There are 16 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago) From: Matthew Martin 1b. Re: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago) From: Matthew Boutilier 2a. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Nikolay Ivankov 2b. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: R A Brown 2c. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Jörg Rhiemeier 2d. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Michael Everson 2e. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Roman Rausch 2f. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Matthew Martin 2g. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: R A Brown 2h. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: R A Brown 2i. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Michael Everson 2j. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Matthew Martin 2k. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: R A Brown 2l. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages From: Michael Everson 3a. cuneiform (was: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago)) From: R A Brown 3b. Re: cuneiform (was: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago)) From: Alex Fink Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago) Posted by: "Matthew Martin" matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:24 am ((PDT)) Don't forget apriori cuneiform. If I ever get around to it, I plan to design a cuneiform that is suitable for writing toki pona with chopsticks on slabs of mashed potatoes. Fonts and Typing tools http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/cuneifont/ http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html Last time I considered using Sumarian, I gave up because the # of symbols seemed too high. I've heard that at any one time, a much smaller number were in use. So it may not be as laborious as learning/using ideograms. Matthew Martin Messages in this topic (6) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago) Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" mbout...@nd.edu Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 9:02 am ((PDT)) > > Does it work like a normal logographic system -because I'm considereing the > creation of a daughter (con)script. > i don't know exactly what you mean by "normal"...sumerian is the only language for which cuneiform works remotely logographically. there are many signs that together in themselves consist a single word or concept. on top of that, signs can represent incomplete words or syllables or morphemes or whatever. there are also determinatives that would not have factored into the spoken message at all, e.g. the DINGIR sign that precedes divine names and is usually transcribed with superscript "d." note that for akkadian (babylonian/assyrian) and to the best of my knowledge hittite, the cuneiform script is strictly a syllabary. in old persian it even approaches alphabetical status. but i assume you're most interested in sumerian owing to the logographic nature in your question. unfortunately as far as sumerian i don't know of too many online resources for learning the *script*. there's the (electronic) pennsylvania sumerian dictionary: http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html as well as the electronic text corpus of sumerian literature: www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/ that might interest you, but as per the sumerian usages of the signs themselves i can only recommend "a manual of sumerian grammar and texts" by john hayes, not much good online. for akkadian, john huehnergard's "akkadian grammar" is pricey but totally unrivaled. but online you can actually get a good headstart with the * akkadian* (i.e. syllabary) adaptation of cuneiform with the following website: http://knp.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/cuneiformrevealed/ and if you want to see the continuation into old persian, harvard has put the following invaluable primer up: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/OldPersian/index.html which will fully immerse you in the old persian (again, necessarily non-logographic) application of cuneiform. matt On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com > wrote: > Don't forget apriori cuneiform. If I ever get around to it, I plan to > design a > cuneiform that is suitable for writing toki pona with chopsticks on slabs > of mashed > potatoes. > > Fonts and Typing tools > http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/cuneifont/ > http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html > > Last time I considered using Sumarian, I gave up because the # of symbols > seemed too high. I've heard that at any one time, a much smaller number > were in > use. So it may not be as laborious as learning/using ideograms. > > Matthew Martin > Messages in this topic (6) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" lukevil...@gmail.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 5:28 am ((PDT)) On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com > wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:55:39 -0400, Roman Rausch <ara...