Re: writing system
From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, January 4, 2005, 15:12 |
Joerg wrote:
> Geoff wrote:
> > I actually don't think much of the Tengwar script. It always makes me
> > wonder what the dyslexia rate among elves is! All the letters look far too
> > similar for it to feel very comfortable.
>
> Yes, this is indeed a drawback of Tengwar. Most of the letters look all
> too similar. This is something not easy to avoid when designing featural
> alphabets. Most of my earlier designs for featural alphabets suffered
> from the same problem.
In my defense, I don't think the relative likelihood of causing dyslexia
is relevant when discussing a system's abstract beauty! :) I think I've
complained on this list before that no less than eight of the Georgian
letters can be construed as looking like the number _3_. Mkhedruli also has
no case distinctions, so the letters for /S/ and /u/ (distinguished only
by ascending or descending below the mid-line) look identical in headings!
Nonetheless, still a beautiful script.
=========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637