Hallo!

On Thu, 24 Nov 2011 20:47:57 +0000 R A Brown wrote:

> On 24/11/2011 16:26, Peter Cyrus wrote:
> > Ray, didn't you just announce that Tengwar was an
> > attractive option?  What do you see as the big difference
> > between a Tengwar-based syllabary and a Shwa-based
> > syllabary?
> 
> Apart from the shape (I'm afraid I do find Tengwar more
> attractive), the Tengwar primary letters are, in fact, an
> abjad.  But it seems Tolkien expected them normally to be
> used with _tehta_.  The Tengwar with tehta forms an abugida.

Yes.  Tengwar with Tehtar is a featural abugida.

> > Shwa is actually a featural system - the base unit is the
> > feature.  Those features can be combined in pairs to form
> > letters of an alphabet, or combined into trios to form
> > kana of a moraic syllabary, or into larger groups to form
> > triconsonantal roots as in Arabic or entire syllables
> > from closed sets as in Chinese.
> 
> I realize it's featural, like several other systems. But
> reading:
> http://www.shwah.net/vowels.htm
> http://www.shwah.net/consonants.htm
> http://www.shwah.net/consonants.htm
> http://www.shwah.net/voices.htm
> 
> I'm left with the distinct impression that Shwa is basically
> _alphabetic_; which I don't consider a criticism in any way.

Yes.  It is a featural alphabet in its basic form.  Not
entirely unlike the Old Albic script (which you haven't
seen yet because it does not yet exist in digital form
- I should get it done soon), which is also featural.

> The 'gaits' seems to me somewhat artificial and kludgey
> adaptations of the Shwa alphabet. On
> http://www.shwah.net/gaits.htm
> 
> My preferences for the writing of Hārūn 'ar-Rashīd bin
> Muḥammad bin 'al-Manṣūr's name are:
> (a) Arabic script
> (b) 'Shwa alphabetic gait'
> (c) 'Shwa abugida gait'.
> 
> I'm afraid I find the Arabic script more attractive; but I
> don't dislike the Shwa alphabetic version.  The 'Shwa
> abugida gait', however,  seems very ugly to me and I
> honestly do not see what advantage it offers over the
> alphabetic version.

Oh, I don't find the "abugida gait" visually unappealing,
but it looks as if it is difficult to read.  Also, the
transformation from the alphabet gait to the abugida gait
is not explained well, and I cannot follow it.

The Old Albic script has two "gaits" in the Shwa sense;
I call them "vertical mode" and "horizontal mode".

In the vertical mode, the script is a featural alphabet;
the letters follow sequentially, from bottom to top (yes,
that is a weird writing direction, but I find it strangely
natural).  In the horizontal mode, the stream of letters
is broken up into syllables.  The actual letter shapes are
the same, within the syllable they run from bottom to top,
but the syllables are arranged from left to right with the
vowels on the same level.  One can say that the horizontal
mode is a featural abugida, quite much like Hangul.

> > Yes, if you take the first two features of a
> > three-feature kana, you get a two-feature letter.  Is
> > that what you consider an adaptation?
> 
> No, you don't.  Shwa, being featural, cannot form a kana or
> syllabary in strict sense.  See below.
> 
> > I do recall your opinion of gaits and I understand that
> > you don't see why everybody doesn't just write in an
> > alphabet like you.
> 
> I most certainly did *not* say that. In fact I said I liked
> a world in which there is a variety of writing systems.  If,
> for example, an abugida is more appropriate for a language,
> then using an abugida is fine.  I find ancient Egyptian
> mixed hieroglyphic system quite fascinating    ;)

They are one of the most beautiful writing systems on this
planet!  Of course, it is complicated and slow to write
(which is why Egyptian scribes invented the Hieratic cursive,
which is faster to write but much less aesthetically pleasing).
It is more attractive than cuneiform (which isn't ugly,
but much less lively than the Egyptian hieroglyphics), let
alone Hieroglyphic Luwian, which looks as if the characters
were just crammed into the available space randomly.

> [snip]
> >
> [snip]
> > convey.  And it sounds like Okamamoto feels the same way
> >  in preferring a syllabary to an alphabet.  And that's
> > why Shwa has gaits.
> 
> Okamamoto preferred a _syllabary_; he quite clearly thought
> featural elements made things more difficult.

