From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Tue 19 Jul 1994 - 09:01:18 EEST
> _____
> Dave:
>
> > I tend towards the idea that the Runes actual shapes are descended from
> > Western, which is probably an ideographic writing form like Kanji
> > (several different spoken languages share one written form, the only
> > earth equivalent as far as I know being Kanji).
>
> What about Latin? Which was the written form of French, Provencal, Italian
> and Spanish (inter alia) until they developed their own scripts. I find it
> more convenient to assume the language of Brithos is "equivalent to" pure
> Classical Latin in everyday use; the other Western spoken tongues are then
> like "degenerate" Romance languages, closely related to one another and to
> the root language. And, like pre-Dante Italy, the language of the common
> folk isn't written down (or would look to anyone like a grotesquely corrupt
> form of proper writing); the Wise write in pure Brithini, the book-language
> of the learned.
>
But we know that the Western languages share the same written form, which
is not true of the written forms of the Romance languages (they are related,
but not the same). My simple solution to this problem (that the written form
is far more closely related than the spoken form) is that the Western
language is an ideogrphic script like Kanji, which represents concepts rather
than sounds. Two people who both speak and write a Western tongue (but not
the same one) cannot communicate very well at all by speaking, but can
read each others writing easily - this cannot be explained by a psuedo Latin
language.
As it happens, I tend to use Latin as a psuedo Brithini script, but that does not mean that I want to extend that metaphor to include the script. I rather like the mixing and matching of elements to make it seem less like Europe.
Besides, a language of ideograms seems to me to fit in with the reveration of logic and abstraction that I see as part of the Brithini character.
> (One of my loose ideas is that a written form of Safelstran is gaining
> ground in some Ralian city-states: knowledge can be written down in the
> tongue of the people! A very dangerous novelty...)
>
Interesting - but the Kanji idea does not preclude that sort of thing. Compare
the relationship between Kanji and native Japanese scripts in Japan - Kanji
was the language of the intelligentsia, but much less widely known.
> Jrusteli taxonomic classifications are in Latin, and come from the West...
>
As I said, I like the idea that it sounds like Latin, to impart the proper
flavour, but I ideographic script suits the facts better. So I consider
the psuedo-LAtin merely a convention for flavour, not a clue to the truth.
Cheers Dave
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