Re: uppercase/lowercase (was: Of Haa/hhet & other matters)

From:    Muke Tever <hotblack@...>
> > Tristan McLeay <conlang@...> wrote:
> > > The scripts that have uppercase and lowercase (as far as I know it's
> > > only the Roman alphabet, the Greek alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet)
> >
> > Georgian, I think, does. Or maybe it's only did?
and Steven Williams wrote:

> > The Georgian alphabet has what could be called capital
> > and lowercase letters, though the capital letters are
> > only used for headlines and titles.
But that's not really how they function.   They're basically the
same letters, but they're all written equidistant from the midline.
Since a number of letters, e.g. those /S/ and /u/, are distinguished only
by whether they have ascenders or descenders, this can sometimes nearly
obliterate phonemic distinctions.  A real uppercase must be clearly
distinguished somehow in the actual formation of the letter, not just
its relative position in the line.

As for real upper case: the great Georgian linguist Ak'ak'i Shanidze
once tried to reintroduce asomtavruli, the Old Georgian script, into modern
use, but it never caught on, except in his own works and in works
dedicated to him.

> Armenian, too, IIRC.
This is true.  Not knowing any Armenian myself, I find it completely
mysterious, and wonder how people read it.

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