Hangraphy
- This is a project anyone can contribute to. Discuss changes on the talk page.
Hangraphy (maybe 漢抓?) is a system for representing Indo-European roots with Han characters (漢字, hanzi). After having done so, we can add a kind of okurigana for inflections and such and we have a readymade scheme to represent all Indo-European languages. Oversimplificated? You betcha.
For an example, we can take the numbers, which are pretty basic.
| 1 | 一 | *oi-[no-] | en: one, ru: один, la: unus, etc. |
| 2 | 二 | *dwo- | en: two, es: dos, grc: δύο, ... |
| 3 | 三 | *tri- | en: three, fr: trois, de: drei ... |
| 4 | 四 | *kʷetwor- | en: four, fr: quatre |
| 5 | 五 | *penkʷe | en: five, fr: cinq |
| 6 | 六 | *(s)(w)eḱs | en: six, fr: six |
| 7 | 七 | *septem | en: seven |
| 8 | 八 | *oḱtō | en: eight |
| 9 | 九 | *newn | en: nine |
| 10 | 十 | *deḱm | en: ten |
Since words get borrowed about so much, some diverse words in a language may be spelled with the same zi, e.g. 一 goes in English words derived from "one", such as "alone" or "only", but it also goes in words of Latin origin such as "unique" or "union".
Of course some of these words inflect, so the Latin word for "one", for example, won't just be 一, but perhaps something like 一us, 一a, 一um.
Characters
I think a better approach would be to assign roots to each 字 first, and then flesh out the individual languages, rather than the other way around. The old stuff is still here, but commented out. --Vlad 02:40, 8 Nov 2004 (PST)
- These assignments are not final - feel free to change if a better root fits.
| zi | root, meaning | English | Latin | Greek | Sanskrit | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 一 | *oi-no-, one, unique | one, an, a | unus, una, unum | |||
| 二 | *dwo-, two | two | duo, duae | |||
| 三 | *trei-, three | three | tres, tria | |||
| 四 | *kʷetwer-, four | four | quattuor | |||
| 五 | *penkʷe, five | five | quinque | |||
| 六 | *s(w)eks, six | six | sex | |||
| 七 | *septm̥, seven | seven | septem | |||
| 八 | *oktō(u), eight | eight | octo | |||
| 九 | *newn̥, nine | nine | novem | |||
| 十 | *dekm̥, ten | ten | decem | |||
| 百 | *km̥-tom, hundred | hund[red] | centum | *Is this unfair to the langs who form their hundred another way? Are there any? | ||
| 男 | *wī-ro-, man | were[wolf] | vir | |||
| 女 | *gʷen-, woman | queen; quean | ||||
| 人 | *man-¹, man | man | ||||
| 土 | *dhghem-, earth | OE guma | humus; homo | मनुः (manuḥ) |
