Re: Ligatures (was Re: NGL: Proposal: de-emphasise the shorthand forms)

[Padraic Brown <pbrown@POLARIS.UMUC.EDU>]

il maystoers Nichels il Togadurs (Nik Taylor) yscreus:

>
> Speaking of Ligatures, has anyone who has a writing system for their
> language devised ligatures in the same?  In my earlier Kizval project I
> had a few ligatures, consisting of the words "and", "or", "not",
> "person" and a few other words, as well as gramatical symbols, symbols
> indicating genetive, for example, for use with the few nouns written
> with ligatures.

Kernu has several such ligatures.  I know of "and", &; "through", a 'p'
with a little squiggle over top; &c.  [Of course, with '&', one must know
whether to read it as "e" or "ach", both of which mean 'and' but are used
in different environments.]  There is no ligature for "not", as the first
part of the negative particle (ne) is usually attached to a pronoun or
verb, the second part of the negative particle (and the part that actually
carries the negative information) is to polymorphous to be represented by
one ligature (pass, mech, spech, uth, &c. all of which mean 'not').  The
conjunction 'not', when not attached to some other word, has a ligature
that looks like an 'n' with a little curl on the bottom somewhat
reminiscent of an 'e'.  Not surprising since the word is 'ne'!  "With" is
a 'c' with a little squiggle on top.

In the past, many common words had ligatures of varying shapes; very few
of which survived the mid 19th century invention of 'il Machenement
Yscrevals' (the Scribal Engine, or type writer).  "Man" is an 'o' with a
squiggle on top; "pound" is an 'l' with a squiggle attached.  There're
undoubtedly others, but I haven't learnt them yet.

As for ligatured letters, the 'll' (sounds like [hl], undoubtedly
considered a boorish and rustic sound by certain Brithenig speaking
types!) digraph has a small connexion at the bottom; on Scribal Engines,
it's essentially two l's in the space of one.  Another 'll' (sounds like
[j]) is simply two standard l's.  The third 'll' (sounds like [lj]) in
writing is two l's with a centered dot between; on Scribal Engines, it's
two l's with a standard period between (l.l), in order to reduce the
number of keys.  There was, at one time, a move to differentiate
'softened' consonants from 'aspirated' consonants by the use of various
accent marks; but that idea didn't fly, and the now common use of 'h'
following the mutated consonant was standardised (except for the
softening of p,t,c/k,qu which become b,d,g/g,gw).

Padraic.

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