Do you know alternative scripts for your language? If so, can you talk about them?

crmsnbleyd , 1 hour ago

Hindi and many other Indian regional languages frequently use the Latin script on electronic devices for casual communication.

For example, Kya haal hai -> क्या हाल है? -> how’s it going?

I don’t even know how to type the original script version.

404 , 1 hour ago

I dabbled in shorthand (particularly Melin’s system) for a bit. Never got up a usable speed, but I’m convinced I would have been unbeatable in uni if I had.

frightful_hobgoblin , 1 hour ago (edited 1 hour ago)

Cló Gaelach / Lámh Gaelach

Cló Gaelach means Gaelic print. Lámh Gaelach is the same thing but handwritten, it means Gaelic Hand. It’s not an alternative to the Latin alphabet, just a dialect of it, like how German was written in Blackletter up until quite recently. Most letters are similar to the boring mainstream print, but T (Ꞇ), G (Ᵹ) and D (Ꝺ) are quite distinctive, and the letter H is not used.

There is no aspirated h (h as a consonant) in Irish, it’s used to mark softened phonemes, so m represents one consonant and mh in Cló Rómánach (Roman print) represents a softer sound. Cló Gaelach favours the superdot ṁ instead of using h.

This is the part of constitution declaring Irish the official language of the country, with English a secondary official language:

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/10b94021-040c-495b-a58f-916ae55e417f.png

The government phased it out for official use in the 1970s because they are idiots. I still use it when I can, I never write Irish by hand without it.

Ogham

Ogham is much older. It was used around the year 400. It is a tree-themed alphabet, branches coming off a central column, and the letters mostly have names like ‘birch’, ‘oak’, 'hazel. Ogham is climbed as a tree is climbed, which is to say it’s written bottom to top. It was created by the god Ogma; similar to how Thoth created writing in Egypt. An 14th-century text called In Lebor Ogaim talks about various ways of putting ciphers upon it. Posts about ogham: lemmy.ml/post/16545296 , lemmy.ml/post/18046303

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/17aae466-a63f-47f1-ba9b-f162f88f9767.jpeg

ᚔᚄ ᚑᚌᚆᚐᚋ ᚓ ᚄᚓᚑ but that won’t display on all people’s operating systems.

Ogham tattoos are common enough nowadays.

hanabatake , 2 hours ago

There were some that were made for french to make the orthography of words easier. They use accents generally. I do not use them and I do not know anyone that uses them.

Erika3sis , 2 hours ago

I have thought about developing an alternate script for Norwegian/Scandinavian based on the old runes, really just because I think that would be fun and interesting, but insofar as I haven’t done this yet, I don’t know of any alternate scripts for Norwegian, and obviously there isn’t much point in talking about English.

So I will instead share an alternate script for a language I do not speak: Circassian, or specifically West Circassian or Adyghe.

Father and son duo R. I. Daur and I. Yu. Daur together developed an alternate script for that language in I think 2012. The script was dubbed “Mifo-Circassian”, and as I understand it, it’s an attempt to give the Circassian language a more unique visual identity, by using letters based on old inscribed symbols — I think the emblems of clans more specifically — rather than using an adapted foreign alphabet like Latin, Arabic, or Cyrillic. Furthermore, Circassian has a very unique inventory of sounds that interact with each other in unique ways, that foreign alphabets can’t really do justice, so this alphabet is more uniquely suited for the challenges that come with representing Circassian in writing. Mifo-Circassian writing seems like it may be used both alphabetically and alphasyllabically, but the alphabetic form is far more common.

Well, “more common”, not that many Circassians actually do use this Mifo-Circassian script to begin with. Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic have the benefit of being supported by Unicode and of also being used by neighboring languages, and they work well enough for representing Circassian. So it seems like the primary usage of Mifo-Circassian is not necessarily for communicative writing, but rather for more ornamental or artistic usage.

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/0a2a2833-d584-4054-99a9-3de703ff486f.png

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6a45e1ab-6309-4b3b-ac23-4121047750d2.png

AdNecrias , 2 hours ago

There’s this pretty handy script me and folks around use for numbers, we call it Arabic numerals, even if the Arabs call them “hindian numerals”. They’re pretty handy. Beats roman numerals at everything but looking classy!

AdNecrias , 2 hours ago

Jokes aside, hope people say which language they’re talking about. Mine, Portuguese, doesn’t really have alternate script as far as I know, unless you you count the old mobile phone shortened typing as such

sbv , 3 hours ago

I hadn’t heard about them until now. Here’s a Wikipedia article.

As a parent teaching kids to read, I’d love an alphabet that didn’t have the stupid ambiguities of current English. Trying to explain to a kid that “c” can make a few different sounds is a pain in the butt.

Nemo , 2 hours ago

It makes one sound followed by E or I and the other the rest of the time. Mostly.

frightful_hobgoblin , 1 hour ago

The writing system has its flaws too.

• I and l look the same.
• 0 and O look the same.
• Why are their two totally different cases? Q looks nothing like q and the distinction serves no communicative purpose
• Similarly, why is there printed letters and joined-up letters – two totally different ways of writing?
• Loops are sometimes merely stylistic, but some letters like say b has a loop that is essential to it.
• b and d are mirror-images, and this confuses some children
• "dot your I-s and cross your T-s" – the pen has to be lifted from the page to do this, so people don’t always bother.

Some of these might sound like non-issues to grown-ups, but they’re hard for children.