Legal Research

The Friday Fillip

By Simon Fodden

I’m the guy who, as a kid, used to make a list of unfamiliar words just to contemplate them in their strangeness, reluctant some times for months to puncture the mystery with a dictionary. There’s something profoundly interesting to me about written language in and of itself — as an object, rather than as a means to meaning. I enjoy the sight of it, bulked on a page, the shape of certain words, the way it can be made to come to a perfect halt at some right margins…

And then there’s this:

????? ??? ?? ?? ?? ??? Slaw ????, ??????? ?? ???? ????? ?? ?? ?????? ??? ???? ?????????? ?????? ???? ????? ???.

and this: ????????????(??) or this:

Beautiful, no? But what scripts are they?

We don’t live in a Roman alphabet world — never did — but thanks to the web that fact is clearer than ever to those of us in Western countries. Sure, we likely recognize ??????????????????????????????? and that, to me, most beautiful ???? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ?? ????? ? ????? ???? ?? ???? ???? ???? ????? ?????? ????? ?? ??????., but may not have a clue about even a country of origin if we encounter language in a script beyond Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and Cyrillic.

Yet there are dozens of writing systems in use in the world. I say “writing systems” because, thanks to Omniglot, I’ve learned to distinguish among abjads (Semitic scripts using no vowels), alphabets, syllabic alphabets (using symbols for consonant-vowel combinations), and syllabaries (such as Chinese). Should you ever need to figure out what kind of writing it is you’re looking at, Omniglot can help, displaying small samples of the various scripts in current use — and those that are no longer current. For me a look at the forty or so Asian syllabic alphabets is an exercise in forms of delight.

And should the exploration of the world’s writing systems ever pall, take a look at the amazing scripts that visitors to Omniglot have invented — dozens for English alone. The most amazing for me was “ColorHoney”, invented by a Korean (you can tell), using colored diamonds, such that “snowman” becomes:

I’ll leave you with this parting thought:

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 15, 2010 (boomark / email).