Re: 'Scripts' & Communications

From: Jacques Guy (jguy_at_alphalink.com.au)
Date: 04/10/04 

Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 06:26:11 -0700

N wrote:
>
> Peter Daniels wrote:
>
> >So why would an 'alphabet' look much different 500 years hence?

> Well, I don't know, thats why I was asking!, in the spirit of
> natural human curiosity & necessity inventions and technologies
> are devised.

Tut, tut, tut (said the pharoah). Have you read H.P. Lovecraft's
short stories? In one of them (I think it might be "The Rats in
the Walls" or some title like that) there is a reproduction of
an old Latin cursive reading "Corvinus necandus est". When I
came across it almost 50 years ago, I immediately dreamt up my
very own "secret alphabet" out of it (I can still write in mock
"Corvinian" script). Well, when I got older, and books about
it (notice the deliberate "ungrammatical" elision) it turned out
that Lovecraft's Latin cursive was the real McCoy. Anyway, you
just have to open a medieval manuscript, any medieval manuscipt,
to be introduced to the priviledge of scratching your head: "what
the hell is this?????"

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