(This bounced from the list a day or two ago. Let's have another go. -- MAM) On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Philip Hart wrote: #> #If we're operating under the assumption that SKZB is translating texts, #> #it's not clear to me that any sort of transliteration is possible. Do the #> #Dragaerans even use the Latin alphabet? And what about the Welsh problem? #> #> No problem. He doesn't have to be transLITERating, just tranSCRIBing. #> Where do you get the conventions for writing down a name in a language #> that has no writing system of its own? Well, you might draw on... # #Serioli. Or Jenoine, for that matter. Actually isn't sorcery done in #part in Serioli symbols? I seem to recall something along those lines, #perhaps involving Tazendra. # #Anyway, for all we know the Eastern settlers might have written in Chinese #or Japanese characters, and anyway I assert that anything could have #happened between the last literate pre-Dragaeran and Kieron - look what #happened to Latin in just a few years of continuous literacy. It seems that Dragaeran "symbols" code syllables, morphemes, or entire words, like Chinese characters (either in Chinese writing or as used in Japanese writing, where they are called "kanji") -- rather than individual sounds, as letters of an alphabet do (although English is notoriously irregular in this regard). There's an exchange in LOCB, I don't remember where, on just this subject, w.r.t. the contrast between Eastern and Dragaeran writing. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel -- Mark A. Mandel http://cracksandshards.com a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website