@mail.ru> > wrote: > > >>For me, putting Quenya on the 9'th place looks like a blasphemy > >Yes, but the real vicitim of rankings of this kind is Sindarin, every > time. > > I'm no expert in Elvish (yet), but isn't one a diachronic variation on the > other? Well, not exactly. AFAIK, Quenya and Sindarin used to have a common ancestor, with Quenya being more conservative. Maybe You are right: since the elves of the Middleearth are immortal, it is quite possible that the ancient form has been preserved by the elder ones as it was. According to Silmarillion, Quenya and Sindarin have been spoken simultaneously at some point of history. Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2b. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:42 am ((PDT)) On 23/06/2011 13:22, Nikolay Ivankov wrote: > On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Matthew > Martin<matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com >> wrote: > >> On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:55:39 -0400, Roman >> Rausch<ara...@mail.ru> wrote: >> >>>> For me, putting Quenya on the 9'th place looks >>>> like a blasphemy >>> Yes, but the real vicitim of rankings of this kind >>> is Sindarin, every >> time. >> >> I'm no expert in Elvish (yet), but isn't one a >> diachronic variation on the other? If one's going to argue like that one may as well say that French is just a diachronic variation of Latin! > Well, not exactly. AFAIK, Quenya and Sindarin used to > have a common ancestor, with Quenya being more > conservative. Correct. Both Quenya & Sindarin are descended from 'Proto-Elvish'. > Maybe You are right: since the elves of > the Middleearth are immortal, Though Elves can be slain, or die of grief and weariness. But the point surely is that Quenya & Sindarin are different languages and not variants of the same one. -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu. There's none too old to learn. [WELSH PROVERB] Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2c. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:58 am ((PDT)) Hallo conlangers! On Thursday 23 June 2011 09:55:39, Roman Rausch wrote: > >For me, putting Quenya on the 9'th place looks like a blasphemy: it should > > share > > >the first position with Esperanto. > > Yes, but the real vicitim of rankings of this kind is Sindarin, every time. > Almost all the film dialogues are (or supposed to be) in Sindarin; almost > all the names and toponyms are Sindarin; it had a profound effect on future > fantasy; yet no one remembers poor Sindarin when it comes to > appreciation... Yes. There indeed isn't that much Quenya in the films (in the books, there is almost as much Quenya as Sindarin); most of the foreign-language dialogue is in Sindarin. But many people perhaps don't realize that there are two different (though related) languages involved, and think the language heard so often in the films was Quenya. (I have read at least one review of the films which talked about lots of dialogue in the films being in Quenya.) On Thursday 23 June 2011 11:05:42, R A Brown wrote: > > Yes, but the real vicitim of rankings of this kind is > > Sindarin, every time. Almost all the film dialogues are > > (or supposed to be) in Sindarin; almost all the names and > > toponyms are Sindarin; it had a profound effect on > > future fantasy; > > This is all true. Personally I much prefer Quenya, but > IME people Sindarin tends to be preferred as it supposedly > has a more "Celtic" feel and I think Roman is right in > saying Sindarin has had a greater effect on later fantasy > languages. Yes. As I have noted above, some people may simply confuse the two languages. Surely, Sindarin has a more "Celtic" feel (to the point that the publisher rejected the _Silmarillion_ because they thought the reader would be confused by the many "Celtic" names, which of course really were Sindarin[1]), but then, lots of utter hogwash is in circulation about the Celts, and many things commonly attributed to them - from Stonehenge to the Druidic Tree Alphabet - have nothing to do with anything that can reasonably be called "Celtic". [1] Actually, "Noldorin", but that was pretty much the same language; Tolkien changed his ideas about who spoke which language while he worked on _The Lord of the Rings_. At least, I have seen conlangs which claimed to be "inspired by Quenya", but looked more like being inspired by, or just being rip-offs of, Sindarin. > >> Newspeak doesn't belong because you can't actually > >> translate the Bible (or any large document) into > >> Newspeak. Not for any feature of Newspeak other than > >> it is just a sketch for an idea of a conlang! > > > > You can't do it with Quenya/Sindarin and the attested > > grammar and vocabulary either. I don't think that it > > should matter at all how deeply a language is developed. > > Yes, but surely while potentially Quenya & Sindarin could > be developed to do these things, Which some people do - it is called "Neo-Quenya" and "Neo- Sindarin". Some Tolkienists object to that, though, on the ground that "we cannot know" - but that is just the reason why the names of the expanded languages bear the prefix "Neo-". > the whole point of Newspeak > is to prevent people from accessing literature > or such 'dangerous' things as the Bible - it was to curb > created thought. Newspeak was a severely cut down form of > English so that "Big Brother" could exert control over > people's thinking. Of course, it is highly questionable whether that would work at all; it presupposes a rather strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I don't know whether Orwell believed in that; I'd rather guess that he simply satirized certain notions on language engineering characterizing totalitarian régimes. -- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html "Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1 Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2d. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Michael Everson" ever...@evertype.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:01 am ((PDT)) On 23 Jun 2011, at 14:42, R A Brown wrote: >> I'm no expert in Elvish (yet), but isn't one a diachronic variation on the >> other? > > If one's going to argue like that one may as well say that French is just a > diachronic variation of Latin! But... that's what it is. Neolatina neolatina est. ;-) Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/ Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2e. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Roman Rausch" ara...@mail.ru Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 8:08 am ((PDT)) >But the author of the so=called 'top ten' invented >languages doesn't give any indication of the criteria >by which the languages are chosen I suspect the criterion is general popularity. >Well, the bible translation got started: Here is an attempt at translating the Pater Noster into Quenya, published 20 years ago: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-quenya.html And here is how Tolkien's own translation, which was published 10 years ago, turned out to be: http://www.jrrvf.com/~glaemscrafu/texts/ataremma-a.htm The point is that Quenya and Sindarin are basically dead languages; and this is further aggravated by the fact that there is no ultimate grammar, but a collection of thousands of notes, often contradicting each other, and anyone who tries to make sense of it will inevitably interpret it in his own way; which is why the prefix 'Neo-' is necessary. Therefore I don't think that the limits of what you can do with a language should be a criterion for anything. Everyone has his own style - some create a complete definitive grammar along with 20000 words worth of vocabulary and spend the rest of their time becoming fluent; others make sure that each word and morpheme has a rich and detailed history, at the expense of their amount. I don't think that either of the two should be made an absolute goal of aspiration, it's just a matter of style. >Well then, my cat would like to add Wookie as top 10 language, which by all >appearances is a series of sound effect, and a translated phrase list short >enough to call it a remnant language. It will be able to enter the top 10 if it's indeed a language and becomes popular enough. I believe that popularity and recognition may be a good sieve, as anything poorly done or developed below a certain level will never become popular. But it's not an infallible guideline, of course. Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2f. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Matthew Martin" matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:29 pm ((PDT)) On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:42:42 +0100, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote: >>> I'm no expert in Elvish (yet), but isn't one a >>> diachronic variation on the other? > >If one's going to argue like that one may as well say that >French is just a diachronic variation of Latin! It is! French is Modern Latin, and so is Spanish, Romanian, etc. But not Living Latin, that's the revival project. As mentioned elsewhere, Sindarin and Elvish actually should have been compared to modern Portuguese and French, daughter languages. But outside of the fictional world, they're still just derivatives of each other. A really strong analogy would be Esperanto and Ido. Which ever set of fans arms themselves first gets status as a language. The other side will become a dialect of Sindarin or Quenya as the case may be. Matthew Martin Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2g. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 12:45 pm ((PDT)) On 23/06/2011 16:08, Roman Rausch wrote: >> But the author of the so=called 'top ten' invented >> languages doesn't give any indication of the criteria >> by which the languages are chosen > > I suspect the criterion is general popularity. Popularity? Solresol the 10th most popular invented language? Somehow I doubt it very much. And E_prime? Popular? Indeed, as i think it has already been pointed out, it's not an invented language - it's *English* without using any form of the verb "to be". In other words it's just a word game - a similar one is not using "yes" or "no." If such variants of English are going to be counted as "invented languages" then IME variants like 'Pig Latin', 'Oppish' etc. are _far more_ popular than E-prime. If general popularity is the criterion, the surely after the popularity of the 'Lord of the Rings' films Sindarin should be there. And shouldn't Na'vi be there? I suspect the sole criterion is the author's own whim. -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu. There's none too old to learn. [WELSH PROVERB] Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2h. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:04 pm ((PDT)) On 23/06/2011 20:29, Matthew Martin wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:42:42 +0100, R A Brown > <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote: > >>>> I'm no expert in Elvish (yet), but isn't one a >>>> diachronic variation on the other? >> >> If one's going to argue like that one may as well say >> that French is just a diachronic variation of Latin! > > It is! No more than nearly all the languages of Europe, Iran & North India are diachronic variants of Indo-European. French isn't even descended from Classical Latin, and if you apply some "Grand Master Plan' to Vulgar Latin you don't finish up with modern (or for that matter, Old) French. You've got at least to throw in the Gallic mixture and the more extensive Germanic of the Franks - they gave the country & language its name. [snip]ach > other. A really strong analogy would be Esperanto and > Ido. I disagree - Esperanto & Ido are so similar that one is obviously a variant of the other. But Latin & French? They don't exactly look the same still less sound the same - and they are certainly not mutually comprehensible! > Which ever set of fans arms themselves first gets status > as a language. The other side will become a dialect of > Sindarin or Quenya as the case may be. I expect dialects to be sort of mutually comprehensible (I know us southerners find Jordie & some Lowland Scots on the difficult side) - but Sindarin & Quenya? Tolkien himself treated them as different _languages_ - and he was their creator. I find him not an unreliable authority. -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu. There's none too old to learn. [WELSH PROVERB] Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2i. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Michael Everson" ever...@evertype.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:26 pm ((PDT)) On 23 Jun 2011, at 21:04, R A Brown wrote: >>> If one's going to argue like that one may as well say >>> that French is just a diachronic variation of Latin! >> >> It is! > > No more than nearly all the languages of Europe, Iran & North India are > diachronic variants of Indo-European. Quite so! > French isn't even descended from Classical Latin, and if you apply some > "Grand Master Plan' to Vulgar Latin you don't finish up with modern (or for > that matter, Old) French. You've got at least to throw in the Gallic mixture > and the more extensive Germanic of the Franks - they gave the country & > language its name. I did Old French and Romance linguistics at University and have known this for decades. > I disagree - Esperanto & Ido are so similar that one is obviously a variant > of the other. But Latin & French? They > don't exactly look the same Sure they do. > still less sound the same Well, no. :-) Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/ Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2j. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Matthew Martin" matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:01 pm ((PDT)) On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:04:18 +0100, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote: >No more than nearly all the languages of Europe, Iran & >North India are diachronic variants of Indo-European. Enlighten me about what you think diachronic means? If I can get used to linguist being used to mean both "polyglot" and "monoglot language scientist" I can get used to anything. I'm going to make a wild guess and say you mean diachronic means strictly words that change over time, like g to k to h to nothing. But the adjective diachronic as applied to languages as it is bandied about on mailing lists and forums, seems to mean "daughter languages" presumably by multiple processes (loans, re-analysis and other things that aren't strictly g-goes-to-k-to-h-to nothing) So English is a diachronic variation of PIE and is a modern PIE. I don't think people usually think of it as that because it isn't normally a useful grouping, kind of like how living things including crystals and viruses can be problematic. Or a better metaphor, we are all all modern ardapithicines (or modern proto- gorillas, there is some nit picking about if the fossil finds are close cousins or direct ancestors, but there is a common ancestor and we are the modern form of that ancestor) >French isn't even descended from Classical Latin, and if you >apply some "Grand