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

On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 11:17 , J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 07:26:08 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
> wrote:
>
>> But why do we need both upper and lower case forms? Mainly just
>> Greek-derived alphabets that seem to feel the need. Arabic, Hebrew, the
>> many Indian scripts, Burmese, Thai and others seem to get along happily
>> without separate upper & lower case.
>
> 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) derive
> from the Greek alphabet, but it's not because of this derivation that they
> distinguish uppercase and lowercase (compare other Greek-derived alphabets
> such as the Coptic or the Gothic),
But Coptic & Gothic were derived before the development of the two case
system. Then Gothic died out and Coptic got cut off by a swathe of Arabic
and was left unaffected by this strange European development.

The lower case letters are derived from the medieval minuscule Greek &
Roman scripts; it seems that this was developed in Greek handwriting early
in the 9th cent CE and became known in Gaul at the time of the
Merovingians and gave rise later in the century to the Roman script
Carolingian minuscules. But both in Greek handwriting & Roman script the
older uncial letters were retained for headings, initials of paragraphs,
names etc. - hence the beginnings of our dual alphabets.

>  but rather because of the influence of modern typography.
If by 'modern' you mean the 16th century. The upper & lower case system
was there right from the start in printed texts in the Roman & Greek
alphabets.

In the case of the Cyrillic script, the difference is more modern. The
Cyrillic script was, in fact, derived from the old Greek uncial script,
and no minuscule script was developed. In the modern printed forms of the
Cyrillic script, the lower case forms, with very few exceptions, differ
from the upper case forms only in the matter of size. It seems that the
dual alphabet was developed in imitation of Greek & Roman script practice.

> To me, it seems strange that we use two alphabets at the same time
> (uppercase and lowercase).
I agree.
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On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 11:48 , Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On 22 Jan 2005, at 10.17 pm, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
[snip]
>> 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?
The old Xutsuri script (ecclesiastical script) did; but this script is
rarely used, at least for secular purposes. Georgian is now almost
exclusively written in the Mxedruli script ("soldiers' script") and that
does _not_ have upper & lower case forms.

[snip]
> As I understand it modern Greek hardly even uses the capital letters!
In the modern language, for the beginnings of sentences and for proper
nouns. It is customary to print ancient & Hellenistic Greek texts almost
entirely as lower case, except for proper nouns.
=============================================================

On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 02:45 , Muke Tever wrote:

> 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?
>
> Armenian, too, IIRC.
Yes, you recall correctly - Armenian does.

I suspect the dual scripts of Armenian and the now almost defunct Xutsuri
scripts were developed partly, at least, in imitation of Byzantine Greek
practice.
======================================================

Otto Jespersen in the preface to his 'Novial Lexike' wrote in 1930:
"On povud, e poves devud, skripte omnum per minuskles..., pro ke li regles
pri majuskles es plu o min arbitrari in omni lingues..."

"...we might, perhaps should, write everything with small letters, as the
rules for capitals are more or less arbitrary in all languages..."

"On pourrait, peut-être on devrait, tout écrire avec des minuscules...,
parce que les règles pour les majuscules sont plu ou moins arbitraire dans
toutes les langues..."

"...könnte man, und sollte man vielleicht, alles mit Kleinbuchstaben
schreiben, da die Regeln für Grossbuchstaben überall mehr oder weniger
gutdünkich sind..."

Yes, he wrote his preface in four languages!

He was talking about auxlangs, rather than conlangs generally (and AFAIK
no auxlang has actually done this in the 75 years since), but I think his
words are worth noting. Certainly, if we are going to use both upper and
lower case, the rules need to be stated clearly.

Another solution is to do exactly what R. Srikanth did with Lin: abolish
the distinction between upper & lower case by having an alphabet of 52
letters (go figure  :)

But I agree with Mach:
"To me, it seems strange that we use two alphabets at the same time
(uppercase and lowercase)"
and almost with Otto Jespersen, If only he had said:
"On devud skripte omnum per minuskules"

maybe i should do that   :)

Ray
=======================================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"