Lexitechnia

Following my post in 2009 on describing writing systems, I’ve started working on a description of Ibran’s orthography:

Ibran has a long written history, leading back to Old Ibran, which is first attested in the 10th century. Though the standard language did not vary among Ibran speakers, the orthography was highly variable; over the centuries, writing systems heavily influenced by neighboring languages such as French and Dutch are found.

It is not until 1784, with the publication of Noé Tesstuor’s grammar of Ibran, that a standard orthography came into widespread use; the book was influential both in New Ibria and in Ibria itself. Tesstuor’s orthography took as its basis those spellings used in the Bible that was being printed in New Royce at the time, and which was itself very popular; from this base, he removed several archaisms characteristic of older Ibran that he deemed to have no relevance in the modern language.

Now, a few issues to work out with this already… first off, Noé Tesstuor is obviously a ‘guest star syndrome‘ version of Noah Webster,  and I’m not entirely sure I want to do that.

Secondly, I assert that some archaisms were removed, but I’ll need to check if there are any examples of such things  I can attribute to this, or if I’ll have to invent something.

And thirdly, I think I’ve vacillated several times in the opening phrase, as to whether ‘Ibran has a long written history’ or not.  I’m not even entirely sure the claim makes sense—how long does it take to ‘be placed among the perfect and the ancient’ as opposed to ‘the cheap and the modern’, as I have a habit of mentioning Horace said?   I mean, you may think a thousand years is a long time, but that’s just peanuts compared to classical languages like Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek…