suzmccarth wrote:

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

> > Hunh? Phags-pa was in use for less than a century (1269-1368 at the
> > most), and evidence for it is meager. Mongolia tried reintroducing
> > Mongolian script in 1989 or 91 or so, but it had been pretty well
> > extirpated by Cyrillic, and they've apparently gone back to Cyrillic
> > now; could you be referring to the Mongolian revival?
>
> I would hardly think of Mongolian (Uighur) as having any of the
> attribues I am talking about - syllablic organization and the use of
> different orientations as a acript device.
>
> No, I was thinking of how Phags-pa was associated with the *intent*
> of Kubilai Khan's government to establish literacy at the level of
> the village and replace the bureaucratic Chinese examination system
> with another method for generating literate subjects. (This was
> definitely not in Mongolian (Uighur) script which the Chinese were
> forbidden from learning.)

Do you have a source for that intent, or is it _you_ speculating?

> However, this is all very speculative - no need to point out that it
> can't be defended very well - it is just an *asociation* in intent
> between Phags-pa and literacy.

Now Sejong _did_ want to bestow literacy on the people. (But it didn't
take for more than 400 years.)

> What is more interesting is the use of orientation as a device in
> Phags-pa and Mandombe. In Phags-pa, there are 6 reversed consonants
> which are separate letters with separate sound values. But, when
> vowels are subjoined below a reversed consonant, the vowel reverses
> without causing a change in sound value. The reversed vowels are
> contextual variants.

Phags pa inherits reversals from Tibetan, which used it for some
Sanskrit sounds not occurring in Tibetan. I've never come across a
mention of reversing vowels.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...