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

> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > (If tone was to be notated, diacritics would need to be added
> > whether
> > > syllabics or alphabet.)
> >
> > Not necessarily. Nushu appears to be a phonetic syllabary, but I
> > have not heard that it uses diacritics for the tone distinctions.
>
> What is Nushu? Is that a Chinese name for Yi?

No! See http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~orie/home.htm .

> Why would being a "phonetic syllabary" lead you to expect tone
> distinctions to be written?

Because tone is an important part of the sound, more important than
vowel length.

> > There ought to be a language in which the tone contrast is solely
> > marked in the initial consonant - tonal Mon-Khmer languages would

be

> > an obvious place to look.

> Why "ought" there to be? How many local languages have inherited

writing

> systems?

It seems that most of Tai languages outside China do or did.
(Thailand may be exceptional, in that the Siamese system was
established throughout the country, and local systems lost their
utility.) There may, of course, have been massive re-adjustments, as
for example happened in Britain.

> Smalley urged people to create Thai-based, not roman-based, scripts

for

> Tai languages, so his last book is an obvious place to look.

I think you mean for Thai languages, though using Thai for other Tai
languages might be an effective way of escaping 'phonetic' order. (I
think phonetic order is actually impossible for Thai - if a 'logical
order' in the Unicode sense existed, it would be neither visual nor
phonetic!)

A Thai-based writing system would not be such a system - tone
contrasts on syllables starting with unvoiced, unaspirated stops
would be shown by tone marks.

Richard.