Re: Moraic writing system

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

> Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > Pahawh Hmong is just an alphabet - it has eleven oral vowels and two
> > nasal vowels. All the Hmong codas are implicit in the nucleus!
>
> No, it is not an alphabet. It is a sort of reverse abugida.

You have me confused on two counts. If it's an abugida, what's the
implicit vowel?

Secondly, I thought that if an abugida ceased to have an implicit
vowel (e.g. Lao and one style of writing Pali in Thai that I know of)
it became an alphabet. Are such systems then fall outside your
classification unless the symbol order happens to be roughly phonetic
(e.g. Phags-Pa, which retains an implicit vowel and thereby remains an
abugida)?

> (Burmese is
> what it's most like, but Smalley insisted the inventor could only
> have known Thai or Lao -- but a book on the history of Shan writing
> has just appeared: a Tai language but with a Burmese-looking script.
> Could this be a connection?)

How about the Tham script? I haven't seen any examples, but it's the
local version of the Lanna and Tai Lue scripts. They look rather
Burmese, but without the consonants being a series of circular arcs.
It's the script traditionally used for religious texts, so it also
feels appropriate as an inspiration.

> It's [Bopomofo's] a sophisticated grammatogeny (plus, it's not used

for writing

> Chinese), so as you say it doesn't need to fit in the [i.e. my]

typology. It's a

> notation for the traditional Chinese analysis into onset, rhyme, and
> tone.

Does the traditional Chinese analysis split up the rhyme? Bopomofo does.

Richard.