Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 20:19 -0400 2005-09-16, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > I don't know enough about Blissymbolics to make such a judgement; I was
> >> figuring there might be a problem because I *thought* Blissymbolics
> >> isn't language-specific (i.e. it doesn't encode utterances), but like I
> >> said, I don't know enough.
> >
> >Right. It's supposed to be an extralinguistic semantic system.
> >("Semiotic" may not yet have been known in Bliss's day.)
>
> Bliss is a truly ideographic language which can be used by
> non-speaking people. It doesn't represent phonemes (and many of its
> users cannot utter phonemes) but it is *writing* certainly.

Which is why I asked the question that "Barry" took such umbrage at:
what does "writing system" mean to you?

> > > >>And I'd have considered it an extended use of Latin, actually.
> >
> >"Latin" is just the 22 or so letters of the Latin alphabet. It might be
> >an extended roman, but not really.
>
> Peter, you know that most of us consider "Latin" to refer to "the

Only if "most of us" are computer engineers rather than linguists or
grammatologists (graphonomists).

> Latin script" not "the Latin alphabet", so please don't offend by
> "correcting" us when we use this term.
>
> >English & Spanish _are_ different writing systems with almost the same
> >script, no?
>
> No. They are languages with orthographies using different subsets of
> the Latin script.

That's a 15-syllable way of saying what I said in 3.

> >(It's rarely important to make this distinction.)
>
> On the contrary, it is very often necessary to make this distinction,
> for clarity, computer locales, input methods, and fonts.

For computer engineers. Not for linguists, graphonomists, or end-users.

> >Neither IPA nor Visible Speech is a writing system -- it isn't used for
> >writing, just phonetic transcription.
>
> Phonetic transcription is, of course, "writing". Don't confuse
> "writing" with "natural orthography".

What do you mean by "writing"?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...