Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > > Pahawh Hmong is just an alphabet - it has eleven oral vowels and two
> > > nasal vowels. All the Hmong codas are implicit in the nucleus!
> >
> > No, it is not an alphabet. It is a sort of reverse abugida.
>
> You have me confused on two counts. If it's an abugida, what's the
> implicit vowel?

IIRC each vowel letter has an implicit consonant, which is replaced by a
consonant letter placed beside it.

> Secondly, I thought that if an abugida ceased to have an implicit
> vowel (e.g. Lao and one style of writing Pali in Thai that I know of)
> it became an alphabet. Are such systems then fall outside your
> classification unless the symbol order happens to be roughly phonetic
> (e.g. Phags-Pa, which retains an implicit vowel and thereby remains an
> abugida)?

What is "such systems"? Lao is an alphabet.

> > (Burmese is
> > what it's most like, but Smalley insisted the inventor could only
> > have known Thai or Lao -- but a book on the history of Shan writing
> > has just appeared: a Tai language but with a Burmese-looking script.
> > Could this be a connection?)
>
> How about the Tham script? I haven't seen any examples, but it's the
> local version of the Lanna and Tai Lue scripts. They look rather
> Burmese, but without the consonants being a series of circular arcs.
> It's the script traditionally used for religious texts, so it also
> feels appropriate as an inspiration.
>
> > It's [Bopomofo's] a sophisticated grammatogeny (plus, it's not used
> for writing
> > Chinese), so as you say it doesn't need to fit in the [i.e. my]
> typology. It's a
> > notation for the traditional Chinese analysis into onset, rhyme, and
> > tone.
>
> Does the traditional Chinese analysis split up the rhyme? Bopomofo does.

Not in the Mac typing scheme that uses it. Initial, rhyme, and tone.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...