There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: R A Brown
1.2. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Wed Jun 26, 2013 6:05 am ((PDT))
On 25/06/2013 22:55, Michael Everson wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2013, at 19:24, BPJ wrote:
>
>> 2013-06-24 16:35, G. van der Vegt skrev:
[snip]
>>> ... and most (if not all) languages which have the
>>> Latin script as their native script use
>>> capitalization, and most of those capitalize the
>>> things English do (the main exceptions I know
>>> capitalize more, not less.)
>>
>> That's hardly true since many languages written in
>> Latin script don't capitalize adjectives derived from
>> names or names of languages. That makes for many
>> fewer capitals in running text containing such
>> adjectives/language names.
>
> That's really not the point.
It may not be your point, but it is answering the point made
G. van der Vegt. IMO it is very much to the point _in the
context in which it was written_.
> Such usage varies normally within the Latin script. This
> is well known.
Yes, fair to say we all know that.
[snip]
> ... Some Cambridge (but not Oxford) approaches to Latin
> texts bizarrely eschew capital letters
Not bizarre IMO - it is merely following long established
practice regarding the printing of ancient Greek. I came
across this fifty years ago; it didn't bother me.
> and all I can say is that it makes both Harrius Potter
> and worse Hobbitus Ille a chore and a pain to read.
So you find conventionally printed texts of ancient Greek a
bore to read, I guess.
> (Tolkien, an Oxford man and a Catholic who knew his
> Vulgate, would not have approved.)
Tolkien also knew his ancient Greek; I don't think we are in
a position to know whether he would have approved or not -
unless there's anything among his writings commenting on the
Cambridge practice.
[snip]
>> In both cases the people who design
>> orthographies/transliterations/transcriptions do what
>> pleases *them* best. It ain't their concern to please
>> you or me, nor should it be.
>
> What are you on about? If you want to insist on a
> special form of H WITH HOOK that differs from the one in
> use in Chad, well, by all means do, but be aware that
> fonts will be doing what the Chadians do.
Unicode fonts. But this is the CONLANG list. BPJ is
talking about conlangers who design orthographies/
transliterations/ transcriptions. Of course they do what
pleases them best. I don't imagine people in Chad are, on
the whole, very interested in BPJ's conlangs ;)
We may, if list members ask, give _advice_, but in the end
it is their conlang.
If R. Srikanth wishes to use all the lower case and the
upper case letters as separate symbols in a 52 character
alphabet, that is up to him - not to you or me. If I wish
to use the letters of the Roman alphabet, as I have done in
the past, as a syllabary, I shall do so. If a conlanger
wishes to write her/his conlang entirely in lower case (or
entirely in upper case), that up to her/him.
This thread began as a request by Rick to know what conlangs
are written (almost) entirely in lower-case letters. Now
that people have told him, it seems to have turned into a
thread for prescriptivists to tell us what we should &
should not be doing. :(
Forget it! This is the _conlang_ list; let's get on with our
own eccentric conlanging and do what we want with those darn
capitals :)
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"... we might, perhaps we should, write everything with
small letters, as the rules for capitals are more or less
arbitrary in all languages."
[Otto Jespersen, Novial Lexike, 1930]
Messages in this topic (27)
________________________________________________________________________
1.2. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Wed Jun 26, 2013 7:06 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wednesday 26 June 2013 11:06:10 Michael Everson wrote:
> On 22 Jun 2013, at 19:29, BPJ <b...@melroch.se> wrote:
> >> Most IPA letters have capitals, actually.
> >
> > It's easy to determine that that is not true. Of the 96 characters in
the
> > IPA Extensions block only 29 have capitals, and even if we allow for the
> > fact that some characters in that block are obsolete (some of which are
> > among those having caps) or nonstandard, and that _a-z æ ø ð β θ_ and
> > perhaps a few more letters with caps are also IPA that's far from a
> > majority!
>
> Let's look at the consonants first, shall we? I count 80 consonants used
in
> the IPA (the current official IPA) and of those only 35 of them do not
> have capital letters. That's 45 with caps, against 35 without. A majority.
Sure. But that doesn't mean that *IPA* has capital letters.
