Re: Interesting Brain/Language Nugget of Info

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> Yes - a good point.  The way a language is printed conventionally is modern
> books is not a safe indication of the way it was actually written.  It is,
> e.g., conventional to print Egyptian hieroglyphics LTR - but the ancient
> Egyptians were not aware of that convention  :)
>
This, in fact, brings us back to conlangs! The most commons script used
to write Charyan languages is the Chancery script, which is conventionally
printed with the bar on top, left to right. Originally however, it is
written from top to bottom, from right to left, just like Mongolian
or hPhags-pa. Around the year 1700 the Charyans developed printing
(blocks, not movable type), and I've got an early printed booklet with
the text of a Broyan play on my shelves. Both the Denden Chancery and
the hPhags-pa fonts are on my website - I've planned for long to do
a mongolian font, but I've always lacked a good plate to make a scan of.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt