Ethiopic writing Re: intrinsic advantage of Latin alphabet over bopomofo (for Chinese)??

On Mar 5, 3:15 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Mar 4, 3:14 pm, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Mar 4, 11:47 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Mar 4, 5:53 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:
I do not know if much larger alphabets than the Latin one
have been successfully placed on typewriters.

As I am supposed to learn Amharic one of these days, I wonder how a
typewriter would handle fidal, i.e. the Amharic syllabary.

Olympia manufactured an Amharic typewriter; its keyboard layout is
included in the catalog reproduced in the back of Beeching's *Century
of the Typewriter*. Have you not noticed that there is a considerable
amount of regularity in the composition of the characters?

Of course there is. As I understand the idea, it is somewhere between
a pure syllabary and an Arabic-like system, where (short) vowels are
written (if at all) by adding diacritics. In the Amharic writing
system, there are no diacritics, but rather modifications of the basic
letter forms (like, adding a hook on the right side, or shortening a
branch on the left side).

Actually,
the whole thing - I mean fidal - looks terribly crude and unreadable
to me.

Haven't you learned your lesson _yet_ about broadcasting bigoted
statements here?

You are the only bigot here. I am familiar with several alphabets, and
they all have their shortcomings. Arabic alphabet is excellent for
Semitic languages, but it is hardly bigoted to say that a more vowel-
friendly writing system would suit better for, say, Iranian languages.

Funny, the Iranians have never felt that way.

AFAIK some Kurds do use the Latin alphabet for their language, which
is unmistakably Iranian. And there are Latinization schemes for Farsi,
too.

"Some Kurds." "There are schemes." Yes, that really proves your point
about how inadequate Arabic script is for Persian! (And Urdu.)

I am not trying to score points, as you usually are. I am only
pointing out a fact that might be significant.

"Prove a point" and "make a point" have nothing to do with "scoring a
point."

Even though the Avestan alphabet was available to them several
centuries before the Arabic script.

It certainly was,. but if I am not very much mistaken, Middle Persian
(Pahlavi) used a script that represented vowels at least as
inadequately as the Arabic alphabet.

Oh, don't even go there. I doubt you have the slightest idea how
Pahlavi represents the Iranian languages it was used for.

You might be correct, because my knowledge of Pahlavi is limited to
seeing the alphabet a couple of times in reference works. It is not a
very widely known script after all.

Read Skhaervo's account in WWS. It's not exactly transparent, but he
doesn't seem able to write for the non-specialist. But there really
isn't anyone else who can write on these subjects at all --
fortunately (I suppose), he seems never to turn down an invitation to
cotribute to a reference work.

Cyrillic alphabet is very good for Russian, but it is tiring to read.

Thanks to uninspired typographers.

Just for this once, I completely agree with you.

Georgian alphabet is otherwise great, but it does not distinguish
upper- from lower-case letters, which in my opinion reduces
readability.

Hardly any of the world's writing systems distinguish majuscules and
minuscules.

It might be my natural Latin bias, yes.

Javanese has an interesting alternative.

Javanese? If I am not very much mistaken, they had a special set of
characters for writing important proper names.

You're only somewhat mistaken. There is not a majuscule correspondent
for every letter; but using majuscules anywhere in a word is the
equivalent of English capitalization.

And probably the placing of the majuscule depends on calligraphic
considerations, i.e., how the word as an entity will look.

I would prefer to write Amharic in the Arabic alphabet.

Even Ethiopian Muslims don't use an Arabic-derived script.

Well, I guess I'd better learn the fidal then and stop complaining.
There are lots of calligraphy books for learning to write Arabic, but
I have failed to find any for Amharic. Probably calligraphy is not
their cup of tea?

There was no prohibition of artistic representation, so they didn't
have much incentive to fancy-up their writing. And with mss. unable to
survive terribly long in the climate, there are no mss. more than a
few hundred years old.

I see. However, I would appreciate an elementary guidebook to writing
Amharic, which would show in what order the lines should be drawn.

Monica Devens showed me on a napkin in 5 minutes one day. Start at the
top left. See WWS p. 575.

It looks more
elegant and is easier to read, and I think it would be no problem to
modify the Arabic alphabet for use in Amharic. But of course, for
saying that you will call me a crypto-Muslim fundamentalist bigot.

No, your bigotry is exposed by such words as "crude," "unreadable,"
and non-"elegant."

People have these things called aesthetic preferences, and I very much
prefer the Arabic alphabet - for aesthetic reasons. But then I have
always been fascinated by calligraphy.

"Crude" and "unreadable" are not aesthetic judgments.

Please do not try to intimidate me. You know I am not afraid of you
anymore.-

Oh, you mean you don't know the meanings of the words "crude" and
"unreadable"? Then you shouldn't be using them.

.

Relevant Pages