Languages and writing scripts

[FosseWay]

Basically agreed, except I don't quite like the term "unadorned" here. After all, English uses several characters that were not used in ancient Latin at all. Apart from the uppercase/lowercase difference which came later, those Romans did not differentiate between I and J, and they used V while English uses U, V, W. Then again, they did use accent (apex) signs. So Classical Latin would not need all 26 characters that are considered to be our basic letters these days ...

Christian

There are plenty of language that (for non-foreign words and non-proper nouns at least) omit various letters from what English speakers would regard as the standard 26-letter alphabet. Swedish has no q, w or z except in loanwords and fossilised spellings of names, for example. The additional letters that English added to the classical Latin alphabet are all (a) used by a wide variety of languages beyond English and (b) are direct modifications of the existing Latin (J from I and U and W from V). The same is true of the Scandinavian/Old English æ and the German ß. None of these additions are the result of bringing in a completely new symbol from elsewhere, unlike the ones I mentioned in the third category. This is what I was trying to get across rather hastily in my use of the word "unadorned". 

It's also interesting to note how different languages decide what is a letter in its own right and what is a modification of an existing letter. I get easily thrown by German dictionaries because Ä and Ö are in the wrong place  (Swedish counts ÅÄÖ as letters in their own right, and they sort, in that order, after Z.) The Welsh digraphs for single phonemes (dd, th, ll, ng for example) are letters in their own right, sorted separately. Spanish does a bit of both - the accented vowels are just modifications of the unaccented ones, but the digraphs ll, rr and the character ñ are letters in themselves.

[chrisild]

Actually I get confused by the way umlauts are sorted here too. No, they do not come at the end of the alphabet, but where you find words with them in a German dictionary or register always depends on whether, say, the "ä" is treated like "a" or like "ae". As I wrote, I basically agree with your comment, it was just the reference to Latin that I found a little misleading. Classical Latin (heck, had to learn that in school ...) did not use all those 26 characters but did have that accent mark. And now I am - veeery patiently - waiting for the first German coin that uses the uppercase ß. Since the lettering on coins tends to be all-caps, it will come one day ...

Christian

[chrisild]

By the way, here are two German (collector) coins that have quite a bit of text. Both feature Martin Luther, and titles of or excerpts from his works. The one on the left is a 5 DM piece from 1983 (500th anniversary of Luther's birth); on the right is a €20 coin issued earlier this year (500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation).

And while looking up some info about an exhibition prepared by the University of Osnabrück, I came across this workshop that also deals with text on money. (The exhibition is about the monetary history of the city - opens tomorrow, can be seen in the windows of the Berliner Carré for three weeks.) This academic workshop - on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week - is called "INschrift-ABschrift-TRUGschrift". Several experts deal with various aspects of text on money. (The workshop, and also the following material, is in German). The flyer with the program is here, and this poster also shows some of the objects. And in the invitation here, Sebastian Steinbach shows a Spanish coin where the inscription in two lines hints at a higher face value of the piece.

So ... more text, more valuable.

Christian

[Finn235]

Another obscure one; Lycian from present day south-central Turkey. Lycian was an indigenous language written using a heavily modified and extended Greek, with a number of Punic-looking letters to represent sounds not found in Greek. Lycian died out during the Hellenization of Anatolia.

Coin reads PERIKLE, clockwise starting at about 3:00

[JMP]

Elegant and mysterious scripts, sure are part of the attraction in collecting coins.
At least they are in my case.
I felt it again when I saw <k>'s Ethiopian coins, posted in "unrealised designs". I am completely under the spell of that Ge'ez script and when I get some nice, medal aligned (difficult) specimen of Ethiopian coins, I want them transcripted and translated. Unlike English, it reads as it writes.
Look at this nice piece underneath for example (unfortunately not medal aligned and thus not in my collection):

[<k>]

Elegant and mysterious scripts, sure are part of the attraction in collecting coins.
At least they are in my case.
I felt it again when I saw <k>'s Ethiopian coins, posted in "unrealised designs".