Or perhaps, the idea of a featural script simply did not
appear to him.  How many writing systems have been invented?
Hundreds.  How many of them are featural?  Only a few.  (And
only one fully featural system is in general use for a major
language of the real world.)

>       He clearly
> would not have been interested in Shwa's gaits.

He would not have been interested in Shwa because there are
no Shwa typewriters ;)  Whether it is featural or not would
not have mattered to him at all, I think.
 
> In hiragana, katakana and any other _syllabary_  such as,
> for example, Linear B, the symbols or 'syllabogram' show
> *no systematic similarity* between the symbols which
> represent syllables with the same consonant or vowels, e.g.
> the symbol for _ka_ will bear no resemblance to that for _a_
> or _ki_ or _ku_ etc.

Right.  The grapheme/phoneme relation is arbitrary.

> The Brx script is a true syllabary.  Shwa can never be a
> true syllabary because it is featural.

If you include the arbitrariness of the grapheme/phoneme
relation into the definition of "syllabary", then indeed not.
I'd rather consider abugidas a subset of syllabaries, namely
those where the grapheme/phoneme relationship is not arbitrary.
All featural syllabaries are abugidas.

> ========================================================
> 
> On 24/11/2011 16:46, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> >
> > On Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:18:02 +0000 R A Brown wrote:
> [snip]
> >>
> >> It seemed to me long ago that it would have better if
> >> [Dutton] had kept ISS and pronounced each letter as a
> >> syllable, i.e. a Roman-letter syllabary.  That is
> >> where Brx has come from.
> >
> > And I think the Roman-letter syllabary idea has
> > something to it. The letters are readily available on
> > computers and typewriters, and using them as syllabic
> > characters shortens the text a lot.
> 
> Quite so.  That almost certainly is why Okamamoto chose to
> use Roman letters for his syllabary.

Yes.  It is obvious that he thought this way.

> [snip]
> 
> >> Thinks: What's the difference between a featural
> >> syllabary and a featural abugida?
> >
> > I think, none.  An abugida is in principle a syllabary
> > whose graphemes can be segmented into a consonant symbol
> >  and a vowel symbol.
> 
> Yes, all abugidas by definition are featural in that one
> segment of the symbol represents a consonant (including
> 'null consonant') and the other segment the vowel (or
> diphthong).

Yes, they are "featural" on the syllable level.

> A fully featural abugida will simply carry the principle
> further as, e.g. Tengwar does.

Or Hangul.

> > For a syllabary, to be featural requires that (as
> > "featural" means that the graphemes can be broken up
> > into elements encoding phonological features), i. e. if
> > it is featural, it is an abugida.
> 
> Exactly!  One thing about exchanges on conlang (and other
> lists, I suspects) is that it helps one think straight. Of
> course a _featural syllabary_ is a nonsense! If it's
> featural it ain't a syllabary, it's an abugida.
> 
> D'oh!  Why didn't I spot that before?
> 
> Shwa doesn't and cannot have a _syllabary_ gait; it has two
> different abugida gaits.

Yes, both the "syllabary gait" and the "abugida gaits" are
abugidas.

> =====================================================
> 
> In short:
> 
> Both Okamamoto and myself arrived at the same sort of
> solution, though for very different reasons.  We both
> decided that:
> - the simplest and most regular orthography is one where we
> just read off the symbols as, e.g. USA, ATM, MBE etc.
> - a small set of 20 to 30 (C)V symbols will be easy to learn;
> - the Roman letters are readily available on computers and
> typewriters, internationally known and provide characters
> for just such a syllabary.

Yes.  That is the principle behind Babm and Brx.  But when I
compare the two syllabaries, I have to say that yours is much
more systematic and elegant!  Babm just uses a shotgun selection
of syllables; you use a restricted phonology in which the 26
syllables fall out from the phoneme inventory and the phonotactic
rules and everything falls into place nicely.

> But such a solution is certainly not appropriate for all
> conlangs!

Certainly not!  I once had designed a Latin-alphabet-based
"universal transcription system" for all my conlangs, which
I thought would cover more or less everything (but really
only covered a union of the phoneme inventories of German
and English, plus a few obvious gap-fillers); I have abandoned
the notion long ago as I have realized that phonologies are
too diverse to adequately cover them with such a system (or
you have to reinvent IPA - but why?  IPA does the job just
fine).

--
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