* Jungshik Shin
|
| It seems like a single script is classified as belonging to only one
| category and only one type on your site. I'd lift that restriction.
The restriction is one of my own making, but no extra work is needed
to lift it, if I can find good reason to do so.
| For instance, Korean Hangul is not only featural but also alphabetic
| and alphasyllabaric.
How can this be? If a script uses diacritics out of temporal order to
indicate vowels it can't be an alphabet, and, similarly, if it does
not, how can it be an alphasyllabary?
I'm not convinced that you are wrong, but I'm not convinced that you
are right, either. Could you elaborate?
| Moreover, it's very likely that the invention of Hangul was
| influenced by Indic scripts and Mongolian 'Phags pa script although
| Chinese influence is also obvious in that a syllable is put into a
| square block. Given that, putting it into Sinitic alone may not be
| such a good idea.
I agree that this classification is kind of dubious.
I feel that Hangul does not belong among the Brahmic scripts, since
that category is very firm. It only contains scripts directly or
indirectly derived from Brahmi (except for Kharoshthi, which I think
clearly belongs there).
I've classified 'Phags pa as Indic, and although Hangul is clearly
related I feel the difference between the two scripts is so great that
it would be wrong to say that Hangul is derived from 'Phags pa.
Of course, given that Hangul is not derived from Han either it may be
that it does not belong in a category called "Sinitc scripts". I've
defined this category as
"The sinitic scripts are the scripts derived from the Chinese
scripts, as well as a number of other scripts designed to resemble
it graphically, or to be used together with it for various purposes."
Hangul is clearly siniform, and so matching this definition. The
question is whether it might not be better to make a separate
classification system by graphical appearance, with categories like:
Siniform
Runiform
Cuneiform
Hieroglyphic (may be difficult to define)
Alphabetic (meaning scripts with clearly disjoint characters)
and maybe some more.
To me the alternatives seem to be:
a) Include Hangul in the Sinitic category, and make that category a
bit too wide
b) Leave Hangul with no category and firm up the definition (Yi,
Nushu, and Kitan small script would then also have to be taken
out)
I haven't made up my mind on this yet, so input is welcome.
| The same is true of all scripts currently in 'artificial'. As
| already pointed out by others, they can be also put into alphabetic,
| featural and so forth depending on their characteristics.
They are already classified by type, as this page should show quite
clearly: <URL: http://www.ontopia.net/i18n/category.jsp?id=2425 >
The table on that page shows the classification by type (see below).
If you look at the page about the types you'll find these scripts
listed under each type there as well.
Cirth Alphabet
Deseret Alphabet
Geyinzi Alphabet
Jindai Moji Syllabary
Shavian Alphabet
Tengwar Abugida
Utopian Alphabet
--Lars M.
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