Hallo conlangers!

On Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:18:02 +0000 R A Brown wrote:

> On 23/11/2011 20:24, Michael Everson wrote:
> > The more I try to like it, the more I think that
> > Roman-letter syllabaries are just a bad idea. Just use
> > Tengwar. Then you can get nice and featural.
> 
> Tengwar is certainly attractive.  Building one's own
> featural syllabary is even more fun.
> 
> I agree entirely that a featural syllabary is a much better
> way of going about things if one is starting from scratch.

I *love* featural scripts; but designing such a script in a way
that the letters don't look too much alike (a frequently adduced
criticism of Tengwar) requires some thought.  Hangul actually
makes a good job of it; I also like the way how the phoneme signs
are grouped in syllabic blocks.

> Why I use a Roman-letter syllabary for Brx is because of the
> origins of the language.  It began life as trying to do
> better what Reginald Dutton tried to do with his Speedwords,
> i.e. to create a language:
> 1. which, when written alphabetically, can serve as an
> alphabetic shorthand;
> 2. which can, if desired, serve as an international
> auxiliary language.
> 
> As many on this list know, I don't take artificial IALs too
> seriously; but, in theory, aim (2) is retained.

Of course.

> Dutton's first attempt at international alphabetic shorthand
> was his 'International Symbolic Script' (ISS) of 1935. This
> was not intended only to be read, not to be spoken.
> 
> His friend, the Rev. F.W.G. Foat, observed that the language
> would have a better chance of catching on if it could be
> spoken.  Dutton did this by changing the language and
> adopting fairly traditional values for letter sounds but, to
> keep word forms brief, he created quite complicated rules of
> pronunciation with quite a few exceptions to the rules!
> 
> It seemed to me long ago that it would have better if he 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.
Of course, that needs a phonology restrictive enough not to
allow more than 26 syllables (or 52 if you are ready to use
both upper and lower case).

> As Fuishiki Okamamoto and his Babm, I quote:
> "... Roman letters are used in a quite different way from
> existing European languages, namely the pronunciation of the
> letters is specially determined for every letter
> respectively, never changing its utterance without a
> phonetic sign.  The respective utterance is the same as the
> name of letters in Babm carefully chosen among most clear
> voices, avoiding any similar sound, so that there is no
> troublesome need to make some pronunciation by combining a
> consonant with a vowel."
> 
> I must admit the second sentence is curiously worded; I
> think I see what he means.

Yes, it is quite confused and unclear.  If I did not know already
what Okamamoto was talking about, I wouldn't understand what he
means.

> As for "Yemls, I leave that Jeff Jones to explain himself.
> 
> Jacques Guy, in his satirical 'Plan C', observed that Jeff
> Prothero could have achieved his aim of "a pronunciation
> scheme which makes all sequences of letters equally
> pronounceable" by using "a strict CV(V)."  I show three
> possible ways in which this could have been done:
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Exp/Appendix1.html
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Exp/March2006.html

Ah, *that* project.  "Plan D".  I also experimented with that,
but it did not go far.  My Plan B derivative can be found here:

http://www.frathwiki.com/X-1

It never went beyond what can be found on that page.

> There are, of course, other ways a syllabary of 16 CV
> syllables could have been devised. Indeed, I point out that
> Tengwar could have been used: "a stream of characters
> (whether alphabetic or of binary digits or, indeed, any
> other characters such as Tengwar" - see
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Exp/index.html
> 
> Indeed, my suggestions for mapping the 16 bit-patters of
> 'Plan B' to a CV syllabary use the bits _featurally_ and
> clearly a featural syllabary, whether base on Tengwar or
> some other system, would be more appropriate.

Yep.

> But to return to Brx: the reason for adopting a Roman-letter
> syllabary is historical.  It does present problems if one is
> going to:
> - produce a systematic syllabary;
> - not depart too far from traditional uses of the letters.

Using the Latin alphabet as a syllabary already departs quite
far from traditional uses of the letters ;)

> It seems to me that compromises or fudges cannot be avoided;
> the aim is to keep these to a, hopefully, acceptable
> minimum.  It's a sort of intellectual exercise; I guess
> that's what attracts me.  Thus I find it interesting to
> discover how other people, who have attempted the same
> thing, resolve these problems.

Sure.

> But, as I wrote above, I entirely agree that a featural
> syllabary is a much better way of going about things if one
> is starting from scratch

Yes.

On Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:39:42 +0000 R A Brown wrote:

> On 24/11/2011 12:30, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> [...]
> > If I understand correctly, his problem with alphabets is
> >  having to combine two characters to form one sound, in
> > other words he considers CV syllables to be the basic
> > unit of sound. Funny, and maybe influenced by his native
> >  language being written in a syllabary
> 
> Ah, yes - I think you are right.
> 
> Yes, I agree it is rather odd. Combining one consonant with
> one vowels seems to me no big deal   :)

Indeed not.

> I think you are right in that he was influenced by his
> native hiragana & katakana.  I assume he chose Roman letters
> rather than one of the Japanese syllabaries for reasons of
> internationality; Babm was intended as a global auxlang.

Right.  Okamamoto of course knew the two kana syllabaries
and probably was influenced by them; the use of Roman letters
was clearly guided by the global auxlang purpose of Babm.

> But clearly if he he wanted to avoid "troublesome need to
> make some pronunciation by combining a consonant with a
> vowel", he would have rejected a featural syllabary.
> 
> 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.  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.

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