> From: David Cake <davidc_at_cyllene.uwa.edu.au>
> Subject: scripts
>
> to add to Peters quite correct synopsis
> >The Dara Happan script is alphabetic.
> and fully documented in the Fortunate Succession.
> I recently fiddled with a Font creation program with a view to
> creating a proper font for all this, but it may be a while yet.
>
> >The Pelandan script is ideogrammic
> >although it shares similarities with the Dara Happan script.
> >AFAIK the Western Script is alphabetic.
> Though Western script is supposed to be the written version of
> several languages that are mutually unintelligible in the spoken form, but
> not in the written. This (and that the runes are allegedly originally
> western) has led some people to speculate that it is ideogrammatic, like
> Chinese (which is the only example I can think of of a mutually
> intelligible written form between mutually unintelligible spoken
> languages). Any thoughts, anyone?
Latin was used as the firt written form of the Romance languages even
though they had diverged far from the root even before the Fall of Rome.
I expect that the same was true for Sanskrit, as well. As to runes
requiring an ideogrammatic system, I bring up the counter example of
the Futhark runes used by the Norse, which were alphabetic letters that
were later given names to support their claimed magical properties.
Is it certain that Pelandan is ideogrammatic? It seemed to me, when I
read the Entekosiad, that it would be well represented by a syllabary
(like an alphabet, but with syllables as the atoms rather than phonemes),
like Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian or Minoan Greek (aka Linear A, I think).
As Babylonia is one of the RW cognates for DH, it seemed reasonable that
the earlier Pelandan cultures would use this earlier style, as well.