Letters | Unicode | Name | IPA | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ა | U+10D0 | an | /a/ | ||
ბ | U+10D1 | ban | /b/ | ||
გ | U+10D2 | gan | /ɡ/ | ||
დ | U+10D3 | don | /d/ | ||
ე | U+10D4 | en | /ɛ/ | ||
ვ | U+10D5 | vin | /v/ | ||
ზ | U+10D6 | zen | /z/ | ||
თ | U+10D7 | tan | /t̪ʰ/ | ||
ი | U+10D8 | in | /ɪ/ | ||
კ | U+10D9 | k’an | /kʼ/ | ||
ლ | U+10DA | las | /l/ | ||
მ | U+10DB | man | /m/ | ||
ნ | U+10DC | nar | /n/ | ||
ო | U+10DD | on | /ɔ/ | ||
პ | U+10DE | par | /pʼ/ | ||
ჟ | U+10DF | žan | /ʒ/ | ||
რ | U+10E0 | rae | /r/ | ||
ს | U+10E1 | san | /s/ | ||
ტ | U+10E2 | t’ar | /t̪ʼ/ | ||
უ | U+10E3 | un | /ʊ/ | ||
ფ | U+10E4 | par | /pʰ/ | ||
ქ | U+10E5 | kan | /kʰ/ | ||
ღ | U+10E6 | ɣan | /ɣ/ | ||
ყ | U+10E7 | q’ar | /qʼ/ | ||
შ | U+10E8 | šin | /ʃ/ | ||
ჩ | U+10E9 | čin | /ʧ/ | ||
ც | U+10EA | can | /ʦʰ/ | ||
ძ | U+10EB | ʒil | /ʣ/ | ||
წ | U+10EC | c’il | /ʦʼ/ | ||
ჭ | U+10ED | č’ar | /ʧʼ/ | ||
ხ | U+10EE | xan | /x/ | ||
ჯ | U+10EF | ǯan | /ʤ/ | ||
ჰ | U+10F0 | hae | /h/ |
The Georgian alphabet has almost enough parallel sounds to cover all the arabic phonemes:
ا ა
ب ბ
ت თ
ث ტ
ج ჯ
ح ჰ
خ ხ
د დ
ذ ძ
ر რ
ز ზ
س ს
ش შ
ص ს
ض დ
ط თ
ظ მ
ع
غ ღ
ف კ
ق ყ
ك ქ
ل ლ
م მ
ن ნ
و უ
ي ი
as you can see I wasn't quite sure what to do about the 'ayn and the ha, but beyond that was a deeper issue of historical Arabic-Georgian interaction. While most people focus on the translation movement from Greek to Arabic in the 9-12 centuries due to the recent attention by Dimitri Gutas and the like, at roughly the same time Arabic Christian thought was being preserved by Georgian monks:
...from the modern scholarly point of view, one of the most important contributions of Georgian monks in the Judean desert monasteries, particularly in the early Islamic period, was their activity as translators. Numerous texts, originally written in Greek and Arabic, have survived into modern times only because they have been preserved in Georgian translations.
(from Griffith, 1997)
So, that might be one reason why Georgian-Arabic wouldn't be such a great combination for a tough to crack language code, but I imagine most of those Arabic-reading Georgian monks are dead now. Referring to the Linguistic Mystic's manual on cryptorthography I am tempted to throw a little Cyrillic in there, but I think it is too commonly known, and again there are a lot of Arabic sounds that aren't accounted for.
Short of stooping to "extinct" languages like Nubian, or recently invented scripts for languages that have almost never been written, like Zaghawa, I am not out of brilliant ideas. There must be some efficient way of finding the 2 most widely spoken languages with the least number of common speakers... any guesses?
1 comment:
all u need is estimated numbers of speakers of language combinations - which is nigh-on impossible to even guess at :)
Chinese and Arabic spring to mind
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