[lojban] Re: D'ni orthography for Lojban

["Hugh O'Byrne" <hobyrne@gmail.com>]

On 11/9/06, Yanis Batura <ybatura@mail.ru> wrote:

On 10.11.2006, 4:50, Jon MacLeod wrote:

> I would like to know what Lojbanistan thinks of the D'ni orthography I am
> submitting, I am including to files- one with the transliteration between
> Lojban letterals and D'ni characters, and the other with an example Lojban text
> written with these characters- namely, rab.spir.'s translation of the song that
> never ends.

What I think is that sending a 500 KB letter to everyone isn't the
best idea.

I think Yanis makes a valid point, but I am also going to answer the question asked.

I think it's pretty.  It looks like it's designed to be easy to write in cursive, adjacent letters join up nicely.  That's a good feature.

It seems to me that anyone using this for an extended time is likely to make the 'i' shape more rounded, just because it's quicker and easier than drawing corners (making it less 'L' shaped and more 'C' shaped).  (The intent may be for the scribe to lift the pen at the end of the top stroke and put it back down near the beginning, but in a hurry, or after they get familiar with making the shapes, I'll bet a lot of people will just keep their pen on the paper because it's easier.  For example, which do you find easier to write, cursive or print?)  The backward strokes on 'f', 'p', and perhaps 'z', look like they could be tiresome, I imagine after a while a scribe might get sloppy with these, making them into loops perhaps.  It is good there are only two different types of feature you have to go back and do after scribbling the 'main' line of the word - the vertical bars, and the short horizontal ticks (like dotting 'i's and crossing 't's); any more than two features, I feel, may be unappealing.

Now for my pet crusade.  I see some commonalities between symbols for similar sounds: 'v' and 'b' are similar, as are 'c' and 's'.  I assume this is intentional, that the visual differences are intended to represent the oral differences.  But it does not do this as well as it might: the written distinction between these pairs is the same (presence or absence of a tick), but the differences in sound, and in the shape and use of the mouth, are quite different.  So the tick does not, in itself, have a meaning beyond 'some variation on the sound'.  Personally, I would find it much more appealing and symmetrical if the tick had a more particular meaning, 
e.g. 'voiced'.  One shape to represent 'p', the same shape with a tick to represent 'b'.  A shape for 'c', the same shape with a tick for 'j'.  't' and 'd', 'k' and 'g', maybe even ' (h) and 'y'.

As I said, that's my personal crusade.  But the observations I make above it, I think may be more relavent to more people.

mi'e .xius.
--
Good night, and have a rational tomorrow!