Those capitals are not used in IPA transcriptions; maybe in
*orthographies based on IPA*, but not in IPA itself. IPA still
is a "unicameral" script. That a majority of the IPA letters
"have capitals" (in whichever other alphabets where they are
also used) is besides the point; the capitals are not part of
the IPA specification.
On Wednesday 26 June 2013 15:05:11 R A Brown wrote:
> On 25/06/2013 22:55, Michael Everson wrote:
> > On 25 Jun 2013, at 19:24, BPJ wrote:
> [...]
> > Such usage varies normally within the Latin script. This
> > is well known.
>
> Yes, fair to say we all know that.
Of course.
> [...]
> >> In both cases the people who design
> >> orthographies/transliterations/transcriptions do what
> >> pleases *them* best. It ain't their concern to please
> >> you or me, nor should it be.
> >
> > What are you on about? If you want to insist on a
> > special form of H WITH HOOK that differs from the one in
> > use in Chad, well, by all means do, but be aware that
> > fonts will be doing what the Chadians do.
>
> Unicode fonts. But this is the CONLANG list. BPJ is
> talking about conlangers who design orthographies/
> transliterations/ transcriptions. Of course they do what
> pleases them best. I don't imagine people in Chad are, on
> the whole, very interested in BPJ's conlangs ;)
Probably not. I can understand if someone wants the hook
on the other top of the H, but then it is at him to design
his own typeface ;)
>
> We may, if list members ask, give _advice_, but in the end
> it is their conlang.
Certainly!
> If R. Srikanth wishes to use all the lower case and the
> upper case letters as separate symbols in a 52 character
> alphabet, that is up to him - not to you or me. If I wish
> to use the letters of the Roman alphabet, as I have done in
> the past, as a syllabary, I shall do so. If a conlanger
> wishes to write her/his conlang entirely in lower case (or
> entirely in upper case), that up to her/him.
Just that. Also, it makes a difference whether the Latin
orthography is meant as a *native* orthography (which of
course makes sense only with altlangs, lostlangs, etc.,
which are spoken in a world where the Latin script exists,
or of course non-fictional languages such as auxlangs), or
merely as a *transcription* for the convenience of non-native
speakers such as the conlanger and his audience.
Of my conlangs, Roman Germanech has a native Latin orthography:
it is a Romance lostlang spoken in a few villages near
Heidelberg, Germany. Intrafictionally, the orthography was
designed by a local schoolmaster in the 19th century (who knew
his Latin and also OHG and MHG, so he could devise a fitting
etymological spelling which writes /s/ from Latin /s/ as <s>,
and /s/ from Latin /t/ as <z>). I am considering right now
whether all nouns shall be capitalized (as in Modern High German),
or only proper names or sentence beginnings (as usual in most
other languages in Europe, including modern conventions for
Latin and Middle High German).
The romanization of Old Albic, in contrast, is intrafictionally
a transcription used by scholars and based on the orthography of
Avalonian, a modern-day descendant which is natively written in
the Latin script (using such "Celtic"-looking conventions as
spelling /k/ as <c> even before front vowels). The ancient Elves,
of course, did not use the Latin alphabet; they had their own
(caseless) featural alphabet for it (I have already worked it out,
but it does not yet exist in digital form). The romanization
capitalizes, as usual, sentence beginnings and proper names.
With the remaining lostlang projects of mine, things are pretty
much the same.
The only of my conlang projects where I am planning on using
only "lower case" is Quetch, but that is because it will be
written "natively", due to its massive phoneme inventory, in
IPA, which, as I have observed above, does not have capitals.
The alienlangs of the Trellis universe are yet another matter.
Those will have non-humanoid phonetics, and their transcriptions
will use their own conventions.
> This thread began as a request by Rick to know what conlangs
> are written (almost) entirely in lower-case letters. Now
> that people have told him, it seems to have turned into a
> thread for prescriptivists to tell us what we should &
> should not be doing. :(
Yes, and that is utterly off-topic here.
> Forget it! This is the _conlang_ list; let's get on with our
> own eccentric conlanging and do what we want with those darn
> capitals :)
AMEN!
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (27)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com
conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
