Re: OT: Handedness (was Re: Complex script editor wish list)

>>My right hand is much more coordinated than most
>>right-handed people's left hand is, but I am far from being ambidextrous.
>
>That's normal for left handed people, I've come to understand.
That's what I've also come to understand over the years.  Left-handed
people tend toward ambidexterity even when (like me) they aren't actually
amidexterous.

>>I truly believe that my daughter was born left-handed.  When she first
>>started reaching for things, it was invariably with her left
>>hand.  However, she started avidly sucking her left thumb
>[snip rest of interesting story]
>
>That's another way to switch handedness!
>The hero of Swedish author Frans G. Bengtsson's novel
>"Röde Orm" became left-handed because of rowing a left-
>side oar as a galley-slave!
That's an certainly an interesting way to end up left handed.  Usually,
it's left-handed people who end up right-handed, like my Danish grandfather
to whom my father's and my left-handedness can be traced.  He was born
left-handed, but they forced him to be right-handed when he went to
school.  Fortunately, that sort of practice has nearly stopped.  It's
generally not helpful for the person to change their natural handedness.  I
have a very good friend who believes that she was born left-handed, but her
family forced her into right-handedness.  Physically, she's a bit clumsy,
or was a a teenager, and I wonder if the two might not be related.  (OTOH,
some of the clumsiness might be attributable to having one foot that was a
shoe size and a half larger than the other one.)  Her handwriting is (or
was) simply atrocious (and I say that as someone who had poor handwriting
herself.)

I did read a story once about a class of kindergardeners or 1st graders who
had a left-handed teacher, and a more than average number of her students
were left-handed.  There may have been some unintentional influence there.

>>I can sympathize.  Most of the medications that I am on have tremor as a
>>side-effect.
>
>May I ask what you medicate for?
Well, let's see...migraine (I was having at least one migraine per day
before I went on Depakote three years ago.), Restless Leg Syndrome,
fibromyalgia, Tourette's Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder (which both
of my homeschooled children got :-( and they both show a few Tourettic
traits as well), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Bipolar II
(manic-depressive illness.)  I think that's got all of them except the
osteoarthritis (I'm only 31) and borderline anemia (which could be caused
by the Depakote.)  We don't actually need to treat the Tourette's, but, due
to the bipolar disorder, I need to take an atypical antipsychotic in order
to prevent frequent episodes of thought blocking and to improve executive
function in general; the antipsychotic is also probably reducing tics.  The
atypical and one of the other meds I'm on as an auxilliary mood-stabilizer
(Depakote is the main one) are supposed to have some effect on both the
Restless Leg Syndrome (which is good, because otherwise you take
anti-Parkensonian drugs to treat RLS, and those are nasty) and on the OCD
(which is also good, because the typical drug treatment for OCD is an SSRI
at high doses, and I cannot take any form of anti-depressant.  Every time I
have been given an antidepressant, I have either had a hypomanic episode or
become fully manic.  When I was 19 and placed on Welbutrin for depression,
-- the doctor never even stopped to consider that I might be
manic-depressive, we had to wait another 9 years for that revelation -- I
eventually began to experience hallucinations, only I didn't know they were
hallucinations at the time.  So no anti-depressants for me -- there's a
risk of inducing psychosis, and even if it doesn't go as far as a psychotic
state, I'll still become hypomanic within about a week, and possibly fully
manic if I keep taking the stuff.  I am very careful with what sort of
herbs I'll consume, for this reason and for fear of an interaction with all
of the prescription drugs I'm on.  I am very grateful to my slightly clumsy
friend whom I mentioned above for warning me not to drink Earl Gray
tea.  It's flavored with oil of bergamot, and she told me that bergamot has
antidepressant properties.  It's good that she told me, because I like Earl
Gray tea, but, of course, it's not worth the risk.)  Well, that information
dump was possibly more than you wanted to know -- and probably more than I
ought to have said in a public forum, but I certainly didn't ask to be born
bipolar, or any of the rest of it, any more than you wanted to be born with
cerebral palsy.  It's not exactly our fault.

