A Thought About Talossan Writing

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

As the moment we use a latin script with many diacritics (soon to be many fewer).

When I first began looking at Talossan...i said "umm.. okay...they've ripped off French" now i realize that this is wrong, and that Talossan is very different from French in numerous ways. However, I believe that we should distance ourselves more by either using a different script, or inventing our own! I would put up some possibilities but unfortunately proboards doesn't support non-roman characters.

I suggest three possibilites

1. A new letter-based script, which someone would create a font for mac and windows so people could download it, and use it
2. A pictographic script like Chinese which someone would do the same for
3. Use both like Japanese (Kanji v. Katakana)
4. Invent an entirely different kind of script (like one based on syllables)

A fifth possibility could be that we use a modified berber-script, I think I sort of like this one the best


I shall post a link to this in the language forum.

[Xhorxh Asmour]

But remember that Talossan IS a Romance language and all Romance languages use the Roman or Latin alphabet.

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

may I point out that no Romance language uses a "ß" or "þ" or "ð"

[Hooligan]

Indeed not. (Although Talossan is of Romance origin, it has obviously been influenced by all the various cultures that the North African Berbers encountered on their mythical journey to Wisconsin or after they arrived, from German to Dutch to English to the Scandinavian languages.) We do have Latinate digraphs, of course, that can be used in place of those characters -- ss, tg, and th respectively.

Hooligan

[Hooligan]

One further note -- Talossan also adopted the ø from Scandinavian languages; although the upcoming Arestadâ will allow the one-remaining (very historically important) word that uses an ø (Støtteneu) to be written with an "o" rather than the "ø", this additional non-Latin character proves all the more that our language certainly was influenced by non-Romance languages, through encounters with persons hailing from anywhere from Germany to Norway to Ireland (witness the pronoun "ár", a borrowing from Irish, which long ago supplemented and supplanted the Romance "noastrâ" -- although the King wishes it hadn't; you see, His Majesty leads the "bring back noastrâ!" parade, but I don't attend that particular parade, myself...Erin go bragh!).

Hooligan

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

Okay, point taken, but why can't Talossa have a seperate script? We are quirky...We are Talossa! *Kicks Persian messenger person into a pit* It would make it more interesting, less french, and more Talossan!

[Hooligan]

A font that we Talossans create and could use for published writing in our language (or any other) would certainly be a cool addition to Talossanity. Of course, our language is our language, no matter the font, but an original Talossan-inspired computer font (TrueType or whatever) would indeed be cool. Personally, I have no idea how to create a new font (even if I could design new, cool-looking versions of the letters A through Z), but anyone with artistic talent should be encouraged to create a new font called "Talossan". Why not?

Any and every project that has Talossanity as its root, and which is inspired by our beloved culture, is certainly to be encouraged.

Hooligan

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

Well, you could always use a service like:
www.chank.com/custom.php

or one of those. I think it's worth looking into

I was also thinking not just a different alphabet, but maybe a special font, just for us. Though I think a different alphabet would be best

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

I was looking at some of these:
www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/foreign-language-fonts.htm

they look pretty good. We could use one of those as a standard for Talossan, kind of like Times New Roman is standard for English

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

alexandreu said:

I was looking at some of these:
www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/foreign-language-fonts.htm

they look pretty good. We could use one of those as a standard for Talossan, kind of like Times New Roman is standard for English

A font based on North African Latin inscriptions would be the obvious choice. The old Black Hand party had something like that in its logo.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

alexandreu said:

When I first began looking at Talossan...i said "umm.. okay...they've ripped off French" now i realize that this is wrong, and that Talossan is very different from French in numerous ways.

Your initial thought would have been fairly close to reality in the first couple years of Talossan. Some of the earliest samples of Talossan pretty much consist of English words with French and Spanish affixes tacked on. It'd be funny if someone created a "mock Talossan" language game, like Pig Latin.

A fifth possibility could be that we use a modified berber-script, I think I sort of like this one the best

I've thought of this idea before, and think it would be interesting -- creating rules for writing Talossan in Tifinagh (the ancient Berber script). After all, the Talossan word for script (as in writing system) is tifinaçh (soon to be respelled tifinagh). It shouldn't supplant the Latin alphabet for writing Talossan, though.


I shall post a link to this in the language forum.[/quote]

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

Yes! Cresti, you've hit the nail right on the head! Those are exactly my ideas! I think that we should have an *alternate* script, not one that would supplant the Latin, just an alternative. I wonder if we can find a Tifinagh font for the computer, if so, we could type in it (perhaps this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifinagh#Code_chart_for_the_Neo-Tifinagh_script).

Here's the alphabet in Tifanagh transliterated with my suggested Talossan Counterparts:

Consonants
- B
- Bh
- C/Ch
- Ç

etc.

*Note* These are based on the actual original alphabet sounds, for instance makes a "v" sound, so I put it as "Bh"

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

alexandreu said:

Yes! Cresti, you've hit the nail right on the head! Those are exactly my ideas! I think that we should have an *alternate* script, not one that would supplant the Latin, just an alternative. I wonder if we can find a Tifinagh font for the computer, if so, we could type in it (perhaps this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifinagh#Code_chart_for_the_Neo-Tifinagh_script).

It'd make sense to create a system for writing Talossan in Arabic script, too, since North Africa has been mostly Arab-speaking for centuries. We can use Mozarabic (an extinct Ibero-Romance language typically written in Arabic script) for inspiration.

As far as Tifinagh goes, rather than using Neo-Tifinagh I think it'd be nice to base our system on a more historic version of the script. Neo-Tifinagh has a lot of characters that were created just within the past few decades. The version of Tifinagh used by the Tuaregs might be good.

With both Arabic script and Tifinagh, the biggest problem we'll have is the fact that both systems traditionally left out vowels, and Talossan has lots of vowels. There's a system for representing vowels with diacritics in Arabic, and the same diacritics are sometimes used with Tifinagh. Neo-Tifinagh has more vowel characters, but some of those are unhistorical.

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

I'm with Cresti on this one, if only we could figure out how to download either of those fonts.

I have some similar fonts on my computer, I've got:
-Arabic
-Persian
-Pashto

All similar...but not the same...I"ll look for a mozarabic font...

[Dréu Gavárþic'h]

Also, it seems that Mozarabic was written with the current arabic alphabet, with a few extra constructed vowels...so this should be a lot easier than I thought.