On 10/10/05, Don Osborn <dzo@...> wrote:

>
> I came across this a little while back, which may be of interest on
> the subject of invented scripts. Apparently some years ago, James
> Norquay, an artist with native Canadian background and with religious
> inspiration (Baha'i), devised on his own a "phonetic script of
> befitting beauty for English." See
> http://pacificcoast.net/~tibachimu/index.html

It seems to be basically Tolkien's tengwar adapted for English, with a
number of new glyphs. For comarison, one of many charts of the tengwar
on the web: http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/~felixcas/tenguar.gif
Compare especially the labial series.

I see now that he mentions this influence on his script, and even describes
some legal run-ins with the Tolkien estate...


His opinion is that the Latin transcription is so fraught with

> ambiguities and inconsistencies that it ought to be superceded by
> something else (esp. as English is used so widely that for better or
> worse it is becoming the de facto international second language). The
> letter forms are attractive (apparently drawing on Celtic runes and

This isn't aimed at you, since I see you're quoting from Norquay's
description,
but what are "Celtic runes"? A brief google suggests that the odd
association
of runes with Celts (rather than, say, Germanic peoples) seems to be
thankfully
confined to webpages about crystals and druids.

Hmm, on the subject of Celts and runes, I seem to recall that the word
"rune" is
sometimes described (accurately or not) as meaning "secret". In fact, "rún"
is
a modern Irish word meaning "secret", and here in Ireland, letters from
public
bodies often arrive with the inscription "faoi rún" ("faoi" meaning "under",
and cognate
to Latin "sub", etc) on the envelope, meaning "confidential". But then, the
sharing
of lexical items between Irish and Old English is hardly unknown ("cam" for
"crooked",
off the top of my head).

/relurking

Stephen.

>
>

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