In a message dated 2001-10-10 9:16:17 Pacific Daylight Time,
jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com writes to larsga@garshol.priv.no:
> You may consider trying to classify the artificial scripts a bit more.
> For example I *think* (I'm a bit rusty on my Elvish) that for Tengwar would
> be either Abjad (like Hebrew), or maybe Featural (like Hangul), and Cirth
> would be Alphabet (like Runic).
Alternatively, you may consider moving the "artificial" classification to a
subcategory inside the main categories (alphabet, abjad, syllabary, etc.), or
even doing away with the distinction altogether. *All* scripts are man-made
and thus "artificial" in a sense. The only exception to this would be if you
subscribe to some article of religious faith that says a particular script
was furnished directly by God.
Cyrillic was created as a better way to write Slavic languages, Russian in
particular. Shavian and Deseret were created as better ways to write
English. The former met with overwhelming success, the latter did not (to
say the least), but the success of Cyrillic does not make the circumstances
its creation any less "artificial."
Even Tengwar and Cirth, although created to support languages introduced in
works of fiction, were invented according to some of the same principles that
guide the creation of so-called "real" scripts.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Oct 11 2001 - 10:26:10 EDT