I was browsing images of Hawaiian petroglyphs the other day, and had a thought. We know the Hawaiians created them. We know the Hawaiian language. We know that many of the petroglyphs represent known concepts.
So, why not use those glyphs to derive a Hawaiian writing system? Sounds fun!
I then sat down with the web on my computer and a very thin tourist-friendly guide to the Hawaiian language, and in no time I had a serviceable first draft. I did it by taking the first sound in a word that has a corresponding glyph, and simplifying or stylizing the glyph a bit, and so I had an alphabet.
For example, the fishhook glyph. I forgot its name (it looks a bit like a capital letter J). I used it to represent the first sound in that word.
After that I tried to build a syllabary, because Hawaiian has no consonant clusters at all, but didn't have enough glyphs or words at hand. But anyway, alphabets are an order of magnitude easier to learn.
If I get the time, I will put my alphabet online as a font.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
What's in a name: Srividya
Names are interesting and educational. One of my co-workers is named Srividya. I thought that /sri/ sounded familiar: to wit, /sri lanka/, "divine island", but I didn't know what /vidya/ meant - sounds like "video" but Indian names are ancient, plus who still with their wits about them would name their kid "divine video"??
So I do what I do when I'm at wit's end: I ask. /Sri/ in this case means abundance, as in 'wealth', or 'a wealth of'. And she said /vidya/ means 'knowledge'.
A little googling gave me more info. Vidya is an epithet of Saraswati, a goddess of knowledge and daughter or consort of Brahma. Makes me think of Athena, the daughter of Zeus.
Now the cognates. PIE is *weid-, to know, whence Englist 'wit'. In Latin, it's videre, whence English 'vision'.
And now you know what I know about the word vidya.
So I do what I do when I'm at wit's end: I ask. /Sri/ in this case means abundance, as in 'wealth', or 'a wealth of'. And she said /vidya/ means 'knowledge'.
A little googling gave me more info. Vidya is an epithet of Saraswati, a goddess of knowledge and daughter or consort of Brahma. Makes me think of Athena, the daughter of Zeus.
Now the cognates. PIE is *weid-, to know, whence Englist 'wit'. In Latin, it's videre, whence English 'vision'.
And now you know what I know about the word vidya.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Baybayin Expanded
In the past year or two, I've looked at Baybayin and how elegant its letters are, how enjoyable it is to write... but also how truncated it is for English. I've come up with ways to represent R versus D, looked at historical letter-orderings, thought about how to use ancestor scripts (including the Nagari) to split out more vowel sounds, and looked at historical samples of Tagalog to see how certain letter clusters are handled.
Now I want to put it all together. Several times (because I expect to do poorly the first couple times, then get better results as I re-try). To extend Baybayin in ways that do the least harm to it.
I'll be needing to see how others have done it. Anyone have suggestions?
Now I want to put it all together. Several times (because I expect to do poorly the first couple times, then get better results as I re-try). To extend Baybayin in ways that do the least harm to it.
I'll be needing to see how others have done it. Anyone have suggestions?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
HandyWrite - the Ultimate Shorthand System
It's time for an app that understands shorthand. It's time to bring shorthand back.
Check this out:
http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm
This guy designed what looks like a near-optimal shorthand system:
1. He started with Gregg shorthand. Note that just using Gregg letters alone you'll speed up your note-taking significantly. The downside is that the notes themselves are often abbreviations, so you have to transcribe soon after you've taken the notes or else it becomes a bit opaque.
2. He extended it to represent the full range of English pronunciation. Now you have 1:1 sound-correspondence to English. You can read back what you wrote years later. i.e. It's a full writing system.
3. He then added a symbology for just 100 of the most common English words. Not at all as extensive as classical shorthand, but all you need is to be able to record notes as fast as they're spoken.
Ok, the best thing about it in my opinion is that it honors and re-uses prior art in simply extending Gregg shorthand. That alone is worth something in my book -- and not just for sentimental reasons: Gregg is a thoughtful and elegant system.
I've jotted down the letter forms, and will be practicing them little by little as I have time. My goal is to be able to record meetings with it.
Actually, my real goal is to write an app that will let me take notes with it.
Check this out:
http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm
This guy designed what looks like a near-optimal shorthand system:
1. He started with Gregg shorthand. Note that just using Gregg letters alone you'll speed up your note-taking significantly. The downside is that the notes themselves are often abbreviations, so you have to transcribe soon after you've taken the notes or else it becomes a bit opaque.
2. He extended it to represent the full range of English pronunciation. Now you have 1:1 sound-correspondence to English. You can read back what you wrote years later. i.e. It's a full writing system.
3. He then added a symbology for just 100 of the most common English words. Not at all as extensive as classical shorthand, but all you need is to be able to record notes as fast as they're spoken.
Ok, the best thing about it in my opinion is that it honors and re-uses prior art in simply extending Gregg shorthand. That alone is worth something in my book -- and not just for sentimental reasons: Gregg is a thoughtful and elegant system.
I've jotted down the letter forms, and will be practicing them little by little as I have time. My goal is to be able to record meetings with it.
Actually, my real goal is to write an app that will let me take notes with it.
Friday, May 14, 2010
[Interspel] "Instant English"
As none of you-all know, I am a proponent of Interspel, a proposal by Valerie Yule to standardize the subset of English spelling which even literate native speakers have perpetual problems with. I'll link to Interspel's Wikipedia entry below.
Anyway, I recently heard a comment about how Instant Message English -- I'll call it Instant English -- tends to be far too "cooked down" to be much use beyond vapid grunts. The example given was:
u r, u no (i.e. you are, you know)
It's quite terse. Too terse, too ambiguous beyond very simple replies. However, the principles are sound: remove useless letters. And if the vocabulary grows, perhaps it will grow alongside 20th-Century English Spelling, or even replace some of it.
Hopefully for the better.
Interspel entry in Wikipedia
Anyway, I recently heard a comment about how Instant Message English -- I'll call it Instant English -- tends to be far too "cooked down" to be much use beyond vapid grunts. The example given was:
u r, u no (i.e. you are, you know)
It's quite terse. Too terse, too ambiguous beyond very simple replies. However, the principles are sound: remove useless letters. And if the vocabulary grows, perhaps it will grow alongside 20th-Century English Spelling, or even replace some of it.
Hopefully for the better.
Interspel entry in Wikipedia
Thursday, May 6, 2010
[Baybayin] Toying with E and I
I played around with variant forms for E and I today. E is closer to Sanskrit's vowel carrier, and I started from E's 'wave' over the Sanskrit /I/, adjusted to account for Baybayin 'style'. It ended up using the /YA/ character, which makes some sense to me. It's potentially a win-win. It also makes me wonder if /YA/ is distantly related to Sanskrit /I/.I also thought about an /R/ based partly on the form borrowed from Bugis by Paul Verzosa, and partly on the Bisaya Hervas font's character for D/R.
I think it could work nicely.
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