On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 11:40:24 -0700, Doug Ewell <dewell@...> wrote:

> The only two piece of typology information I feel comfortable with at
> this time are:
>
> (1) Latin, and other writing systems that have discrete symbols for

[...]

> safely be considered alphabets.
>
> (2) Hiragana and katakana, which have an different blort for every

[...]

> can safely be considered syllabaries.
>
> Everything else, I leave to the gladiators on the floor of the Colosseum.

Morituri te salutat? I don't think so.

It was a very-amusing post; this dilettante has been trying to commit to
memory the definitions of abugidas and abjads, and at this point, him am
well confusen. I do have WWS and Unicode 3.0 in hardcover, and (not to
play favorites :) ) will surely consider WWS to be more authoritative
about writing systems. Unicode has other strong points...

Fwiw, I think it was Unicode 1.0 that introduced me to the concept of the
inherent vowel.

(Any off-topic comments about Mario Pei, one of my early encouragements
(books, not in person!)?)

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
who's still trying casually to end a sentence with five or more
non-alphanumeric characters, using valid syntax.
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