There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Patrick Dunn
1b. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Padraic Brown
1c. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Padraic Brown
1d. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Padraic Brown
1e. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Michael Everson
1f. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Michael Everson
1g. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1h. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Padraic Brown
2a. Re: Nominals in Verb-heavy Languages
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: Roger Mills
From: David Peterson
4.1. Re: Days of the week
From: Padraic Brown
5a. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
From: Paul Bennett
Messages
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1a. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 7:24 am ((PST))
Well, if this culture ever invents the abomination that is the ball-point
pen, perhaps it will modify the script, as we did when we stopped writing
with a fountain pen.
Or maybe they'll skip right to microfiber wedge pens, or wedge-sharpened
pencils. Not every single con-culture has to use our writing tools; that's
a failure of imagination. Not even imagination: it's a failure of
knowledge.
--Patrick
On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 4:49 AM, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com>wrote:
> On 4 Mar 2012, at 03:45, Patrick Dunn wrote:
>
> > Gorgeousity and yum yum yum. It looks like you could write it very
> effectively and efficiently with a calligraphy pen.
>
> But how legible would it be writing notes with a ballpoint or pencil? That
> is also a consideration in writing system design.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (22)
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1b. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 7:51 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 3/4/12, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com> wrote:
> On 4 Mar 2012, at 03:45, Patrick Dunn
> wrote:
>
> > Gorgeousity and yum yum yum. It looks like you
> could write it very effectively and efficiently with a
> calligraphy pen.
>
> But how legible would it be writing notes with a ballpoint
> or pencil? That is also a consideration in writing system
> design.
Why?
Or rather, you're right *IF* the language's context includes school
lectures, steno pads and ballpoint pens. I don't think we've been told
enough about this language, its culture (if any) or its ultimate purpose
to say whether or not ballpoint pens should even be considered.
It could be that brushes and rice paper in the hands of remote Idtotian
monks, who spend their nights contemplating the wonders of the all
encompassing principle of Gogam, where their scriptoria produce verses
on scrolls and banners of this lovely ivy-script.
Padraic
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (22)
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1c. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 7:55 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 3/4/12, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com> wrote:
> On 4 Mar 2012, at 12:29, Eugene Oh
> wrote:
>
> > Not if the culture it's designed for writes with a
> broad blade, or carves (eg Latin serif script)
>
> I should think that the true test of a robust writing system
> is its ability to be written in a number of media, from sand
> to pencils.
Why?
Again, you are right *IF* the culture and context of the writing system
warrants. We don't yet know enough about this language or the writing to
make the assumptions you are making.
Just wait and see what this language's discoverer comes up with first!
I have, for example, a writing system for a philosophical language that
you would undoubtedly cast aspersions on as utterly unrobust and possibly
poorly designed -- note taking with ballpoints or pencils is out of the
question; it can't easily be written in a very large number of media all
that well; and in fact it really can not even be used to write in any
language *except* the language for which it was designed.
Padraic
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (22)
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1d. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:01 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 3/4/12, Virginia Keys <virginiak...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that something like a
> calligraphy pen would be ideal for this
> writing system, but I actually wrote these examples using a
> fine point pen.
> It is certainly less convenient, especially when filling in
> the strokes to
> make them more easily identifiable, but it is possible. I
> have thought about
> reducing the script for faster use with a finer point, but
> each time I try I don't like the results.
Some things just have to done with a brush or a broad nibbed pen or a
stylus. Any other means would yield a less than perfect result.
I was instantly impressed with the organic flow of the script and the
way it almost screams "use me to write beautiful verses about flowing
waters and growing things in quiet nature!" I just somehow don't see
this being used for grocery lists scribbled with a pencil nub on the back
of a check register!
Mind you, I'm not saying the language itself couldn't handle a mundane
list; just that this particular script form seems like it should be used
for nobler purposes!
All that said, I'd like to know more about how the script works. You know,
the mechanics. As well as the language and culture that go with, if you
have any ideas on those.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (22)
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1e. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Michael Everson" ever...@evertype.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:17 am ((PST))
On 4 Mar 2012, at 15:51, Padraic Brown wrote:
>> But how legible would it be writing notes with a ballpoint or pencil? That
>> is also a consideration in writing system design.
>
> Why?
>
> Or rather, you're right *IF* the language's context includes school
> lectures, steno pads and ballpoint pens.
Gee, I was just thinking of the convenience of people in the real world, like
the conlanger herself.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (22)
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1f. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Michael Everson" ever...@evertype.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:46 am ((PST))
On 4 Mar 2012, at 16:17, Michael Everson wrote:
> Gee, I was just thinking of the convenience of people in the real world, like
> the conlanger herself.
Of course my favourite solution is for there to be a font. I've been, on and
off, making a font for James' Khlìjha. It's quite a challenge.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (22)
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1g. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 9:00 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sat, 3 Mar 2012 18:33:49 -0500, Virginia Keys wrote:
> Ok, Pics are up here:
> http://pics.conlang.org./v/Shateyo_2dws/
Rock'n'roll, that script looks gorgeous! It calls to mind such
writing systems as Klingon pIqaD or Carl Buck's Moj, or so-called
"tribal" tattoos, without being imitative of any of these.