Glad you liked them, JMP. I've spent years researching such designs, yet very few people comment on them when I post them.

I am completely under the spell of that Ge'ez script and when I get some nice, medal aligned (difficult) specimen of Ethiopian coins, I want them transcripted and translated. Unlike English, it reads as it writes.

No, English spelling is so often not phonetic. "Sleet" and "oak" are fine, but I have to think twice when I write "Portuguese". Why can't it just be "Portugeez".

There are already a few topic about scripts, if you look in the Coin Characteristics, Coin Design and Numismatics sub-boards. I have therefore merged your post with this topic.

[chrisild]

but I have to think twice when I write "Portuguese". Why can't it just be "Portugeez".

Dearest creature in creation, etc.   As for that word, I would guess the spelling is simply derived from the Portuguese word (e.g. República Portuguesa). If if was spelled according to your suggestion ... geez, who knows how that would sound.

[<k>]

If if was spelled according to your suggestion ... geez, who knows how that would sound.

Like "geese", but with a Z. Simple! A "g" doesn't need a "u" after it to make it hard - does it, dear girl ? 

[JMP]

Thank you very much <k> to put my message in the right location  .

Also the Irish Celtic or Uncial script can have its charm. Look underneath to the nice old characters and see how they play and glue two letters together into one character. Yes, elegant and mysterious !:

[<k>]

Also the Irish Celtic or Uncial script can have its charm.

I am no expert on fonts, but I did notice various unusual points of interest in an earlier topic:

Text and legends on the Irish predecimal coinage.

[JMP]

Well, I am not surprised I am not the only one who is charmed by the uncial script on the Irish coins.

Most names of the pre-decimal values are easily recognisable when compared to their english counterparts. Only the Irish sixpence, I wondered for some time, where its Gaelic name "Reul" was borrowed from. And then I found, it came from the Spanish Real, which had in early days the same worth.

For me, this is only a quick passage along the Irish coins as there are plenty of other scripts which have my full interest and I would like to present them here.

[Figleaf]

@JMP, why not try your hand at Bactrian. It is the most confounding script I have seen. It works like Arabic (consonants only), but is usually sloppily written, so even specialists can' agree on what it says.

Also, I can recommend the WoC bookshelf, which has a series of booklets by John Deyell on four Asian scripts, as well as Richard Plant's Arabic coins and how to read them, available second hand only.

Peter

[JMP]

Hello Peter,
I would have liked a picture to your Bactrian with consonants only, because I am surely on a different track by what I know as Bactrian: a script derived from Greek, with a couple of own letters, like their famous "sh". The one I have in mind is not so challenging as for example the Pahlavi of the Sassanians (which is mostly sloppily written on their coins too). I find it interesting to see how the Kushans with their Bactrian "Shaonannoshao" make the bridge between the Greek "Basileus Basileon" and the Persian "Shahanshah", but is it a mysterious and elegant script? In that category its score is not so high.

[JMP]

No high score for elegance either, but certainly mysterious is the Deseret script of the Mormons.
Underneath: A Mormon gold $5-coin with legend: "Holiness to the Lord" in Deseret.
Deseret was a script designed for the English language, to make it written as it is spoken in a new era: one sound, one character. It was not blessed with long life.

[FosseWay]

Like "geese", but with a Z. Simple! A "g" doesn't need a "u" after it to make it hard - does it, dear girl ? 

English spelling rules have a lot to do with etymology. There are always exceptions, but in general, the letter G is hard in words originating from proto-Germanic, like "get" and "geese", and soft before E and I in words of Romance origin, following the pronunciation rules in French and other modern Romance languages. And to make a G hard before E/I in a Romance word, we generally follow French practice, which is to stick a U in there. (That's also the practice in Spanish and Portuguese, but in Italian and Romanian you use H for the same effect.)