Re: Ciphers (Was: Berber/Tifinagh)

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Tue Nov 11 2003 - 08:21:22 EST

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    Doug Ewell wrote:

    >I think such a collection of symbols A becomes a cipher for a true
    >script B when it replicates the usage of symbols in B, irregularities
    >and all. In the Pigpen cipher, there is a symbol for C and one for T
    >and one for H, and C+H and T+H are slapped together *exactly* as they
    >are in Latin to spell English words. In a substitution cipher, the word
    >"chime" is spelled with those five letters, c-h-i-m-e; they just look
    >different.
    >
    >
    >I was surprised and a bit dismayed to see Klingon dragged into this
    >thread. Klingon was rejected not because it's a cipher, but because
    >it's used only for decoration, not for communication.
    >
    We're slowly changing that usage, but that will not change the
    one-to-one correspondence to the Latin transliteration (actually not
    one-to-one to Latin *letters*, which may be what you meant). The
    question at that point is which script one chooses to consider the
    cipher and which the (or a) "true" script.

    ~mark



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