i know that latin script is boring by now
But no matter how tempting it is:
EIGANA IS SILLY.
Eigana, which I found out about this morning, is a system for writing English with hiragana, one of Japan's writing systems. And that would be awesome if hiragana were an alphabet, but it's not. It's a syllabary. Each character does not represent a single phoneme, but a consonant and a 'pure' vowel or just a 'pure' vowel or simply 'n' (take THAT, Korean! ...no, no, come back, Korean, I still love you. I just hate your vowel system. But we can compromise, okay? Don't cry). There's no method of splitting up the characters that's native to Japanese (by 'splitting up characters', I mean using a 'te' to read as 't'. Sure you can so that when you READ OUT LOUD--the 'su' in 'desu' is pronounced as 's' alone, but that doesn't happen much). So jamming hiragana into a system that uses single phonemes all the time?
FAIL. Here's what I mean:
I have the name Ossa Defero. It's actually transcribed almost the same way in Japanese, despite not being a Japanese name: おっさ*でふぇろ (actually, it should be オッサ*デフェロ, but I'm not gonna split hairs on the hiragana/katakana thing). But, I looked it up on Omniglot, Ossa's name would be spelled this way in Eigana: おすすあ*だえふえるあ (Osusua Daefuerua) or おささあ*だえふえるお (Osasaa Daefuerua). Supposedly, all of the characters are divorced from their vowels, but it just looks...weird and not an alphabet. At all. And you have two S character to choose from, how about explaining which one to use?
Why am I picking on this poor guy's idea? Because I'm kind of a bitch when it comes to language, I'm sorry/ And I'm kind of planning on doing the same thing with my Xajema language. They're going to have a syllabary, but the instance of "split" characters is more prevalent in their written system, just to make things harder. But to help out little kids and foreigners, they've go a symbol for the captured voice (kind of like the 'little つ (tsu)' in Japanese.
For example , let's take the word 'xassi' (pronounced "shas-si'), a person raised on Xajibai). In a children's book it would be spelled "xasi'si", indicating that you 'cut off' the extra 'i' sound when you say it. In an adult book, you just have "xa'si"). I think it's kind of simple to learn as a kid, if not a bit redundant. But it gets the job done.
In conclusion: written language is tougher than you think. That is all.
[Re-dated because I put it on private for a while.]
EIGANA IS SILLY.
Eigana, which I found out about this morning, is a system for writing English with hiragana, one of Japan's writing systems. And that would be awesome if hiragana were an alphabet, but it's not. It's a syllabary. Each character does not represent a single phoneme, but a consonant and a 'pure' vowel or just a 'pure' vowel or simply 'n' (take THAT, Korean! ...no, no, come back, Korean, I still love you. I just hate your vowel system. But we can compromise, okay? Don't cry). There's no method of splitting up the characters that's native to Japanese (by 'splitting up characters', I mean using a 'te' to read as 't'. Sure you can so that when you READ OUT LOUD--the 'su' in 'desu' is pronounced as 's' alone, but that doesn't happen much). So jamming hiragana into a system that uses single phonemes all the time?
FAIL. Here's what I mean:
I have the name Ossa Defero. It's actually transcribed almost the same way in Japanese, despite not being a Japanese name: おっさ*でふぇろ (actually, it should be オッサ*デフェロ, but I'm not gonna split hairs on the hiragana/katakana thing). But, I looked it up on Omniglot, Ossa's name would be spelled this way in Eigana: おすすあ*だえふえるあ (Osusua Daefuerua) or おささあ*だえふえるお (Osasaa Daefuerua). Supposedly, all of the characters are divorced from their vowels, but it just looks...weird and not an alphabet. At all. And you have two S character to choose from, how about explaining which one to use?
Why am I picking on this poor guy's idea? Because I'm kind of a bitch when it comes to language, I'm sorry/ And I'm kind of planning on doing the same thing with my Xajema language. They're going to have a syllabary, but the instance of "split" characters is more prevalent in their written system, just to make things harder. But to help out little kids and foreigners, they've go a symbol for the captured voice (kind of like the 'little つ (tsu)' in Japanese.
For example , let's take the word 'xassi' (pronounced "shas-si'), a person raised on Xajibai). In a children's book it would be spelled "xasi'si", indicating that you 'cut off' the extra 'i' sound when you say it. In an adult book, you just have "xa'si"). I think it's kind of simple to learn as a kid, if not a bit redundant. But it gets the job done.
In conclusion: written language is tougher than you think. That is all.
[Re-dated because I put it on private for a while.]