> > There's been a lot of confusion between language and script
>
>>>in this ever-so-old ever-so-arcane thread. I personally agree
>>>completely that the Brithini linguistic family can confidently
>>>be based on latin and the romance languages, rather than on
>>>the semitic tongues or Chinese agglutination
>>
>>
>
> Isn't there a source that claimed that all Westerners can read the
>script, even though they pronounce it differently? It's kind of hard to
>imagine this with characters representing sounds or syllables, but, I
>suppose that you might have a set of characters (Brithini?) that have been
>added to and deleted from as the various mainland languages diverged from
>the original. If you assume that written Brithini was vowel-less, that
>makes it easier, as different vowels could be inserted at different places
>(as Larry Gonick pointed out, you can say "Jehovah," but you can also say
>"Yahoo-Wahoo").
>
IMO, the Abiding Script (as written Western is formally known) is indeed
an abjad, like Arabic or Hebrew. However, there has been much argument
on this topic (which recently resurfaced at Lokarnos.com). My present
opinion is that written Western is not strictly the same as the spoken
language, but is either Brithini or a close derivative thereof. Much as
early medieval writers only wrote in Latin, regardless of what they
spoke, or the way that written Arabic is that of the Koran, and not
necessarily the same as the various spoken forms of the language used in
various different Arabic nations.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ --__--__--
Powered by hypermail