I'm following this discussion with some interest, as an enthusiast of alternative scripts for English (Deseret, Shavian) and inventor of one. Some random thoughts:
I'm rather uncomfortable with labeling a script, or the usage of a script, a cipher simply because it is used by a minority. How large could such a "minority" become and still have its usage relegated to "cipher" status? The secrecy criterion seems a little more on track. I know there are other kinds of ciphers, but when I hear the term, I think of one-to-one "substitution" ciphers. The Pigpen cipher is the classic example, as someone pointed out, though it does come in varieties. I think such a collection of symbols A becomes a cipher for a true script B when it replicates the usage of symbols in B, irregularities and all. In the Pigpen cipher, there is a symbol for C and one for T and one for H, and C+H and T+H are slapped together *exactly* as they are in Latin to spell English words. In a substitution cipher, the word "chime" is spelled with those five letters, c-h-i-m-e; they just look different. In both Deseret and Shavian, "chime" is spelled as three letters, representing those alphabets' idea of three sounds: ch-i-m (Deseret ððð, Shavian ððð). There is no blind adherence to English spelling principles, so not a cipher. In my invented alphabet, there are five letters, but they don't correspond to the five Latin letters (t-sh-a-y-m, or îîîîî if you've got Code2000 installed). No separate "c" and "h", and no silent "e". Therefore, not a cipher. In Theban and Utopian, words are spelled exactly as they would be with Latin letters. Only the shapes are different. To me, that's clearly a cipher; there's nothing arbitrary or whimsical about it. I was surprised and a bit dismayed to see Klingon dragged into this thread. Klingon was rejected not because it's a cipher, but because it's used only for decoration, not for communication. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
