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

Yoon Ha Lee sikayal:

> I wonder if that's a common phenomenon.  My Korean handwriting isn't great,
> but it's generally considered far more legible than my broken half-cursive,
> half-print and half-scrawl Roman alphabet handwriting (though I am painfully
> conscientious about diacriticals after lots of half-points marked off on
> French quizzes).  And my mom's Roman alphabet handwriting, OTOH, is much
> neater and more "conventional" (like the forms they teach you when you're
> learning to write) than her Korean handwriting.  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....)
Yep, yep, and yep.  My Greek handwriting is much more meticulous than my
English handwriting (now that I'm learning Classical Greek--hooray!), and
I was told that my Hebrew handwriting is the same.  I never learned Hebrew
cursive, but the print letters I drew were always pretty neat.  And I
agree that it's because when drawing in an unfamiliar alphabet people are
more conscious of the letter-forms and so are more careful about forming
them exactly right.

WRT cursive...my normal handwriting is a scriptologist's nightmare of
mixed cursive and print forms and my own unique interpretive
letters.  Most people can read it without too much trouble, but it's
hardly standard by any means.  I remember having to learn cursive writing
separately, and some of the letters are *really* weird--especially the
capital "Q" and lower-case "r" and "s".

>
> The one area where my "handwriting" is neatest is, alas, in math and
> physics.  It sucks when you lose points because your lowercase mu got
> confused for a 4...<G>
Been there, done that . . .

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_