>Peter Larsen:
>> As far as I know, the Middle East and surrounding areas to the West
>> are the only place in the RW that developed letters.
>
>Then again, much the same is true of 'civilisation'. ;-) (If you mean,
>develop independently.) That's also quite a hatful of different
>systems (though how much they influenced each other I can't, personally,
>give you the straight dope on.)
Well, the Chinese and Mesoamericans certainly got their starts separately.
>I'm happy enough to imagine many cultures with no script at all, and
>other with highly limited ones. (For example, Praxian knot-writing
>is far less "written Praxian", and more of a simple language in its
>own right, IMO.)
>
Totally in agreement here.
>> Why shouldn't there be as great a variety of
>> written laguages (and writing technologies) in Glorantha as in the RW?
>
>There should. What concerns me is the apparent zeal in some quarters
>to have logographic scripts left, right and centre, with little
>analysis of the applicability and difficulties. In particular,
>any culture with sophisticated literacy, and a language that doesn't
>"look logographic", I'm immediately suspicious of.
I imagine that Dara Happa is a lot like the Fertile Crescent, with a little Egypt thrown in (there's that whacking big river with its floods and all...). All of these cultures at least started out with ideographic writing systems; why not Dara Happa. And that Plentonian alphabet looks pretty much like all the other runic sets Mr. Stafford has created.
Mr. Metcalfe gives my EWF alphabet a big kick, below.
>I think this one makes reasonable sense, myself, though I'd have
>not been upset to see it otherwise, either. But I suspect it's
>largely a fait accompli, given the amount Greg's written on it,
>if only in "spiral bound nonsense".
That's my assessment, too, although I'm sad to say it. About Heortling languages -- does anyone know anything about the origins of real world runes? The Germanic/Scandinavian ones. They had both magical and communication purposes, but did they exist before contact with the Mediterranian cultures?
Peter Metcalfe says:
>Why should scripts "simplify" to the "letter" stage? It's not an
>inevitable development and even in english, there are syllabic
>and logographic components within it.
Um, that's where letters seem to come from, at least in the systems I know something about. You know, those charts in the front of dictionaries, tracing the evolution of letters, that sort of thing. The Japanese kana are, likewise, simplifications of Chinese Characters. Egyption hieroglyphics show a simpling over time as well
>Apart from logographic scripts of the Chinese, the Japanese and the
>Mayas, most other scripts use what else is
>there? The Indian Devanagari, being a mixture of syllabic and
>alphabetic principles, is ancestral to other scripts in SE Asia
>(as well as Tibet), and that was practiced long before the
>Europeans. Korean Hangul was also invented before the Europeans
>came. There's also Rongorongo.
But this is a pretty wide range of "types," right? And the fully lettered alphabet, where each symbol represents a sound (smaller than a syllable) is not found outside of Europe/the Middle East. East Asia took its cues, unsurprisingly from China. The areas around India have a certain similarity, I suspect that the mesoamerican written systems have links, and so on. In Glorantha, we have the Western language(s), Dara Happan, and the Orlanthi, apparantly all lettered alphabets. Since the huge bulk of Gloranthan gaming happens in one of those cultures, it seems like there should be a little more variety.
>The only post-European "simplification" that I know of is
>Vietnamese which switched from the Chinese to the Roman
>alphabet (and perhaps Turkish which changed from the Arabic
>to Roman alphabet).
You may be right here, although I was also thinking of the native writing systems of Western and Northern Europe, which were dumped in favor of the Roman alphabet. I'm not sure what happened with the people of Central and South America.
>Why shouldn't letters be descended from runes? Our alphabet is.
>FWIW given the transcription of foreign names (Oralanatus,
>Umatum etc.), Dara Happan might not be an true alphabet but a
>partial-syllabary.
It's just that they all look like the same runes and they all seem to work pretty much like English (as opposed to the Wendarian stuff that looks different, hurrah!). Now that the One True Rune system has been scrapped for local variations, there is no reason for the scripts to resemble each other. I'd be happier if Dara Happan was a syllabic system, if only for the change.
>The actual model [for Dara Happa] is Mesopotamian which had a sacrosanct
>priest
>class and a lettered script (although this was largely cuniform).
This may be my ignorance, but weren't the various Mesopotamian languages ideographic, at least in part (and certainly toward the beginning).
>Dawn-age examples of Orlanthi Writing. The history of Dorastor
>(D:LoD p5-16) mentions:
Well, poo. A perfectly good idea shot down by facts. Any idea where this language came from? Especially considering that the Orlanthi don't seem to have had all that much need for a written language until the 2nd Age.
>Because the difference in New Pelorian and Dara Happan is
>spoken. One doesn't invent a new script for a new (or previously
>unwritten) language but uses (or adapts) an old one whenever
>possible.
That's a good point. Of course, the Cyrillic alphabets are an example of the idea but not the system being transmitted. (And one that works better than the endless hellish attempts to "romanize" Chinese (but, of course, the problems are very different)). Although, if New Pelorian is descended from Wendarian, shouldn't it use Wendarian glyphs as its base? (Is New Pelorian descended from Wendarian?)
There's been an attempt to deparate Gloranthan cultures mythically, to tell the stories from radically diifferent points of view. This causes me a certain amount of discomfort, but I figure its worth it. Shouldn't the material cultures of the various Gloranthan groups be different as well? The West should write differently on different materials than the Pelorians, whose systems should resemble each other's more than they do the West. The Carmanians shoould show lots of Western features, but also ideas and tools picked up locally (similarly, their culture should be stamped all over Pelanda). The Orlanthi should be different from both of these other groups, and the scattered groups should have developed differently (Ralios - - more Western, Tarsh - more Pelorian). That's what I'd like.
On other subjects, Trotsky says:
RE: one Sun
> Boy, but that idea just bores the pants off me... fortunately, it's
>hardly compulsory.
Hear, hear!
and Bronze Goats:
> They certainly weren't intended to be clockwork when I thought them up,
>FWIW.
Thank god! Leave the clockwork for games set in the 18th and 19th
century....
Peter Larsen
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