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Evan Kirshenbaum
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John Flynn
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 4:43 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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the Omrud wrote:
| Quote: | Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> spake thusly:
A friend sent me a pointer to this animated history of the alphabet:
http://janpeters.net/pics/stuff/alphabet.gif
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
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Icelandic.
--
johnF
"Everything that is specifically human about our mode of awareness is a
product of our long-standing symbiosis with culture."
-- _A Mind So Rare_, Merlin Donald |
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Richard Ulrich
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 5:52 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:43:32 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
Was it the Robot series? In that distant future, the letter
"F" will be written in reverse, as some character noted.
I see that half the letters that weren't symmetric 2800 years
ago have already reversed themselves once -- B, E, and K,
in addition to F.
Does anyone speculate why?
--
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 6:09 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> spake thusly:
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
--
David
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Default User
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 6:47 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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Richard Ulrich wrote:
| Quote: | On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:43:32 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
A friend sent me a pointer to this animated history of the alphabet:
http://janpeters.net/pics/stuff/alphabet.gif
Was it the Robot series? In that distant future, the letter
"F" will be written in reverse, as some character noted.
I see that half the letters that weren't symmetric 2800 years
ago have already reversed themselves once -- B, E, and K,
in addition to F.
Does anyone speculate why?
|
Seems to have been mostly the Greeks, as they adopted the Phoenician
letters. The Greeks apparently preferred having the letters "face"
right.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com) |
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Evan Kirshenbaum
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 8:07 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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"Default User" <defaultuserbr@yahoo.com> writes:
| Quote: | Richard Ulrich wrote:
I see that half the letters that weren't symmetric 2800 years ago
have already reversed themselves once -- B, E, and K, in addition
to F.
Does anyone speculate why?
Seems to have been mostly the Greeks, as they adopted the Phoenician
letters. The Greeks apparently preferred having the letters "face"
right.
|
My understanding is that it arose during the boustrophedon period.
The original direction of writing was right to left, so the asymmetric
letters "faced" left. When they went to having the lines alternate
direction, the direction of the asymmetric letters told you which way
a particular line went, so they faced right on left-to-right lines.
Eventually, they settled on having all lines written from left to
right, and what we use is the result.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Sorry, captain. Convenient
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |technobabble levels are dangerously
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |low.
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 10:19 pm
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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John Flynn <johnpf@lineone.net> spake thusly:
| Quote: | the Omrud wrote:
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> spake thusly:
A friend sent me a pointer to this animated history of the alphabet:
http://janpeters.net/pics/stuff/alphabet.gif
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
|
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
--
David
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Mark Brader
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:41 pm
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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"David" and John Flynn write:
| Quote: | Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
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"Dialect"? Them's fightin' words!
Which is to say, "A language is a dialect with an army".
(Okay, so Iceland doesn't actually have an army of its own. But...)
But seriously, there are lots of other cases of closely related
languages (or dialects if you like) where one uses a letterform that
another does not. Norwegian and Swedish; Russian and Ukrainian;
Hindi and Urdu; Serbian and Croatian. (In the last two cases,
completely different alphabets are used.) Why not Norwegian and
Icelandic?
--
Mark Brader | "...the government is simply a bunch of people we've
Toronto | hired to protect ourselves from thieves and murderers
msb@vex.net | and rapists and other governments..." -- Bill Stewart
My text in this article is in the public domain. |
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:52 pm
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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Mark Brader <msb@vex.net> spake thusly:
| Quote: | "David" and John Flynn write:
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
"Dialect"? Them's fightin' words!
|
It was not my intent to appear pugnacious.
| Quote: | Which is to say, "A language is a dialect with an army".
(Okay, so Iceland doesn't actually have an army of its own. But...)
But seriously, there are lots of other cases of closely related
languages (or dialects if you like) where one uses a letterform that
another does not. Norwegian and Swedish; Russian and Ukrainian;
Hindi and Urdu; Serbian and Croatian. (In the last two cases,
completely different alphabets are used.) Why not Norwegian and
Icelandic?
|
I will rephrase - I thought that Icelandic was Danish with few
differences. AIUI, Norwegian is also a form of Danish, but shares
the alphabet, I think. I can't understand spoken Norwegian on TV but
I can follow the subtitles quite well by pretending to be from
Cumbria.
