From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Nov 05 2005 - 07:23:46 CST
From: suzanne mccarthy
> I have continued to feel uncertain about my answer 'l'ecriture
> syllabique'. It seemed to me that
> it should be simply 'le syllabique' in French. (Grammatical sensitivities
> aside)
Yes and we also say "le latin", but it does not designate the script, but is
a substantivation of an adjective to express in short the implied but
missing noun "langue" or "écriture" or "style". This is only correct in
contexts where the missing word can be correctly infered.
Well you may say as well "le cyrillique", this is possible but ambiguous as
well.
So don't say "le syllabique", as it will be ambiguous as well!
> I consulted these two trilingual online dictionaries and also emailed an
> author of
> the East Cree project. She responded 'le syllabique' as do these two
> dictionaries.
>
> http://www.livingdictionary.com/index.jsp
> http://www.collectionscanada.ca/naskapi/r24-102-e.php
> http://www.collectionscanada.ca/naskapi/r24-119-f.php?uid=1729&uidc=ID&queryString=kwq%3Dsyllabique%26kwf%3DTRUE%26maxRslts%3D500
Beware of online dictionnaries (notably translation disctionnaries), most of
them are full of errors are they are not completely reviewed by linguists,
and contain many entries which are approximative translations from other
languages by people that only know well a source language and poorly the
target language, and so these dictionnaries do not reflect the actual use of
the target language.
> Syllabary/syllabaire as such are not found in these dictionaries.
These dictionnaries are then clearly incomplete. The french term
"syllabaire" (or "syllabary" in English") is well defined and widely used in
French (or English) as a regular noun since centuries. It unambiguously
defines a subset of characters needed to write and spell one or more
languages, and the system by which they can be combined to note words,
phrases or sentences.
Don't assert your discovery is a proof. These sources are certainly wrong.
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