Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)

-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...>
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
Date: Friday, January 12, 2001 10:59 PM
Subject: Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)


>CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>> My hypothesis is that when
>>you're writing in a not-as-familiar alphabet you don't know *what* you can
>>get away with modifying while still being legible.  (I don't know how
>>anyone
>>associates cursive with print in English, frex; the letter-forms are in
>>some
>>cases pretty darn different, and I think you have to learn 'em
>>separately....)
>
>I think for me, the reason is, since whenever I draw, i repreoduce things
>fairly accurately. So, when writing a script, i reproduce it as if I were
>drawing it out. With my handwriting, it's something I see as utilitarian,
>and unless i'm specifically writing something like cursive, it gets
>scrawled and scribbled (when writing in Spanish, my writing is legible,
>especially with accents and tildas) . Even in Montreiano, the written
>results are far neater than English
<making a face at herself>  O fortunate person.  I can draw--I'm good at
somewhat stylized forms--but my sense of proportions is completely lousy.

>The Saalangals have a few different styles of their native script. One is
>a combination of curves and boxy shapes (the standard style for headlines,
>ads, and government documents), and is somewhat ornate in style. The
>"quick" script, is much more curved, not as decorative, and is used for
>day to day communication.
Headlines.  <wry g>  I know the Qenaren and Avren have the printing-press,
but darned if I know what fonts they've devised.

>The letter forms dont modify well for cursive, so a fully connected
>cursive script didnt develop (esepcially with all the diacritics for
>vowels. I also came up with what I call "Saalangal Tech" which is a kind
>of modernish looking form of the script (purely for my edification)
Must be neat.  :-)  I wonder how cursive evolved anyway...I've read a little
about calligraphy but they don't really go too deeply into how things like
these develop.

>Montreianos of course have your typical Latin cursive, as well as the
>other forms you find today in modern typology for the Latin script.
>However, calligraphers tend to prefer to write in the Gothic Rotunda
>style, and the style has also been adopted as the main calligraphic style
>on government documents.  Some Montreianos even go so far as to adopt the
>peculiar form of r, and s from Gothic Rotunda in their printed handwriting
>(often with flourishes on certain letters).
<G>  I used to look at pictures of older books in books--like maybe a page
from Newton's _Principia Mathematica_ and I swear it took the *longest* time
for me to figure out that people weren't writing "s" as "f", it was just a
*long* "s".  And then after that it took me even longer that the integral
sign was a *really* long "s"...

YHL