Now mix vigorously with generous helpings of Vedic India, and make at gas mark 3 for an Age or several.
> 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.
The question isn't whether this or that writting system _starts_ with ideograms, it's how long it _stays_ that way. If you want a true script, as we understand it today, with any sort of reasonable mapping from the spoken language, pure ideograms are really not an option. Chinese is about the 'best case language' for such a treatment, and is more properly 'logographic'. For languages with many multi-syllabic morphemes, or worse, which are badly infested with loan-words that don't conform to the original scheme, a real dog's breakfast is likely.
> 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?
Dunno. They don't strongly resemble those systems, so far as I know. But supposing the Orlanthi have an alphabet seems no less likely, whether or not they nicked if off of someone else.
> The Japanese kana are, likewise, simplifications of Chinese Characters.
True, but then, Japanese as a language has 'syllablise me' written all over it. (Though writing katakana is perhaps the happier part of the transaction; reading it has problems of its own.)
> Egyption hieroglyphics show a simpling over time as well
You mean the actual characters become less pictographic? That's true, but I'm not clear how it goes to your case.
> 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.
I don't think the Orlanthi have their own alphabet; rather they adoped (or at least adapted) one or other (or both!) of the other two you mention. I don't see how this exactly contrast with the RW, with "only" Europe and the Middle East (i.e., a huge variety of distinct cultures) having 'em.
> Since the huge bulk of
> Gloranthan gaming happens in one of those cultures
It does? And here I thought everyone played in Prax... This strikes me as a suspect measure. Certainly, it would be a mistake to equate 'Dara Happan' with 'Lunar' or 'Pelorian'.
> 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.
Had their languages wiped out, by and large.
> 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.
There's plenty more room for 'change', even in Peloria. Dara Happa is just one culture from a whole Pelorian gamut, just one that's rather more self-important than the average...
> 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?)
I suspect it can be written both ways. The Buseri, predictably, write it with the Dara Happan alphabet. People who're semi-literate will write it as what glyphs they happen to know, and the touchy-feely "more JeSevened than thou" crowd will make a point of using glyphs whenever possible.
> Pelorians, whose systems should resemble each other's more than they do the
> West.
Why? Their cultures are remarkably disparate, why not their writing systems?
> 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.
As Peter points out, there are only so many permutations of broad "kind" of writing system available. Trying to four-colour the cultural map on such a coarse scale is more likely to give silly results than deeply evocative and interesting ones, I suspect. But there's plenty of ways they can be smaller-scale different. Perhaps Western is a cursive script with no explicit vowel markings, for example.
Cheers,
Alex.
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