Truly ideographic sounds about right.
> > The fourth script (also my idea) was invented on Mokato in
> > its imperial days. After a rather embarassing incident, the
> > chamberlain of the Grand Steward received the script as a
> > gift from Hobimarong. The characters represent a consonant/
> > vowel combination, (with single letters added later). The
> > inspiration is the indian devanagari script.
>
> Also rather like Japanese kana (in which caes "-n" is the only
> such single letter). A lot of EI words seem to consist of
> (C)V(C) type syllables, though there are inconvenient exceptions
> to this. So a "syllabary+" type system would maybe be handy.
> (Perhaps this originates from some language where the syllables
> were a more consistently good fit (to (C)V(C), or to (C)V), and
> the affixes were added later as a "hack" to deal with loan-words
> that broke the rules.
Exactly, a majority of East Isles place names have a number of consonant-vocal syllables:
Mokato
Haragala
etc.
even though there are exceptions:
Hanfarador etc.
I think that this writing fitted the Mokato dialect perfectly, but needs to be tweaked to work well for others.
Keith:
>
> I like all of this stuff. Of course Valkaro may have brought Western with him
> when he arrived.
Yes absolutely. All in all there should be a bewildering multitude of more or less related scripts, including foreign loans in the East Isles.
Peter L:
>
>>It [the first "script"] is extremely
>>difficult to learn, because reading it (must be read aloud
>>I think) means direct communion with the High Gods. That in
>>turn means that the reader experiences a state of Liberation
>>while reading.
>
> This would certainly make teaching the language difficult, but grading
>would be easy: the students who are left at the end of class fail.
:-)
Fortunately it isn't quite as bad as that, as divine mystics don't seem to be quite as hard-nosed as the followers of Mashunasan and Larn Hasamador about non-existence.
>>I think it [the second "script"] looks like complex mandalas: one figure
>>is an entire text that must be taken in and understood as
>>one.
>
> There's a potential for sacred architecture here; huge 3D mandalas that
>induce enlightenment by walking through them with a sincere and prepared mind.
Cool, I'll steal that idea!
> I'm not sure I'd classify either of these as writing systems, though --
>they are more like mystical notation schemes.
I agree about the first, but the second is intended to explain mystical concepts rather than induce them, so it has some justification as a (sort of) writing system.
> I suspect the East Isles have a huge range of writing materials, though,
>shared with other countries.
It would be strange otherwise.
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