. Why would Orlanth the lord of wind
want to write things down?
PRHarmaty: I don't feel Stormspeech should be written. The
oral tradition thing.
Gray: Why do Sartarites, an oral culture, have a written
language?
Ekron: Dara Happa sounds good. Pelorian okay. Sartarite
too. So too Kralori. I don't agree about
stormspeech.
Gray: I'm not sure myself.
Ekron: The druids forbade people to write things down. If
the orlanthi are based on celts they might have
similar rules
Gray: OK, scrap Stormspeech.
PRHarmaty: The norse had a written language, but they prized
their memories. Scalds were much admired.
Gray: Firespeech?
Gray: That has a written form.
Ekron: Stone speech would be the only one I would go for.
Gray: Brushstrokes, charcoal?
PRHarmaty: I believe that Scandinavians make better models for
Sartarites.
Gray: Earthspeech should be carving.
Gray: Paul, I agree.
Gray: Seaspeech?
PRHarmaty: Their government and politics are nearly perfect
matches.
Gray: Patterns of objects?
Ekron: Sartarite can be a script. I just don't know about
Stormspeech. Sartarite is cool by me
Koribouros: That about wraps it up for me guys, see ya.
Gray: Western - Latin?
Gray: Take care, then...
Ekron: You don't need a ton of scripts, since any script
can be used for any tongue
PRHarmaty: The reason Runes look the way they do in our world
is that its damn hard to CARVE swirls / scripts.
Ekron: Write stormspeech in sartarite if you want, just
don't show it to the wind voice.
G Bailey: what about Mostali?
Gray: Mostali - probably lots of 01010100100111s
G Bailey: "digital"?
PRHarmaty: The Mostali use printing presses. At least that's
what I vote for.
Gray: Takes them a year to read a long note <g>
Ekron: Mostali probably write in Helvetica 11.
PRHarmaty: Disagree. Gothic, Mostali's gotta write in Gothis
sometin-or-other.
Ekron: Helvetica is a gothic font. But Gothic is cool too.
Gray: Letter Gothic. It's monospaced.
Ekron: Variable spaced fonts are octamonist heresy. So are
differently sized fonts, and italics. Every
sentence looks the same.
PRHarmaty: I mean that weird stuff the Guttenberg bible's
printed in.
Ekron: What? a mostali who would want to read that
beautiful font? The old bibles were set in what we
call German Black Letter fonts.
Gray: Scripts should probably be culturally based - ie
Pelorian, Theyelan, Dara Happan, etc.
P Michaels: Wahy about Auld Wyrmish?
Gray: Auld Wyrmish was an invented language, so probably
whatever was popular back then.
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