[lojban] Re: D'ni orthography for Lojban

[Jon MacLeod <eye_onus@yahoo.com>]

--- Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

The D'ni characters are meant to written with the continous line done first,
then to go back through the word and put in the accents (ticks) and flags
(vertical lines). Writing the wors as such may be odd at first, but it does
enable someone to scribble something in D'ni script rather quickly.

> 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'.

The D'ni language has 24 different characters, 11 with accented versions (the
xy. and by., for example), and has 35 individual sounds. I honestly don't know
why the creators of the Myst series of games decided to attach a certain symbol
to a certain phoneme, I just know which one's are which.

You can have a look for yourself at the whole D'ni character set and teir
attached phonemes at this page:
http://linguists.bahro.com/domahreh/lessons/lesson02.html

You'll have to download the D'ni font to actually see the characters, that's
located here: http://linguists.bahro.com/domahreh/lessons/media/rcd_fonts.zip

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

I don't have anything against altering Lojbanic usage of the D'ni character set
to be more correct, such as having the accent mean voiced and accent-less
unvoiced, for example- if you are wont to, by all means alter it as you see fit
to improve for Lojbanic usage, I would love to see the result, and I'll be more
than happy to fix the font mappings to your results.

Truth be told, I have my own problem with the current mappings- there is no way
to distinguish between emphasized and non-ri vowels, except by underlining
them. Possibly using an accent to indicate stress, but that might confuse
anyone who actually tried to read it.

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


-Jon Jones

"I have a brain, I've just lost my mind." -Ian McLeod

"As a percentage of total universal knowledge, what I know is statistically insignificant." - me

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