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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