Re:Boustrophedon
by gumby on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @02:46PM
(#15544154)
> Only about half the glyphs to recognize.
This is not really a big deal. Some writing systems require you to recognize a few thousand symbols, and I read (i.e. "effortlessly recognise") three alphabets and with some concentration two more (the grammar is a bigger deal for the latter...my overall fluency in those languages is, at best, poor and I am sure will never get better. But symbol recognition is not the barrier).
This is because I put in the effort to study these languages, but many people, without much formal education, can read that number of alphabets (much better than I can) simply because they live in (typically border) regions where that is reality of daily life. My own mother grew up in a town where four writing systems were in use, plus used a different alphabet in her home.
Don't mock that older writing by the way. Most people were illiterate; Especially anything in paper was the writing of some pretty sophisticated folks.
This is not really a big deal. Some writing systems require you to recognize a few thousand symbols, and I read (i.e. "effortlessly recognise") three alphabets and with some concentration two more (the grammar is a bigger deal for the latter...my overall fluency in those languages is, at best, poor and I am sure will never get better. But symbol recognition is not the barrier).
This is because I put in the effort to study these languages, but many people, without much formal education, can read that number of alphabets (much better than I can) simply because they live in (typically border) regions where that is reality of daily life. My own mother grew up in a town where four writing systems were in use, plus used a different alphabet in her home.
Don't mock that older writing by the way. Most people were illiterate; Especially anything in paper was the writing of some pretty sophisticated folks.