Master Plan' to Vulgar Latin you don't >finish up with modern (or for that matter, Old) French. This is a significant variation on the story one reads about where French came from. Where did French come from? Is there something fundamentally wrong about the standard language family trees that I should discard the very notion? (Which makes me think, it would be an awesome alternative world sci-fi story if French was a constructed language published by L'Académie française during the French Revolution, in a world where the Roman Expansion hadn't happened) >> other. A really strong analogy would be Esperanto and >> Ido. Esperanto is to Ido as Sindarin is to Quenya. I meant to express that they are both made up. They didn't naturally evolve from a previous language, except in a fictional context. The processes that lead from one to the other have to do with art, fashion and engineering, less so lazy tongues and what ever else was been suggested to motivate diachronic changes. PIE is to English as Latin is to French. Each of the above evolved by natural processes into the other. Chinese is officially one language by government fiat. By government fiat, Norwegian is two and by Swedish is yet another. But by several modest tests, Chinese is a dozen and Swedish and Norwegian are one. For example, the so called dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible. Both Norway and Sweden have armies, so they are different languages even though most learners of Swedish/Norwegian don't recognize they are speaking to someone speaking a different language when they encounter the other "language". Icelandic is a difficult case because they only have a coast guard, so it is neither language nor dialect but something in between. Matthew Martin Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2k. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 11:22 pm ((PDT)) Oh dear, this sub-thread that developed from observations made about a fairly meaningless list of "top ten invented languages" is getting very tedious. I am away next week so I was intending nomail this weekend - but I think I shall be going nomail quite shortly and hope all reference to this silly top ten list has stopped when I return. On 23/06/2011 22:01, Matthew Martin wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:04:18 +0100, R A Brown > <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote: > >> No more than nearly all the languages of Europe, Iran& >> North India are diachronic variants of Indo-European. > > Enlighten me about what you think diachronic means? Not a question of what _I_ think. According to Larry Trask: "*diachronic* /daɪÉ'krÉnɪk/ -adj._ Pertaining to linguistic change across time." ["A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics," R.L. Trask, London & New York, 1993] The Indo_European languages are the result of linguistic changes over the past 3000 or so years (time) from a common ancestor we call Proto-Indo-European. [snip] > >> French isn't even descended from Classical Latin, and >> if you apply some "Grand Master Plan' to Vulgar Latin >> you don't finish up with modern (or for that matter, >> Old) French. > > This is a significant variation on the story one reads No, is is not - at least not in the books I read. > about where French came from. Where did French come from? It originated in the _Vulgar Latin_ of north Gaul. Vulgar Latin was a _sister language_ to Classical Latin - both developed from Old Latin. [snip] > > Esperanto is to Ido as Sindarin is to Quenya. > > I meant to express that they are both made up. They > didn't naturally evolve from a previous language, except > in a fictional context. This is not true. I do *not* want to get involved in the tedious blame-game of what did and did not happen at the Délégation pour l'Adoption d'une Langue Auxiliaire Internationale in 1907; but Ido resulted from a proposal to reform Esperanto. It evolved from Esperanto in real time - _nothing fictional about it_, as the interminable flame-wars I once witnessed on Auxlang only too clearly demonstrated. While Sindarin & Quenya were constructed by the same author (which Esperanto & Ido certainly were not), Tolkien quite clearly intended them to be _different_ (tho related) languages. I quote from JRRT himself: "... the living language of the Western Elves (_Sindarin_ or Grey-Elven) is the one usually met [in Lord of the Rings], especially in names. This is derived from an origin common to it and _Quenya_, but the changes have been deliberately devised to give it a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh: because that character is one I find, in some linguistic moods, very attractive; and because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers." [Letters, 176 - 1954] Tolkien refers to Quenya variously as "the book-tongue", "the high speech (of the Noldor", "High Ancient Elven", "Elf-Latin", "Elven Latin" etc. It seems fairly clear to me that if some analog of the relationship of Quenya & Sindarin is needed then Latin and French are reasonable ones. Both are ultimately derived from a common Proto-Latin ancestor. One