Idea for conscript

[linguistcat]

Has anyone considered, let alone made, a conscript similar to or based on Hanzi that gets used for a secondary language (think a borrowing like Korean or Japanese in the case of Hanzi) where words are written with a symbol designated to give the meaning, and a smaller subset of symbols is used to give a pronunciation? Something between Early Japanese Man'yougana and the modern system mixing Kanji with Hiragana for conjugations and particles.

Maybe I'm just half asleep thinking that this would be an interesting way to develop a script, but I think even if it had similarities to the above it could then develop in some interesting directions of its own.

[keenir]

Has anyone considered, let alone made, a conscript similar to or based on Hanzi that gets used for a secondary language (think a borrowing like Korean or Japanese in the case of Hanzi) where words are written with a symbol designated to give the meaning, and a smaller subset of symbols is used to give a pronunciation? Something between Early Japanese Man'yougana and the modern system mixing Kanji with Hiragana for conjugations and particles

Just to see if I'm following this correctly (and apologies if i'm not)...

basically, you'd have the main symbol meaning, for example, DOG, and the subset being all the pronounciations that DOG has in the various 'ganas?

It sounds like it'd work quite well in letter-writing and other things that we do for ourselves.
The biggest hurdle I can see - and I don't doubt that a workaround would be arrived at in any setting which used your idea - is this: what do we do when involving other people...ie, we are dictating a letter or a law? Do we just give our pronounciation, and it gets the DOG sign because thats associated with the pronounciation used in that instance?

And when I was typing that last question, it reminded me of how sometimes scribes would verbally read a document in the language that most of it is written in...and when they get to a word written in another language, they'd pronounce it in their language, not in the language it was written in.

Maybe I'm just half asleep thinking that this would be an interesting way to develop a script, but I think even if it had similarities to the above it could then develop in some interesting directions of its own.

*nods*

[Moose-tache]

What would be the internal explanation of a system that writes every word twice?

[alice]

What would be the internal explanation of a system that writes every word twice?

Comes with FREE! digital* delay!!!

* as in "operated by fingers"

[keenir]

What would be the internal explanation of a system that writes every word twice?

simplifying making translations for different regions/script preferences? the main word (ie DOG) always remains the same, after all.

[linguistcat]

What would be the internal explanation of a system that writes every word twice?

Honestly I hadn't thought that out. Though maybe it could start as a type of reading guide that became widespread, then turned into a normal part of writing. Might even be a comparatively short step between the original system that was borrowed and something completely different.

Keenir also has a good idea as well.

[sasasha]

What would be the internal explanation of a system that writes every word twice?

Hanzi already, originally, often encoded meaning twice (or in two different ways within one glyph, anyway). So did Egyptian hieroglyphs. Sometimes hieroglyphs encoded the same information multiple more times: e.g. to write a hypothetical word stp you might find its logogram, then a glyph standing for the phonetic sequence stp, then one for tp, and finally one for p. If you already more or less know that the word is stp from the logogram, we don't really need to confirm the presence of p three more times... But we did, anyway.

It would be at the least very unambiguous. Homophones would be easily distinguished in writing. And the whole system would be more stable in the face of sound change, aiding political projects etc (keenir's explanation).

[Moose-tache]

Hanzi has some logograms that are extended as semantic clues, and some characters used for their phonemic value. But a stage of written Chinese in which every single word had its own logogram and every single word could be diambiguated solely through phonemic means? That is completely unattested. Similarly, are there any Egyptian texts that use full logograms (not classifiers), unique for every word, plus a full set of phonograms for every word?

I think if you have a logographic system, it's basically a programming language for the first several thousand years, so accessability isn't a big concern. And even after you achieve high literacy among lay people, there doesn't seem to be much demand for this level of redundancy. The only people in the world who carry around the ability to write every word simultaneously in logograms and phonograms without code switching are the Japanese and Taiwanese, and in both countries this approach is only widely attempted for children.

[sasasha]

I take your points. I can imagine a political motivation though: imagine a ylikansallinen 🏛järjestö ratkaisevat ✒kirjoittaa ⬇näin.

It would be disgusting, but I could imagine someone deciding to give it a go.

[keenir]

Has anyone considered, let alone made, a conscript similar to or based on Hanzi that gets used for a secondary language (think a borrowing like Korean or Japanese in the case of Hanzi) where words are written with a symbol designated to give the meaning, and a smaller subset of symbols is used to give a pronunciation? Something between Early Japanese Man'yougana and the modern system mixing Kanji with Hiragana for conjugations and particles.

I think I just made a script(s) based on your idea...what do you think?
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=76831#p76831

mind, just because I attempted it, doesn't mean you can't also do it. I'd like to see yours, please.

[zompist]

Has anyone considered, let alone made, a conscript similar to or based on Hanzi that gets used for a secondary language (think a borrowing like Korean or Japanese in the case of Hanzi) where words are written with a symbol designated to give the meaning, and a smaller subset of symbols is used to give a pronunciation? Something between Early Japanese Man'yougana and the modern system mixing Kanji with Hiragana for conjugations and particles.\

If I'm understanding what you mean, then yes, this is how Old Skourene works.

It's also how kanji with furigana works (in kids' books and in manga); also how Ancient Egyptian was often written.

[zompist]

Hanzi has some logograms that are extended as semantic clues, and some characters used for their phonemic value. But a stage of written Chinese in which every single word had its own logogram and every single word could be diambiguated solely through phonemic means? That is completely unattested. Similarly, are there any Egyptian texts that use full logograms (not classifiers), unique for every word, plus a full set of phonograms for every word?

If what you're saying is that there are no pure logographies, then yes, quite right, and I hope everyone here knows that. (For those that don't, see every book on writing ever for how writing systems get by with far less than one graph per word.)

And hieroglyphics very often did have a logogram (not classifier) plus a phonetic rendering. Why, who knows, but it's common as dirt for writing systems to include a high degree of redundancy. (And also common as dirt to leave stuff out that we might think is essential.)

[linguistcat]

I think I just made a script(s) based on your idea...what do you think?
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=76831#p76831

mind, just because I attempted it, doesn't mean you can't also do it. I'd like to see yours, please.

I'll get on working on this as well, I think this is a good start on an interpretation of the idea.

If I'm understanding what you mean, then yes, this is how Old Skourene works.

It's also how kanji with furigana works (in kids' books and in manga); also how Ancient Egyptian was often written.

I really like that version. I don't actually know much about Old Skourene works but it looks like it has a triliteral root system? The combo with the writing works really well.

It might be closer to kanji with furigana if the furigana included any okurigana as well and many of the things that are normally written with hiragana or katakana also employed kanji. Tho particles would still just use the phonetic component.

[sasasha]

I keep meaning to say on this thread that the OP reminds me of Pahlavi, which used several hundred heterograms which were actually just Aramaic words, written in Aramaic. They were supposed to be read, of course, in Persian. Exactly as if we were to write ‘book’ ⟨liber⟩.

There are other examples of this kind of thing from ancient Western Asia, and of course, East Asia!

Rather than glossing each heterogram with a translation guide in situ ‒ which is essentially what the OP described, and what furigana does ‒ Pahlavi dictionaries were made to allow scribes to reference the otherwise inscrutible foreign words (representing entirely unrelated native words) that peppered their manuscripts. I do think it unlikely that a writing system would evolve which always demanded such concurrent transliteration ‒ but that's because there are shorthand ways of writing every script. If we had spent centuries spelling ‘book’ ⟨liber⟩, I don't see what is implausible about a reform taking place to make that ⟨liberbk⟩ or something, with not a great deal of extra energy having to be put in to add a small but crucial phonetic element.