Re: writing system
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, January 2, 2005, 12:27 |
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#1 wrote:
> When I look arabic, chinese (or Japanese, for someone who don't know these
> it's the same),
Japanses actually uses three distinct nonalphabetic systems*: kanji
(Chinese characters), and katakana and hiragana (both syllabic).
These latter two are not used by non-Japanese at all, and since the
Communists reformed the characters, these have not been the same
as those in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.
*(Though I once saw a Japanese grammar of Ancient Greek, which was
a fascinating mixture of scripts, since it also included
Roman and Cyrillic comparanda.)
> Thai, cyrilic, mongolian(I like that one), it seems so
> beautiful even the latin alphabet seems beautiful when it's well written
IMHO, the most beautiful script is Tengwar; second thereto being only
Georgian mkhedruli. I don't know where Tolkien got his inspiration, but
there are eery resemblances in shape and sometimes in value to mkhedruli:
Sindarin <s> is almost identical to mkhedruli _sani_, and the whole feel
of the alphabet is similar.
=========================================================================
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
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