became a formal literary language; the other has changed considerably over the centuries picking up elements of other languages to produce something quite different. If you know either Esperanto or Ido, you can generally read languages without much problem. That is not true of either Latin or French, nor is it true of Quenya and Sindarin - there's far too much difference. Therefore to say of Quenya & Sindarin "one [is] a diachronic variation on the other" is not true even in their own fictitious world; both, if you must, are diachronic variations of a common proto-language. But if I say the same of IE languages , you object! I give up :( -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu. There's none too old to learn. [WELSH PROVERB] Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ 2l. Re: Top Ten Invented Languages Posted by: "Michael Everson" ever...@evertype.com Date: Fri Jun 24, 2011 1:14 am ((PDT)) On 24 Jun 2011, at 07:22, R A Brown wrote: > I am away next week so I was intending nomail this weekend - but I think I > shall be going nomail quite shortly and hope all reference to this silly top > ten list has stopped when I return. Do what you like, but Matthew Martin's criticism of your argument was well-founded. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/ Messages in this topic (24) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3a. cuneiform (was: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago)) Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:14 am ((PDT)) On 23/06/2011 13:02, Iuhan Culmærija wrote: > 2011/6/14 Eugene Oh<un.do...@gmail.com> > >> Check out this BBC news article: >> >> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13715296 >> >> > On a related-ish note: Does anyone know of a Cuneiform > resource? Does it work like a normal logographic system > -because No. Originally logographic - but as used for most of its history it was mainly phonetic representing syllables, both CV and VC, which meant certain conventions were needed for dealing with consonant clusters. There were, however, a certain number of logograms retained for commonly occurring words. Old Persian developed a mixed syllabic & single-sound (alphabetic) form of cuneiform. The people of Ugarit developed a cuneiform alphabet. > (BTW, what is List policy on con-script discussions?) No problem. ======================================================== On 23/06/2011 13:17, Matthew Martin wrote: > Don't forget apriori cuneiform. Yes, indeed - many a time I've pondered on a_priori cuneiform systems ;) Cuneiform was never a single monolithic form of writing - it developed and changed over the centuries as it was adapted for quite different languages. The people of ancient Ugarit showed a great deal of originality. Why not go the whole way and do an a_priori cuneiform? > If I ever get around to it, I plan to design a > cuneiform that is suitable for writing toki pona with > chopsticks on slabs of mashed potatoes. :-D -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu. There's none too old to learn. [WELSH PROVERB] Messages in this topic (6) ________________________________________________________________________ 3b. Re: cuneiform (was: Assyrian dictionary now free online (UChicago)) Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com Date: Thu Jun 23, 2011 7:45 am ((PDT)) On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:14:46 +0100, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote: >On 23/06/2011 13:02, Iuhan Culmærija wrote: >> 2011/6/14 Eugene Oh<un.do...@gmail.com> >> >>> Check out this BBC news article: >>> >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13715296 >>> >>> >> On a related-ish note: Does anyone know of a Cuneiform >> resource? Does it work like a normal logographic system >> -because > >No. Originally logographic - but as used for most of its >history it was mainly phonetic representing syllables, both >CV and VC, which meant certain conventions were needed for >dealing with consonant clusters. There were, however, a >certain number of logograms retained for commonly occurring >words. Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform also had determinatives: signs with only semantic value, no phonetic content, classifying an adjacent word. And there was some use of phonetic complements as well: when a logogram that could've stood for multiple words came up, sometimes one would phonetically spell a portion of the intended word to disambiguate. If you know how Egyptian hieroglyphs work, the old cuneiform scripts were nearly identical in function, modulo Egyptian's complete disregard for Vs. "Complex script" is the term that used around here for the class they belong to, I think. On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:02:18 +0200, Iuhan Culmærija <culm...@gmail.com> wrote: >And how is the phrase "He who saw the deep" (from Gilgamesh) written in >Cuneiform? AFAICT it's Akkadian _s^a nagba i:muru_, seemingly written _s^a nag-ba i-mu-ru_ with syllabic signs. Alex Messages in this topic (6) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------