Apple, Wednesday, 22 October 12025
Pomme, Primidi, 1 Brumaire CCXXXIV
2016-08-25 – Nikon D3300
haze, Wat Rong Khun, Chiang Rai, Thailand
Miley Cyrus – “See You Again” ↗
one of the older styles of writing systems is an abjad – in abjads, only the consonants are written down, vowels are inferred – later on, “impure abjads” would add in diacretics (Arabic, Hebrew) or repurpose specific consonants as also vowels (the “sometimes ‘y’” mnemonic) (Tifinagh)
I had been pondering writing English as an abjad as a way of saving space, but, because of the number of loan words, English spelling is already all over the place: “th qck brn fx” – if we resort to diacretics, we would need to use combining diacretics with consonants to indicate 5 to 6 vowels, or switch to phonetics and try to indicate 11 to 12 vowel sounds, as well as figuring out how to deal with 5 to 8 dipthongs (in which order do multiple diacretics get read?) – and if we repurpose consonants, then we don’t really end up saving any space – it would be less effort to switch to simplistic phonetic transcription
nouveau – nv – nouveau – n̆v̊ – nuvo
nouveau – nv – ngwvraw – nwvg – nuvo
the day after
the day before
the month before
the season before
the year before