--
... 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 (22)
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1h. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 11:20 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 3/4/12, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com> wrote:
> From: Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com>
> Subject: Re: [CONLANG] A New Lang is Born
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> Date: Sunday, March 4, 2012, 11:17 AM
> On 4 Mar 2012, at 15:51, Padraic
> Brown wrote:
>
> >> But how legible would it be writing notes with a
> ballpoint or pencil? That is also a consideration in writing
> system design.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Or rather, you're right *IF* the language's context
> includes school
> > lectures, steno pads and ballpoint pens.
>
> Gee, I was just thinking of the convenience of people in the
> real world, like the conlanger herself.
Convenience? I suppose perhaps if she's trying to engineer an ideal script
for use in taking notes with ballpoint pens!
Is that what's going on here?
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Padraic
Messages in this topic (22)
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2a. Re: Nominals in Verb-heavy Languages
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 7:35 am ((PST))
On 2/27/12, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <jeff.rol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You could just have a verb that means "to rock" or "to be a rock", and then
> syntax or morphology which makes it clear when the lexeme is being used in
> the nominal sense,
That's the way predicate languages like Lojban and Voksigid do it; you
could call them verb-prominent engelangs, as opposed to noun-prominent
engelangs like Vorlin, AllNoun or my own gjâ-zym-byn. The
noun-prominent engelangs tend to have roots for qualities, actions,
and processes whose basic meaning corresponds to an
adjective-nominalization or a gerund verb form in an IE natlang, while
the verb-prominent engelangs tend to have predicates for entities
which correspond to verb phrases like "be an X". I don't know of any
adjective-prominent (or more generally modifier-prominent) engelangs.
Both those approaches have a certain elegance in reducing the number
of basic word classes, but they may have a cost in conciseness; if a
word refers to an entity, it will probably occur more often as a noun
than as a verb, and the nominalization morphology will probably make
it longer in its more commonly-used form than in its basic form. Or
if a word refers to a process or action, it will probably occur most
often as a verb, and adding a verb affix to a basic noun form means
that such words are longer in their most common form. The same goes
for words denoting states, qualities and manners and their most common
use as adjectives or adverbs.
In my still-sketchy engelang säb zjeda I tried to address these issues
by having root words of four broad semantic categories (classified by
their final consonant phoneme), entity, process, quality and
relationship, which have default parts of speech noun, verb, modifier
and preposition; vowel suffixes convert roots from their default part
of speech to another in predictable ways. See the table here:
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/conlang13/grammar-p1.htm
säb zjeda has an unwieldy and unpleasant phonology and I'm going to
relex it first thing if I ever work on it again, but I'm pretty
pleased with its morphology. It could use some further tweaks, like
perhaps marking process/action roots so that they have a default
valency as well and one can omit the transitivity-marking suffix when
they're used as verbs in the default valency. And maybe entity roots
could omit the case-marking noun suffix when the case is the default
one for the word-order position.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (8)
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3a. Re: Roger Mills
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 5:32 pm ((PST))
On Mar 3, 2012, at 8:56 AM, Carsten Becker wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Mar 2012 18:33:15 -0500, p...@phillipdriscoll.com wrote:
>
>> Is that really a problem? I mean, this is not his regular residence
>> address and probably not his regular telephone number. How
>> likely is someone to use this information maliciously?
>>
>> Most peoples' addresses are pretty easy to find. I had to mail
>> Roger some paperwork a few years ago, and I was able to find
>> his residence address on line.
>
> OK, that's true, both arguments.
Still, I think it would be beneficial (it wouldn't have helped in this specific
case, but in general) for new members to know that everything they post on
Conlang is publicly archive, and will be available to anyone on the web pretty
much indefinitely.
David Peterson
LCS President
presid...@conlang.org
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (7)
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4.1. Re: Days of the week
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Mar 4, 2012 6:31 pm ((PST))
--- On Mon, 2/13/12, Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Funny that... I don't seem to have much in the way of
> Daynames for any place in the World.
Alright, well this has now been rectified for the principle languages of
the Eastlands:
A. H. Icon. Pr. Tal.
Saturday: Starnday Sterdaye Siabbat Di Saternas amtâlenas
Sunday: Sunday Sunnedaye Soueled Di Solas amtasawaltus
Monday: Monsday Moonsdaye Selaned Di Lunas amtîsilas
Tuesday: Tiersday Twiesdaye Aried Di Mareas amtâtrastaras
Wednesday: Vodansday Wethandaye Mercrour Di Mercurias amtamitras
Thursday: Thursasday Thoresdaye Diued Di Jeovias amtalewectas
Friday: Vramsday Freyndaye Vendred Di 'Starias amtasewemas
Fairly straightforward, except that Iconian uses the proper name for the
greater moon (Selana) and Aries in place of Mars. Not sure where
Auntimoanian gets Vramsday from. Iconia is predominantly Kristian, so
Siabbat oughtn't be too surprising.
Talarian, as it often does, goes off the beaten path with Starday, Sunday,
Moonday, Darkday, Mithraday, Lightday, Somaday.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (28)
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5a. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" paul.w.benn...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Mar 5, 2012 5:44 am ((PST))
On Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:40:50 -0500, Paul Bennett
<paul.w.benn...@gmail.com> wrote:
v5 is now up at
> http://sites.google.com/site/paulwbennett/Home/Hamer.pdf
>
> Work still very much in progress.
As I've been understanding more about the source text, I've been making
some pretty noticeable changes to the orthographies, and there are some
typo fixes in there too.
Comments, questions, and suggestions more than welcome.
--
Paul
Messages in this topic (18)
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