* i18n
|
| I wonder if there is any sort of correlation among the historical
| use of certain categories of writing systems with certain categories
| of languages.

* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Yes. There is no such correlation.

It seems to me that in most cases when a script begins to be used to
write some language the users of that language either adopt or adapt
an existing script and that they usually do not look around for a
suitable candidate, but pick the one most obvious to them. It also
seems that very rarely when adapting an existing script do they change
it to such an extent that the new script belongs to a different
category.

So I guess that the reason for this lack of correlation might be that
very rarely is a script extensively tailored for the language it is
used to write, so that the influence of the language on its script is
(generally) quite weak.

In fact, in my scripts "database"[1] I can find 12 cases of a script
changing type when being adapted to a new language, out 114 total
cases, as follows:

PREDECESSOR SUCCESSOR PRED. TYPE SUCC. TYPE
========================================================================
Classical syriac Modern syriac Abjad Alphabet
Linear A Cypriote syllabary Logosyllabary Syllabary
Arabic script Thaana Abjad Alphabet
Mongolian clear script Buryat Abjad Alphabet
Pahlavi Avestan Abjad Alphabet
Aramaic script Kharoshthi Abjad Abugida
Sabean/Minean script Amharic script Abjad Abugida
Orkhon Hungarian runes Abjad Alphabet
Chinese script Man'yoogana Logosyllabary Syllabary
Lanna script Tai Lue script Abugida Alphabet
Phoenician script Greek Abjad Alphabet
Proto-Elamite Old Elamite Logosyllabary Syllabary

The clearest example of a language -> script influence I see in this
list is a tendency for non-semitic languages to abandon the abjad in
favour of script types that denote vowels. (Though this could hardly
be called a scientific conclusion.)

[1] It's actually a topic map.

--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50 <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >