Writing

[rochvelleth]

If you could design your writing system (let's say for writing English to keep things simple), what would it be like?

I suspect everyone reading this will be most familiar with the Latin alphabet, as is standardly used to write English. But this script wasn't developed for English, as I'm sure you know - it came from Phoenician, via Greek (through

Comments

[woodpijn]

Interesting. I guess it would be as close as possible to a one-to-one mapping between phonemes and symbols, and it wouldn't have any letters that were too similar and easy to mix up, and it would be pretty and conducive to calligraphy.

[rochvelleth]

Ooh, it's lovely to see people mentioning the phonemic principle! We do an essay for Classics first years that asks whether the Greek and Latin alphabets are good scripts, and every year the answers were so unpredictable that we added a hint about finding out whether they adhere to the phonemic principle or not :)

When you say conducive to calligraphy, are you thinking of writing in ink on paper? Or just generally, including things like stone inscriptions? I hadn't really thought about how pretty I want my ideal script to be, so I'm interested now.

[woodpijn]

I did only have ink and paper in mind. I have a vague concept of what would be conducive to ink calligraphy - curves rather than angles, letters that can flow into the next letter, etc - but I don't have any concept of what, if anything, would make it easier to carve letters prettily in stone.

[vyvyan]

I'd like to see all languages written in the IPA, reflecting each speaker's pronunciation :-)

[rochvelleth]

Now that's quite controversial! :)

[enismirdal]

I think I'd go for something like Katakana, where syllables are represented rather than individual letters, but it would probably need a fairly complicated system of accents and stuff to make sure foreign loan-words and what not are rendered suitably. Perhaps using a Tengwar-like style of swirly bits cos it's pretty. (There's some really ancient script I've come across in encylopaedias and stuff and every time I see it I just think, "Wow. That is SO beautiful." But I can never remember for the life of me what it's called. It might start with O but I might be imagining that.)

Or something 100% phonetic. But prettier than the current phonetic alphabet. Something where even my worst undergraduates couldn't make any spelling mistakes, now that would be nice!

[rochvelleth]

Wow, we have a vote for a syllabic script! I wasn't expecting that :) But then I'm feeling less and less friendly towards the syllabic script(s) I'm working with at the moment!

Ooh, I wonder what ancient script you mean... Do you remember where abouts it comes from?

Something where even my worst undergraduates couldn't make any spelling mistakes, now that would be nice!

Ah, I'm with you there! :)

[enismirdal]

It would increase typing speeds, I think, once you learned the layout of the keyboard - a word could be, like, 3 keys instead of 6. :D

Hmm...I'm not sure exactly where. I'd guess somewhere not too far from the Middle-East - no further east than the middle of India and no further west than the Balkans. I don't think it was anything Native American or anything like that - it was a pretty swirly, curly thing not too dissimilar to stuff like Kannada and Glagolitic and that sort of thing.

Saluton. Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

[ex_robhu]

A formal grammar? Something like Lisp's S-expressions?

P.S. I'm ignoring your original question and answering the question I wish you'd asked. I find running my life in this way makes me happier.

Re: Saluton. Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

[rochvelleth]

You did indeed ignore my question spectacularly well :)

But I can forgive you, since you have interesting links ;) Not that I can get my head around them at the moment, because my brain has turned to mush, but I'll have another look when I'm less mushy!

Re: Saluton. Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

[rochvelleth]

P.S. Just scanned through the first link with a blank mind and managed to read 'Chomsky-free grammars' in it :)

[epea_pteroenta]

I really want to think about this and answer it in an interesting way- but I have to prepare for two supervisions by tomorrow so I'm not going to! :(

[rochvelleth]

Oh don't worry, I understand! Feel free to come back to it if you have spare time to think about the question :)