Re: OT More pens

On Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 03:16  AM, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Dirk Elzinga :
>
>
>> I recall handwriting instruction in elementary school also being,
>> well,
>> uninspiring. The teacher didn't like teaching it (which was obvious to
>> us even then) and of course we didn't like having to do it. The script
>> which we were taught seemed so far removed from what we saw in print
>> or
>> how our teacher really wrote on the board, that it seemed pretty
>> pointless to try to learn it. That was my reaction, anyway.
>
> Strange. First, teachers who teach how to write in France *always*
> write on
> the blackboard with that same cursive handwriting. Second, I've never
> connected in my head writing with printing. It seems to me just natural
> that what you do with your hand should be different from what's
> printed on
> books. It's not the same thing after all.
*Shrug* I'm not condemning nor praising my teachers; that's how they
wrote. Of course, it's possible that I misremembered or that I'm
unfairly generalizing from one or two of my teachers. I was also a very
literal, concrete child. I would draw the sun and use green mixed with
white and yellow, because when I looked at the sun, those were the
colors I saw. When it came to writing, I expected everything to look
the same; else why call it writing?

>>  My
>> handwriting didn't turn out all that badly for it, though. Now many
>> teachers are using Denelian script, which has a cursive variant which
>> isn't too far removed from printing. It strikes me as being more
>> "European" in appearance; that is, it looks more like what I saw
>> people
>> using when I was in Germany and the Netherlands.
>
> You should look at my webpage, especially at the page "Ecriture et
> Phonologie" of my Azak. I scanned tables of the characters of the Azak
> script with their names in Roman script using my handwriting. It hasn't
> much evolved since I made this page. Please tell me if my handwriting
> looks
> "European" to you or not, so that I get an idea of what you mean :)) .
Yes, your handwriting looks something like what I remember, only you
have more loops (for instance, in the ascenders for 'd's).

> One thing is sure though, is that cursive is still common. I've been a
> corrector in the University of Delft, and 99% of the papers I've had to
> correct were written in cursive.
>
> Also, I find blockwriting difficult to read and tiring. Cursive *flows*
> better for my eyes.
What seems to happen now is that everyone develops their own "cursive"
style, rather than adhering to the forms learned in the early grades
(I'm using the word 'cursive' to mean "running", referring to the
connection of one letter to another; just about everyone does this to
some extent). For the most part, these "cursive" scripts are based on
printed letter forms.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie