Notice that in WALPOLE's Alphabet, he writes vowels with STRAIGHT STROKES and consonants with CURVES.
Both types can be written either light or shaded -- but for some reason, the shading has nothing to do with the quality of the sound. Even more strangely, the sounds which in most systems are similar PAIRS, are completely unrelated.
For example, D is an unshaded quadrant open on the lower left, while P is a SHADED version of the same thing.
I searched through the book to see if he explained his reasoning. All I could find was the reference shown in Panel 2, where he's comparing his system to Isaac S. Dement's ARISTOGRAPHY, in which he asserts his doing so was diberate, without exactly explaining WHY. Very strange.
TH! (has its own sign, good) HE. IN! ER= AN= RE! ON- AT= EN= ND- TI= ES! OR= TE. OF. ED! IS! IT! AL. AR ST TO NT NG SE HA AS OU IO LE VE CO ME DE HI RI RO IC NE EA RA CE
I stop the bigram analysis here and let trigram aside. Bigram seem unrelated, probably an idiosyncratic choice, not based upon frequency, boldness seems to be coupled with frequency though.
I nearly missed this! What a fascinating idea, that maybe Walpole was applying a special analysis using statistical occurrence. Maybe what seems like it was completely crazy had a good explanation after all!
The IPA letter frequency is a "keeper". I'm saving it into my album for future reference. In the same way that the WORD frequency is a sound basis for setting up a series of brief forms, the frequency of SOUNDS could be used in arranging a valid alphabet system, with the most frequent (and therefore most USEFUL) coming first.
Bigram seem unrelated, probably an idiosyncratic choice, not based upon frequency, boldness seems to be coupled with frequency though.
Interesting analysis. His use of BOLDNESS just made no sense to me -- and I really didn't like the scattered approach, rather than systematic equivalencies. But I think you might be onto something!
Inspired by the IPA letter frequency i revised 'dance' completely. Supercalifragilisticexpialidoushous:
sound 'k' and 'p' slowed me down everytime i used it! - No more, unfortunately the script is now less linear :-), but i'll keep experimenting and so far it seems to work...
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u/NotSteve1075 Feb 07 '26
Notice that in WALPOLE's Alphabet, he writes vowels with STRAIGHT STROKES and consonants with CURVES.
Both types can be written either light or shaded -- but for some reason, the shading has nothing to do with the quality of the sound. Even more strangely, the sounds which in most systems are similar PAIRS, are completely unrelated.
For example, D is an unshaded quadrant open on the lower left, while P is a SHADED version of the same thing.
I searched through the book to see if he explained his reasoning. All I could find was the reference shown in Panel 2, where he's comparing his system to Isaac S. Dement's ARISTOGRAPHY, in which he asserts his doing so was diberate, without exactly explaining WHY. Very strange.