History: Katakana Orthography

Source of version: 1 (current)

''Also, if we had a katakana orthography (not like I expect that to be easy) we might could appeal to the anime crowd. Just a thought.'' -- anon, from ((Why Tengwar?))

''(Here a lamer from 24.17.25.93 showed off his vocabulary.)''

That is an awfully interesting idea. Might even be possible. How would consonant clusters be done, though? (Hell, how would any C not followed by V be done? And what do you do with the 'n' consonant symbol? Give it to n or m?) --((Jay Kominek|jay))

''Awfully fancyful people around here ;-) : Don't like Katakana as much as I'm fond of ((Hiragana)) (Firakana)!  - But speaking honestly, for what *rational* reason should a syllabic alphabet like this, tailored for a language with a very special phonemic system like Japanese, be adjusted for Lojban? - But yes, it would be very, very nice to have it. So I was playing around a bit with Fontographer and a Hiragana font to maybe get some idea... Yet, it's horrible a task:''
''E.g. we needed to modify characters for lb {c}, {l}, {f} and {x} - {l} maybe by adding a nigori to "r", {f} by using the "h", unless we don't take that for {x}. We'd have to invent some more diacritical marks beside "nigori" and "maru" (at least one for kind of "schwa" to indicate the syllable as being "vowelless" (i.e. being a consonant).''
''So, don't think it's impossible... (... for doing your Lojban poems in Hiragana calligraphy - let us fetch some ink, brush and paper...) -.aulun.''

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You can use the Japanese people's double-kana tricks for writing fa, fi, fe, fo, for instance.
''How does this work?''

Try fu plus a small vowel kana.

And as for Lojban {x}, I think the Japanese try to imitate this sound by putting a small tsu in front of a kana such as ha. So {xa} would be (small tsu) (ha).
History: Katakana Orthography

Source of version: 1 (current)

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