Talk:Logogram Project/Stage 1

Ran's musings while working through Chapter 1 of Greek: An Intensive Course

Ancient Greek phonology is actually surprising similar to Japanese. The vowel system, the long and short vowels, the pitch accent, all seems rather reminiscent of Japanese. Of course, the phonotactics aren't Japanese at all.

In any case, given the following claims made by Wikipedia about the Classical Period:

• All the plosives are still intact, including the aspirated ones
• The spiritus asper is pronounced, etc.
• The various vowel letters and digraphs actually reflect real phonemic differences
• etc.

It seems that the Japanese vowels click themselves into place (but not the consonants):

(Vowels)

a	あ	aa	ああ	ai	あい	au	あう	aai	ああい
e	え	ee	ええ	ei	えい	eu	えう	eei	ええい	eeu	ええう
i	い	ii	いい
o	お	oo	おお	oi	おい	ou	おう	ooi	おおい
u	う	uu	うう	ui	うい

(Consonants)

p	ぱぴぷぺぽ	b	ばびぶべぼ	ph	ぱは　ぴひ　ぷふ　ぺへ　ぽほ
t	たちつてと	d	だぢづでど	th	たは　ちひ　つふ　てへ　とほ
k	かきくけこ	g	がぎぐげご	kh	かは　きひ　くふ　けへ　こほ
m	まみむめも	n	なにぬねの
r	らりるれろ	l	らりるれろ？
s	さしすせそ	(z?)	ざじずぜぞ	zd	ずだ　ずぢ　ずづ　ずで　ずど
h	はひふへほ

Zeta-row --> use Japanese ざ row or ずだ digraph?

Or.... the "Ionic alphabet"?

p	はひふへほ	b	ばびぶべぼ	ph	ぱぴぷぺぽ
t	たちつてと	d	だぢづでど	th	たちつてと＋゜
k	かきくけこ	g	がぎぐげご	kh	かきくけこ＋゜
m	まみむめも	n	なにぬねの
r	らりるれろ＋゜	l	らりるれろ＋゛
s	さしすせそ	z	ざじずぜぞ
h	あいうえお＋゜

(Consonants not being followed by a vowel)

What to do with these?

p	ぷ	b	ぶ	ph	ぷふ
t	と	d	ど	th	とほ
k	く	g	ぐ	kh	くほ
m	む	n	ぬ	n /_C	ん？
r	る	l	る？	s	す

(Kana that are not being used)

や　ゆ　よ　わ　を

(Test - as can be seen, consonant clusters aren't being handled very well)

tékhnee	てくほねえ / 技ねえ	tékhnai	てくほない / 技ない
tékhnees	てくほねえす / 技ねえす	tekhnóon	てくほのおぬ / 技のおぬ
tékhneei	てくほねえい / 技ねえい	tékhnais	てくほないす / 技ないす
tékhneen	てくほねえぬ / 技ねえぬ	tékhnaas	てくほなあす / 技なあす

agoraá	あごらあ / 市らあ	agoraí	あごらい / 市らい
agoráas	あごらあす / 市らあす	agoróon	あごろおぬ / 市ろおぬ
agoráai	あごらあい / 市らあい	agoráis	あごらいす / 市らいす
agoraán	あごらあん / 市らあぬ	agoraás	あごらあす / 市らあす

ánthroopos/-e	あんとほろおぽす/-ぺ / 人ぽす/-ぺ	ánthroopoi	あんとほろおぽい / 人ぽい
anthroópou	あんとほろおぽう / 人ぽう	anthroópoon	あんとほろおぽおぬ / 人ぽおぬ
anthroópooi	あんとほろおぽおい / 人ぽおい	anthroópois	あんとほろおぽいす / 人ぽいす
ánthroopon	あんとほろおぽぬ / 人ぽぬ	anthroúpous	あんとほろうぽうす / 人ぽうす

érgon	えるごぬ / 仕事ごぬ	érga	えるが / 仕事が
érgou	えるごう / 仕事ごう	érgoon	えるごおぬ / 仕事ごおぬ
érgooi	えるごおい / 仕事ごおい	érgois	えるごいす / 仕事ごいす
érgon	えるごぬ / 仕事ごぬ	érga	えるが / 仕事が

Also.... the biggest question of all:

Do we use hiragana or katakana?

I'm inclined towards finding some excuse to keep both.

-- Ran 19:04, 13 February 2008 (PST)

I'm not sure if it's okay for me to just leap in like this, or even if the project is still active, but I have a number of observations and suggestions:

• How about using the -u katakana for final consonants and clusters? Thus ανθρωπος would come out as 「あんツ゜ろおほス」. Another option might be to adopt some hentaigana for this purpose.
• The 'Ionian alphabet' seems to make the most sense, but I'd be tempted to try to add ψ, ζ, ξ as extra modified versions (in addition to dakuten and handakuten) of the π-, τ- and κ-rows, respectively, since they palpably form a series, particularly in earlier forms of the language when ζ was still an affricate.
• If the Japanese script were adopted at the same time as the Phoenician one was adopted *here*, then the language would have been at a stage where digamma (capital Ϝ, minuscule ϝ, pronounced /w/) still existed, so that (for example) οἰνος ('wine') would have been ϝοινος (woinos). This phoneme had died out by the Classical period, and the letter with it, but it would certainly be an interesting complication to the system if the script retained an (unpronounced) distinction between わゐ？ゑを (with digamma) and あいうえお (without), so that (ϝ)οἰνος would be rendered をいのス rather than おいのス.

Josy 20:52, 18 May 2009 (UTC)