Re: [lojban] A suggestion for new hànzì-base writing system

["Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org>]

Hanzi for Lojban is an excellent notion (has it already been 
entertained?) Hanzi are probably better-suited to Lojban than the Latin 
alphabet is, and possibly better-suited to Lojban than they are to 
Chinese. A fixed, *closed* number of roots, each representable by a 
single figure, none needing to be related to the others... Sounds good 
to me.

Each gismu should have a single official graph, as close as possible in 
meaning. It will never be perfect, but the mapping of sounds to Latin 
letters isn't perfect either, to an English-speaker. Rafsi use exactly 
the same graph, as you propose, except they're linked together to make 
lujvo. It's reminiscent of the distinct on/kun readings in Japanese, 
where they have different pronunciations if they're in compound or other 
environments. I don't like your ^ because it separates as much as joins, 
and since there won't be spaces between the graphs in general (or will 
there?) you wind up with lujvo-elements that are more visually separated 
than adjacent words. Something like a COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE or 
COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW would be nice, though I'm not sure applying 
such non-Han diacritics to Han characters doesn't qualify as an unholy 
abomination. Something small, some little separator that joins more than 
it separates... Maybe something like ˌMODIFIER LETTER LOW VERTICAL LINE 
or ˈMODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE, squeezed between the rafsi-graphs?

Presumably specific graphs for the cmavo as well. There we lose the 
cmavo/brivla distinction that the Latin writing system gives, with the 
consonant clusters. (what might be cool is to take the cmavo-graphs from 
katana/hiragana, which are visually distinct from the Han graphs, but 
then you'd wind up straying pretty far from pronunciation and meaning).

And yes, some kludgy whatever for cmene and fu'ivla (these also suffer, 
by never being able to reduce the markedness of being written all funny).

~mark

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