On Sat, 8 May 2021 06:24:57 -0400, Thomas Jones-Low <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
wrote:

>You overlook the differences between the alphabetic languages vs the ideographic
>languages. The glyphs of several far east languages represent whole words or
>ideas at a time. So the (theoretical) more compact nature of the ideographic
>writing allow more flexibility of the layout of the scripts.

While I didn't address compactness, I did discuss some of the differences
between ideo/logographic scripts and abjads/abugidas/alphabets, back in
Jotting #7. The thing about compactness is that you're trading compactness
from having to learn a new symbol for each word. Compounding via radicals
doesn't exactly help, because you don't actually end up learning words by
breaking down compounds; you have to learn the word as a unit.

>And while most languages have a defined order of glyph layout (Left to right or
>right to left for example), there are many artistic uses of altering this.
>Usually the intent of the artist is to challenge the assumptions of the readers.
>This shows up in some ConLang designs. The examples of the ConLang you provide
>an an excellent example of this.

Yes, and esthetics are a legitimate part of world-building - but remember
that the purpose of writing is to transmit information, and esthetics takes
second place to that - you can make a very pretty sign using your own
calligraphic variations, but if nobody can read what your sign says, you've
failed.

>Which glyphs are used for writing and their ordering is, like the languages
>themselves, the subject to the history and evolution of the language. The manner
>of writing a language evolves as the language evolves. This may be the subject
>of another whole article.

Developing that idea would in fact be a long article, but it's beyond the
scope of _my_ world-building articles, which are intended not to be a
complete guide, but simply a means of tossing out ideas for the
world-builder to pursue as s/he wishes.

(Basically, "Here's something to think about that happens in the real world
or in other fiction. You like? Duckduckgo is right there; have at.")

>On 5/7/2021 10:05 PM, Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
>> Comments desired, please, plus any other ideas you think should be
>> incorporated.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Jotting #12: Writing Systems II
>>
>> In Jotting #7, I discussed the various types of writing systems that a
>> language could use, and mentioned some languages that used each, for
>> illustrative purposes. When creating writing systems for world building,
>> you might also want to consider how the glyphs from your writing system go
>> together on the page.
>>
>> Writing is, fundamentally, one-dimensional - that is, the glyphs are
>> written and read in sequence, and the order in which they are read
>> determines the words and their meanings that are communicated. But how that
>> sequence is placed on a two-dimensional surface can vary.
>>
>> Most languages known to be in use at present are read and written left to
>> right and top to bottom. That is, one starts at the top of the page, reads
>> across along the first line of text from left to right, and then returns to
>> the left side of the page to read the second line, and so on. This appears
>> to be by far the most common way of doing things; languages that use all of
>> the types of writing systems mentioned in Jotting #7 are written this way.
>> Some languages, most notably languages written with variations on the
>> Arabic and Hebrew abjads, are written right to left and top to bottom.
>>
>> Many of the languages of the Far East are classically written in vertical
>> columns, read top to bottom and right to left. It is increasingly common to
>> see these languages written left to right and top to bottom, perhaps under
>> the influence of early computerization (modern computers can handle
>> vertically-written text). An exception can be found in Mongolian; the
>> classical script is written top to bottom and left to right.
>>
>> While comparatively rare, there are known examples - some in limited but
>> current use - of languages that are traditionally written and read from
>> bottom to top. It is common, however, for these languages to be written
>> left to right and top to bottom.
>>
>> There are (historical) examples of scripts written as boustrophedons - that
>> is, alternate lines are left to right and right to left. In most, but not
>> all, known examples, the individual glyphs are mirrored on alternate lines.
>>
>> The text of the Phaistos Disc is undeciphered, but those who have studied
>> it generally believe that it is written spiraling inward in a clockwise
>> direction. (One notable thing about the Phaistos Disc is that it is the
>> earliest known certain example of the use of movable type for printing.)
>> The pre-European-contact Mayan language was written as pairs of
>> side-by-side glyphs stacked vertically. Columns were read left to right.
>> This pattern was also used in other mesoAmerican languages.
>>
>> Several present-day languages (most notably Thai and Lao, and most
>> languages derived from written Chinese ideograms/logograms) are written as
>> scriptio continua, or without spaces or punctuation; often, language that
>> now use spaces and punctuation were also originally written scriptio
>> continua.
>>
>> In C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels, one race, the T'ca, are so alien that
>> their messages can only be represented in Hani [using English as a
>> stand-in] as a 6×6 matrix of words, and one supposedly must read said
>> matrix in all directions to understand the message. While an interesting
>> idea, Cherryh does not carry it off well; the examples provided in the
>> story are not difficult to interpret simply reading down the columns.
>>
>> The Vulcan tanaf-kitaun script at korsaya.org can actually be written in
>> any direction; a text starts with a symbol that unambiguously indicates the
>> direction of writing.
>>
>> Most (but not all) scripts derived from the Latin and Greek alphabets
>> (including the Cyrillic script) include two forms of each letter, generally
>> called "upper case", "capitals", or "majuscules", and "lower case",
>> "small", or "minuscules", and there are grammatical and orthographic rules
>> governing when each is used. Letters in scripts based on the Arabic abjad
>> have varying forms based on the surrounding glyphs, rather than a "case"
>> distinction. Other scripts generally have only a single form for each glyph
>> ("monocase"). Constructed scripts are often, but not exclusively, monocase.
>>
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>> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
>> the trademark in this notice and in the
>> referenced materials is not intended to
>> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>>
>
>
>--
>         Thomas Jones-Low
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