Michael Everson responded: > At 08:42 -0400 2003-07-15, Karlj�rgen Feuerherm wrote: > > Michael Everson said: > > > My native script isn't Hebrew but I am certain that no one who was could > > > easily read a newspaper article written in Phoenician or Samaritan letters. > > > >Surely that is not an argument for encoding a separate script, is it? > > It is sometimes. :-) > > >Most German people I know can't read the German > >cursive script used say 50 years ago. But the > >characters clearly correspond to the Latin > >characters in use today. > > The handwriting is difficult to read. One would > think that in German schools it would be at least > introduced so children would know about it.
One might hope so, but when I was at school there (1972-5), would you believe I was only one of two in my class (and a non-native speaker) who could read Fraktur? And so far as I know, I was the only one who could recognize much of cursive, let alone read it fluently.... (That is of course only one place, but as it was a classical school I doubt it was different in most places, or has 'improved' [bias acknowledged] since.) K
