Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 21:37 -0400 2005-09-16, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > > Blissymbolics is certainly a writing system, and I know people who
> >> are literate in it and in no other writing system.
> >
> >Define "writing system." Since it isn't a scheme for recording
> >utterances in such a way that they can be recovered without the
> >intervention of the utterer, it's not writing.
>
> This is incorrect. Blissymbolics *is* a language, and for the
> non-speaking people who use it, it is often the *only* language which
> they can express themselves in. People who express themselves in
> Blissymbolics create text, parseable, recoverable text. Text that can
> be sent in a letter, or by e-mail, like any other written text, and
> read by another person, without the intervention of the utterer.
>
> >It's said to be useful for people who are unable to use conventional
> >writing systems, but they're not recording language with it.
>
> It is used by non-speaking people, often as a primary, and sometimes
> as a secondary, language. It is truly ideographic language, which
> makes it unique. But language it surely is.

You cannot make Blissymbolics into a writing system by arguing that it's
a language.

It may indeed be a language, a language with exclusively visual form,
but by that very fact it _is not_ a writing system.

Unless you use a definition of "writing system" that's different from
any definition that's ever appeared in the literature.

That's why I keep asking what you mean by "writing system."
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...