Re: Moraic writing system

--- "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> >
> > --- 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?
>
> IIRC each vowel letter has an implicit consonant,
> which is replaced by a consonant letter placed

beside

> it.
>
> > 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)?
>
> What is "such systems"? Lao is an alphabet.

Slightly off topic, but this subject of the differing
typology of Thai and Lao reminded me of a comment on
Amazon about the change in Lao orthography under the
communist government:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0804809097/qid=1123103176/sr=8-5/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl14/102-0373435-5816141?v=glance&s=books&n=507846#R3MMIVQ3GQWOYV

My guess is that Lao was an alphabet before, during,
and after these changes and that the changes had no
effect on the script's typology. Is that right or is
the story more interesting?

Also was it Lao or Thai which changed after the split
or was there never an actual split between these two
scripts, merely one being based on the other but the
two always having different typologies to each other?

Andrew Dunbar.

> > > (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.
>
> Not in the Mac typing scheme that uses it. Initial,
> rhyme, and tone.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels
> grammatim@...
>

http://en.wiktionary.org -- http://linguaphile.sf.net/cgi-bin/translator.pl



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