On 9/12/2013 1:36 AM, Gerrit Ansmann wrote:
On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 06:50:23 +0200, Charlie Ruland ☘
<[email protected]> wrote:
One final remark: Thinking about it I have the impression that the
blackletter vs. antiqua distinction once made in German very much
resembles that made between Hiragana and Katakana in Japanese. In
both cases the underlying systems of the corresponding scripts are
essentially the same; yet it seems impossible to read the other
script without further instruction and exercise; and in both
languages one script is used primarily for inherited, and the other
for foreign words.
Just to clarify: Antiqua in Fraktur text was by far not used for all
foreign words, but only for few. The guidelines for this differed, but
my Duden (the most important German dictionary) from 1926 advises that
only words that were (a) from Romance languages (including Latin), (b)
still clearly foreign words (and, e.g., not inflected) and (c) neither
a name for geography nor a person should be set in Antiqua. In the
dictionary part, you can find Horsd’œuvre, Midſhipman, São Thomé,
Perpetuum mobile, Oſzillograph, Oxymoron and Feuilleton in Fraktur,
just to give some examples.
much lower % of text than katakana but the basic analogy isn't that far off.
the alpbets being smaller than the kana sets means less instruction
needed, but a bit of practice for fluency.