--
David
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Evan Kirshenbaum
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 12:02 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) writes:
| Quote: | But seriously, there are lots of other cases of closely related
languages (or dialects if you like) where one uses a letterform that
another does not. Norwegian and Swedish; Russian and Ukrainian;
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English and German, French and Spanish, ...
| Quote: | Hindi and Urdu; Serbian and Croatian. (In the last two cases,
completely different alphabets are used.)
|
Similarly German and Yiddish.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The General Theorem of Usenet
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Information: If you really want to
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |know the definitive answer, post
|the wrong information, and wait for
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |someone to come by and explain in
(650)857-7572 |excruciating detail precisely how
|wrong you are.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Eric The Read |
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Don Aitken
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 12:05 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:19:09 GMT, the Omrud <usenet.omrud@gmail.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | John Flynn <johnpf@lineone.net> spake thusly:
the Omrud wrote:
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> spake thusly:
A friend sent me a pointer to this animated history of the alphabet:
http://janpeters.net/pics/stuff/alphabet.gif
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
|
More like a fossilized version of Old Norse; Danish and Norwegian have
changed a lot, but Icelandic hasn't. Are there any theories as to why
some languages change faster than others? I don't think I've ever seen
any attempt to explain it.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com" |
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Default User
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 3:03 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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Mark Brader wrote:
| Quote: | "David" and John Flynn write:
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
"Dialect"? Them's fightin' words!
Which is to say, "A language is a dialect with an army".
(Okay, so Iceland doesn't actually have an army of its own. But...)
But seriously, there are lots of other cases of closely related
languages (or dialects if you like) where one uses a letterform that
another does not. Norwegian and Swedish; Russian and Ukrainian;
Hindi and Urdu; Serbian and Croatian. (In the last two cases,
completely different alphabets are used.) Why not Norwegian and
Icelandic?
|
How close are the Scandavian languages? Which are closest and which
farthest apart? Can the people sort of understand each other? Not
really understand? More or less follow written but not spoken?
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com) |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 4:51 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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the Omrud wrote:
| Quote: |
I will rephrase - I thought that Icelandic was Danish with few
differences. AIUI, Norwegian is also a form of Danish, but shares
the alphabet, I think. I can't understand spoken Norwegian on TV but
I can follow the subtitles quite well by pretending to be from
Cumbria.
|
No, Icelandic is the modern form of "Old norse", the language of the
Vikings, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish all derive from that language
and are thus, in a sense, dialects of Icelandic.
(One can also claim that English is an Icelandic (or Icelandic/Latin)
dialect.)
Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are quite different from one another and
they put subtitles on when there is something from the other countries
on TV, Icelandic is also very different from the Scandinavian languages. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 5:22 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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Default User wrote:
| Quote: | Mark Brader wrote:
"David" and John Flynn write:
Where is the D with a line across the upright used?
Icelandic.
Thanks. I thought that Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian/Danish?
"Dialect"? Them's fightin' words!
Which is to say, "A language is a dialect with an army".
(Okay, so Iceland doesn't actually have an army of its own. But...)
But seriously, there are lots of other cases of closely related
languages (or dialects if you like) where one uses a letterform that
another does not. Norwegian and Swedish; Russian and Ukrainian;
Hindi and Urdu; Serbian and Croatian. (In the last two cases,
completely different alphabets are used.) Why not Norwegian and
Icelandic?
How close are the Scandavian languages? Which are closest and which
farthest apart? Can the people sort of understand each other? Not
really understand? More or less follow written but not spoken?
|
The Scandinavian languages and Icelandic are all derived from the "Old
Norse" (or old Icelandic), the language of the Vikings, but split
fairly early on into East Nordic (Danish, East Norwegian (bokmål) and
Swedish) and West Nordic (Icelandic, Faroese and West Norwegian
(Nynorsk))
Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can follow each others written languages
but have difficulities with the spoken languages. Norwegians from
different parts of Norway can also have trouble understanding one
another, the same goes for Swedes when they encounter someone from
Skåne.
They put subtitles on anything that is in the other Nordic languages.
Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can usually not understand a word in
Icelandic, written or spoken, the same goes for Faroese. |
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 5:27 am
Post subject: Re: An animated history of the alphabet |
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<sigvald@binet.is> spake thusly:
| Quote: |
the Omrud wrote:
I will rephrase - I thought that Icelandic was Danish with few
differences. AIUI, Norwegian is also a form of Danish, but shares
the alphabet, I think. I can't understand spoken Norwegian on TV but
I can follow the subtitles quite well by pretending to be from
Cumbria.
No, Icelandic is the modern form of "Old norse", the language of the
Vikings, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish all derive from that language
and are thus, in a sense, dialects of Icelandic.
(One can also claim that English is an Icelandic (or Icelandic/Latin)
dialect.)
Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are quite different from one another and
they put subtitles on when there is something from the other countries
on TV, Icelandic is also very different from the Scandinavian languages.
|
Thank you. Sadly, I have never visited Iceland.
I'm curious. Do you read AUE avidly, waiting for anybody to mention
Iceland so that you can help us with local knowledge, or do you scan
all the newsgroups looking for a mention of your country or language?
--
David
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