>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.
Well, yes. My point is that the various "big cultures" of Glorantha (Westerners, Pelorians, Orlanthi, Kralorians, Artimali, etc) all went through this process (assuming they have writing) at different paces and to different degrees. So it seems pretty unlikely that they have all ended up at the same point in their writing systems. I really doubt anyone outside of Kraloria uses a logographic system; as many people have pointed out, it is pretty cumbersome. There are, however, more places to stop between ideographs/logographs and letters than one end or the other. I think that, as in the RW, successful systems have tended to spread. In Glorantha, the Bright Empire should have had this effect, so should the Middle Sea Empire and, to a lesser extent, the EWF.
>I suspect it [New Pelorian] 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.
This doesn't seem too likely to me, or various literate people aren't going to be able to read each other's writing (and remember, there aren't that many fully literate people). What I think happens in the Lunar Empire is different flourishes -- whether you chose to render your name in old Dara Happa characters, Pelandan glyphs, or "standard" characters, which styles you use, maybe even what writing technologies. "He's an old school scribe and won't even look at a codex or pen...." The advantage of this is the illiterate Pelorian is still going to be able to look at the temple and recognize the name of Yelm if nothing else.
>> 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?
Because you use what's close and what has developed to meet the needs of your language family. The cultures of Peloria are diverse, but they have more in common with each other than they do with the West or the Orlanthi. Most of the Fertile Crecent cultures adapted cuneiform to their languages rather than creating a totally new system, at least until the Phonecians came up with a better system, and everyone adopted that.
Lastly, John Hughes reveals that the Orlanthi script is borrowed, but there is no idea from where. Sigh. Perhaps different places -- Ralios gets a relatively unaltered Western script, southern Manria gets something dreamed up by an Aeolian St. Cyril, the Aggarites use a Pelorian script, and so on....
Peter Larsen
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #92
Powered by hypermail