From nellardo@xxxxxxxxxx.xxxx Sat Sep 18 17:06:58 1999 X-Digest-Num: 237 Message-ID: <44114.237.1297.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 20:06:58 -0400 (EDT) From: David Brookshire Conner brook writes: > >Most of the basic little words end up being a single glyph: one tengwa > >with one tehta above, maybe one below. This suggests ligatures for > >these combinations, at least in Tengwar. They become pictogram-like > >word-characters, yet still have all the phonemic information apparent. > > You really should have come up with some way to make diphthongs -- both VV > and V'V -- into tehta-combinations. That way *all* cmavo would be single > symbols. It would make a nice cmavo/brivla distinction. Not sure if it's > possible without making a real mess of the notation, though. Ah, didn't mention that detail, but had in fact thought of it. In my tengwar mode for lojban, the tehta above a tengwar is for a following vowel, as most lojban words end in a vowel. As in Tolkien's own Tengwar mode for Old English, a second following vowel is represented by a tehta *under* the tengwa. Because of the shape of the tehtar, you can either draw the lower tehta right-side up, or upside down (i.e., mirrored, which appeals to me esthetically). So that covers cvv. ' is a tengwa itself (you should like that, Mark - really emphasizes it) - it's a voiceless velar fricative (x is the voiced velar fricative). So that handles cv'v with two tengwar and two tehta - still visually clear from a selbri, which *must* have a bare tengwa somewhere. v or vv cmavo can be represented using the short carrier symbol. So what about v'v? You could either write this as a short carrier followed by the ' tengwa or (if no ambiguity resulted) you could break the following-vowel pattern and put the first v above the ' tengwa and the second one underneath (since ' never comes between a break and a vowel or between a consonant and a vowel, this works more than might first be apparent). > >Actually, the one open question I'd still muddling about for this mode > >is whether to put "r" and "l" in Row 6 of the Tengwar - the > >semivowels. This has a certain elegance, but it does make the writing > >a bit more monotonous looking. But most tengwar modes don't put r and > >l up there, but as part of the "other tengwa". > > Tengwar by their nature are monotonous-looking when written. True. Though Quenya uses enough of the "other" tengwar that it looks less monotonous than lojban does. > Probably the > weakest thing, aesthetically and practically, about the system: most of the > letters resemble one another. You can't get around that, might as well > live with it. > > There's a certain charm to teeny little Grade 6 r/l, especially given their > role as hyphens/glue in Lojban. Actually, the hyphen/glue thing makes me think they *shouldn't* be grade 6 - if they look visibly different, they suggest a different structure as well. In fact, this is one place where a Loglan mode works a little better - you can use Grade 6 for R and L when it's acting like a vowel, and the other tengwar otherwise. > Have you bounced this off Ivan Derzhanski, Lojbanist, typographer, and > tengwarist extraordinaire? Nope. Don't know him. Got an email address? Or is he on this list? > >I guess this seems ligature-heavy, but to my thinking, typing the > >letters together emphasizes the structure, which is part of the beauty > >of lojban. > > Come to think of it, you may be on to something here. Using ligatures for > consonant-clusters emphasizes the clustering, and makes them distinctive. Yeah - just like the bare tengwa does when using tengwar. > And noticing consonant clusters is critical in Lojban (especially as > written with frequent "compound cmavo"). And maybe that's what you just > said. Thanks - it is! :-) > Ligating cmavo might dilute that, but not if done carefully. It might, but I can think of two approaches to doing it carefully. One is to somehow style the consonant-vowel ligatures for cmavo differently. Maybe the i looks more like a slash, or some other subtle tweak to the serifs or shapes. The other is to simply not use ligatures with consonants in cmavo - there's plenty you can use that are just vowels (or vowels and '). > Not much ligating you can do with {.i} though. Except for a special font > or form for the {i}. Which is all a ligature is anyway :-) An i with a stem that looks something like a backwards capitol L. > Bear in mind I'm one of those who pushed early on for permitting {h} as an > alloglyph of {'}, for handwriting. So I'm in favor of pretty heavy > representations of {'}, and generally fearful of losing it. Mmm, I'm torn > regarding the idea of merging the apostrophe and the dot. If anything, I > want to emphasize the break, not obscure it. But on the other hand, I > could see some kind of big bold comma-ish thing ligated on top of an {i} > that almost becomes a syllable-glyph for {'i} (the /hi/ syllable). Exactly. > Confusion with {ta' i} or {ta i} doesn't scare me much, since I do NOT > intend for the {'} to be lost (if anything I would overemphasize it), and > if we're looking to pump up the visual distinctiveness of the {.i} cmavo it > will not conflict with the {i} in {ta'i}. All of which also doesn't treat > the other four vowels and the need for a certain amount of visual > consistency. 'a is easy, as is 'u. 'o and 'e are a bit more of a stretch, but if you think about the bar on a Q or the hook on double-loop forms of g, you get something pretty reasonable. And they all involve this big, comma-like hook thing. Ligating i with a preceding vowel is an easy one, as is u and a (if you use the small-loop-overhook shape of a, not the single loop form). e and o are harder, but again, not impossible. For example, eo ligates much like ae. ao is an obvious extension. And so on.... > Don't fear heavy ligatures; wait till I show you my Klingon font... :-) Brook --------- Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS --------- Fancy. Myth. Magic. http://www.concentric.net/~nellardo/