Re: Latin mxedruli, or do we really need capital and small letters?

On Wednesday, May 26, 2004, at 09:34 PM, Philippe Caquant wrote:

> I believe Arabic has 4 forms for some letters: word
> initial, inside of the word, end of the word, and
> isolated letter.
These are just positional variants, which is likely to occur in a script
which is essentially cursive.

> In Greek, you have two forms for minuscule beta
> (beginning or inside of the word),
_Not_ in Greek texts printed in the anglophone world, you don't. Nor AFAIK
do the Greeks themselves do this.

> and two for
> minuscule sigma (inside or end of the word); plus the
> capital forms.
_Positional_ variant - done also in German Fraktur.

At one time Latin alphabets had two forms for lower case 's', one which
looked remarkably like lower case 'f', used initially an within words, and
's' only at the end. I believe this system did not give way to our modern
system in Britain till the 19th century.

On the other hand, I have seen Greek texts printed with just a single form

> And let's not forget bold, italics and underlined in
> modern fonts (plus some more possibilities).
>
> (NB. It should be "ne se rÈveilleraient plus")
>
> --- Carsten Becker <post@...> wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> From: "Paul Bennett" <paul-bennett@NC.RR.COM
>> <mailto:paul-bennett@...>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 3:29 AM
>> Subject: Re: Latin mxedruli, or do we really need
>> capital and small
>> letters?
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, 25 May 2004 19:55:59 -0400, Javier BF
>> <uaxuctum@YAHOO.ES
>> <mailto:uaxuctum@...>>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> [Danny Wier]
>>>>
>>>>>> 1) If your conlangs are written in two-case
>>>>>> alphabets/abjads/syllabries, what are the
>> rules?
>>>>
>>>> It just occurred to me: Could a case be made
>> for a higher-
>>>> than-two-case system, say, a three-case system
>> with uppercase,
>>>> lowercase and 'middlecase'?  Come to think of
>> it, in a way
>>>> that's what we actually have already...
>> counting small caps!
>>>> Any idea for a four-case system?
>>>
>>> I have an "intermediate" stage in Thagojian,
>> whereby "important" nouns
>>> (usually historical personal and place names) are
>> written in the
>>> cuneiform-derived logo-syllabary (including the
>> use of the character
>>> derived from dingir (which just happens to look
>> like a crucifix)
>> before
>>> holy names), whereas the rest of a text would be
>> written in the
>> alphabetic
>>> script. The alphabetic script is uncial, though,
>> so I don't know
>> exactly
>>> where it stands in your number-of-cases
>> classification. Maybe this is
>> more
>>> readily compared to the situation in Japanese
>> than it is to questions
>> of
>>> case?
>>
>> I just wanted to add that Javanese script (see
>> omniglot.com) also
>> behaves similar: There are the Aksara consonants
>> (the normal ones), the
>> Pasangan consonants for C+C clusters, the Aksara
>> murda consonants for
>> the initials of names and the subscript Aksara murda
>> consonants for C+C
>> name initials. And there's the punctuation (looks
>> really complicated...)
>> and of course there are the vowels.
>>
>> -- Carsten
>>
>> =========================
>>
>> Class test: Si on pouvait apprendre le franÁais en
>> dormant, ...
>> I wrote:    ... des gÈnÈrations d'ÈlËves ne se
>> revailleraient plus.
>>
>> My website:   http://www.beckerscarsten.de/
>> My portfolio:
> http://gitarrenklampfer.deviantart.com/gallery/
>
>
> =====
> Philippe Caquant
>
> "High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)
>
>
> 	
> 		
> __________________________________
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>
Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
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