<< BUT I am not so convinced that Ice Age Brithini (actually, pre-Ice Age :
this is Golden Age Brithini, isn't it?) used an alphabetic script.>>
No, Golden Age Brithini would be what the Blue Book of Zzabur was originally written in. What they write in now is Ice Age Brithini. According to Greg, modern Brithini has diverged from this more than you'd think - although hardly to the point of them being mutually unintelligible, of course. He was also fairly specific about the Abiding Script being alphabetic. Golden Age Brithini is another matter, though...
<< Remember that we're speaking of a writing system that's *at least* 2.500 -
3.000 years old (or 3.500 - 4.000 years older than comparable RW C20/21
writing systems ; if the
'Brithini Latin' camp is in the right).>>
Sounds about right. Golden Age Brithini is likely tens of thousands of years old.
<< The basic unresolved problem is whether the Malkioni continue to use the
'Core Runes' as ideograms or not >>
IMO, they don't, but I have no official backing for that position. Personally, I believe modern Western is a cursive alphabetic script.
<< If such an ancient ideograph script existed (as I still believe) the
attachment of an alphabet could only occur after the perfect Golden Age, when
all concepts were known, and it would be a script that virtually no-one
today would use or even understand, except
for some particular purposes, such as magical rituals and the occasional
shorthand (using the Sun Rune instead of writing "S.O.L.", or however it's
spelt in Malkioni).>>
I'd agree with that.
Richard Bourke:
<<It also suggests a different language analogy than the chinese
(logographic) versus latin (alphabetic) competitors: that of modern Formal
Methods. (Used to specify mathematically the desired behaviour of, typically,
a computer system).>>
Modern formal methods in pure mathematics use a logographic script as it happens, although I assume computing isn't exactly like that. To take a really basic example, the logographic expression "5+8=13" requires no translation from English into French, unlike the alphabetic "five plus eight equals thirteen". Of course, for proper logic you need the logographic for "set A intersects with set B if, and only if..." which is likely beyond the Digest's power to duplicate, but you get the idea.
Anyway, it does make sense to me that Golden Age Brithini (and to an increasingly lesser extent those scripts which followed it) did indeed work in the manner you describe.
Peter:
<<We hates you, Mr Trotsky, we do. What on earth are we going to use for a
football now? >>
Past evidence suggests that new footballs will not be long in arriving ;-)
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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