--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

>
> How's that? He invented a writing system involving 4 orientations

and

> then looked around for a language that had a tetrad of
> something-or-other and figured Cree vowels were a good candidate?

No but he could have represented the 7 vowels with 7(6) different
modifiers as Amharic has. However, he used four orientations
instead, so 4 long vowels and 3 short, in pairs. But surely a system
with 7 different modifiers could have provided a possible
representation of the language.

Suzanne