>>  and
>>I do have a slight tremor at all times.  I am not at all certain that I
>>will have much success in developing native scripts for my conlangs (should
>>I chose to do that) because of my general lack of precise cordination when
>>it comes to handwriting.  I am more likely to come out with a sloppy mess
>>than a useable font.
My poor handwriting (and the difficulties that my children have with
handwriting) are almost certainly attributable to the ADD/ADHD.  (Both of
my children are hyperactive to varying degrees; I am not.)  For some
reason, people with AD(H)D more often than not have poor handwriting.  No
one knows why.

>You can always use Metafont, though that requires
>knowing some algebra and learning to use TeX.
I can brush up on my algebra.  (I'll have to eventually, in any case,
because we homeschool.)  My husband can probably help me learn to use
TeX.  (He's got two degrees in Computer Science; he's got to be good for
something ;-)  )  I had been thinking that there were probably computer
tools available that could help draw the letters.

>FWIW my problem is rather with deciding what I
>want the shapes to look like!
I've got the same problem as well.  I do have an idea for a syllabary for
the one of my languages that has a syllable structure simple enouh to make
a syllabary an efficient form of writing, and I have a general idea what
the printed text is going to look like, but trying to come up with actual
letter shapes is something I haven't really put any effort into yet because
I can't sense yet what the parts are supposed to look like.  (Of course,
the idea for this syllabary is only a week or two old at the most, so I
suppose that that may be excused.)

Here is what I am hoping to do with the syllabary, if I ever get around to
it.  (Which I may or may not, since this is the least important of my three
languages.)  The language has a phonological inventory consisting of 10
consonant phonemes and 7 vowel phonemes.  Syllables may not have codas, and
only certain types of two-letter consonant clusters are allowed in the
onset.  These are obstruent + liquid and obstruent + glide.  (And I am not
entirely certain of the obstruent + glide clusters.  I may decide to force
the high vowels to remain vowels /C_V.  We'll have to wait and see.)  In
any case, what I want to do is to make the syllabary semi-alphabetic in
nature.  Each of the syllables will be a complex ligature, integrated
vertically, of the signs for the composite sounds.  Thus there will be a
character for /i/, which can appear alone as its own syllable or used to
spell a geminate vowel or a glide.  Then there will be a sign for /t/,
which never appears alone, but is recognizable as the glyph for /t/ because
it appears in all syllables containing /t/.  A ligature of these two signs
will be the symbol for the syllable /ti/.  There is only one liquid in the
language.  In order to form the sign for the syllable /tri/, a liquid
diacritic will be joined to the top of the /ti/ symbol.  (Glide clusters,
if they exist, will work similarly to the liquid clusters.)  This is a tone
language, and so there will be a high
tone diacritic added to the symbol for a syllable when it has a high tone
and left off if it has a low tone.

I suppose one thing that will make this project easier is that I am working
with a very limited number of phonemes, and am breaking it down so that I
am basically making each syllable a ligature of 2-4 individual componants.

>>I know that I have left-handed calligraphy nibs
>>and that they are cut on a slant.  I didn't realize that the right-handed
>>nibs had no slant.
>
>Oh I see.  IME writng with a straight nib on a turned paper
>is much easier than using a slanted nib.  Perhaps you
>should try it.
If I ever decide again to try to learn calligraphy, I think I shall do it
that way.  I've never liked trying to not drag my hand over wet
ink.  Writing sideways would be much better.  I suppose I'll have to decide
whether this syllabary is written with a straight nib or a pointed one, or
both.  It will make a great difference in the look of the writing.  It
turns out to be well-nigh impossible to write Church Slavonic with a pencil
or a modern pen by hand because the printed fonts in use today were all
designed with the traditional look that comes from an old-fashioned pen.  I
remember a few years back, that I was going to try to get ahold of some
calligraphy markers for my husband so that he could write out things by
hand in Slavonic without the resulting letters looking silly.

Isidora

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