Has anyone read "Absent Voices", by Rochell Altman? Taking her description of stoefwritung, it seems that Unicode needs a large block tenatively set aside for Anglo-Saxon writing, as every mark written was obviously phonetically distinct from any other, and size and vertical location were equally important. After all, it was a universal writing system clearly superior to the IPA. (For one thing, everyone can read Anglo-Saxon, but IPA takes learning.) Locally important in her off-handed dismissal of modern universal writing systems and universal languages, "In the computerized world of the late-twentieth century, the UNICODE Consortium was trying to create a 'universal' computer character set." Another quote is "Learning to speak a foreign language was as simple as learning to read your native tongue with stoefwritung."
It amazes me that a book subtitled "The Story of Writing Systems in the West" spends so much time on Anglo-Saxon, and that a book that claims that a writing system is a universal system is about "the West", never going east of Babylon and rarely east of Calais. For all my mocking, I must admit I've barely glanced through the book, and it looks like there might actually be a wealth of real information about Anglo-Saxon writing in there. I'm curious if anyone else has seen this book and has comments. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
