Posted on 03/01/2011 11:38:30 AM PST by Zionist Conspirator
This thread was suggested by Dangus' posting of the beautiful Georgian script on another thread.
Are there any linguists here? Please post examples of some of your favorite alphabets/fonts!
I can read it. It starts off
Dear Penthouse Forum,
I'd never thought something like this would happen to me, but..."
They did that so their inkjets wouldn’t run out as often.
Um . . . which one?
In some languages..one reads left to right....that looks like right to left. (a.k.a. backwards to some European languages)
As I read Biblical Hebrew, I am well aware of that fact. But you didn't tell me which language you were asking about.
Never mind.. I suppose it is left to right. (I only know English, German and a little Polish.)
Sorry for the hassle.
You still haven't told me which language you're asking about.
The only ones I'm sure of are Aramaic (right to left) and Armenian (left to right). I have no idea about the others.
Myanmar (Burmese):ဟီလီယမ်တွင် တုနှိုင်းမဲ့သော ဂုဏ်သတ္တိများ ရှိပါသည်။ ဥပမာအားဖြင့် ရေဆူမှတ်နိမ့်ခြင်း၊ သိပ်သည်းဆ နိမ့်ခြင်း၊ ပျော်ဝင်နိုင်စွမ်း နိမ့်ခြင်း၊
Sinhala (the Indic majority language of Sri Lanka): විකිපීඩියාවේ සත්කාරකයා වන්නේ, අනෙකුත් ව්යාපෘති රැසකම සත්කාරකයාද වන්නාවූ, ලාභ-නොඋපයන සංවිධානයක් වන
Malayalam (the Dravidian language of Kerala state in India, home of the St. Thomas chr*stians): ഉപരിതലത്തിന്റെ ഇരുപത് ശതമാനമാണ്. വടക്കേയറ്റം ആർട്ടിക് സമുദ്രവും, കിഴക്കുഭാഗത്ത് യൂറോപ്പ്, ആഫ്രിക്ക
Examples from the Wikipedia pages in each language.
Correction: I am also sure that languages that use the Arabic alphabet are read from right to left.
The Malayalam is amazing to me.
The main Dravidian languages (Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam) are spoken in southern India, though there are a few isolated areas in northern India and even Pakistan where some are spoken as well.
I’m sorry to bother you again, but I wish you would consider commenting to this thread. It was inspired by your posting of Georgian script on that other thread.
One of the funniest symbols in that written language is the symbol for "disharmony".
I've been told that the symbol for "harmony" resembles a house.
The symbol for "discord" is a symbol the resembles a house, with a symbol of a woman in it.
I thought the thread was very cool, and there actually were a few comments I wanted to make, but i have the flu and can’t think of what they were. :^)
Looks like something they used in Lord of the Rings.
It's interesting the way that choice of media affects a language's text. Did you ever think of this? Writing in script minimizes the number of times you put a pen down on the paper; when writing with a quill or fountain pen, this means fewer opportunities to leave a smudge-causing ink droplet at the head of a letter. Not an issue anymore, so gothic letters have replaced script even when we handwrite.
The early days of computing had something to do with it, too, but really, how hard would it be to design a computer font that intuitively used the correct links between letters? (As you see below, some computer programs do it.) It could be standardized into HTML with no problem, but there's no demand anymore...no-one uses script, even for handwriting. They don't even teach it in class anymore.
Some day soon, will we have a generation that cannot make sense out of these characters? 
It's interesting the way that choice of media affects a language's text. Did you ever think of this? Writing in script minimizes the number of times you put a pen down on the paper; when writing with a quill or fountain pen, this means fewer opportunities to leave a smudge-causing ink droplet at the head of a letter. Not an issue anymore, so gothic letters have replaced script even when we handwrite.
The early days of computing had something to do with it, too, but really, how hard would it be to design a computer font that intuitively used the correct links between letters? (As you see below, some computer programs do it.) It could be standardized into HTML with no problem, but there's no demand anymore...no-one uses script, even for handwriting. They don't even teach it in class anymore.
Some day soon, will we have a generation that cannot make sense out of these characters?
Roman letters were designed with "serifs," to make the endpoints of the letters easy to see when carved into stone:
But then, 2000 years later, they also looked good for monospace fonts, creating more evenly spaced characters than gothic, for the old days when computers reserved a certain amount of screen memory for each character. "Courier" mixes serifs when to bulk up certain letters' size, and leaves them off on other parts of letters.
Of course, Hebrew letters are for pen calligraphy, using serifs for smooth pen strokes (or just because they look so cool?):
And yes, I do love Hebrew writing.
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