Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Mon May 24 2004 - 08:33:43 CDT

  • Next message: Dean Snyder: "Re: Fraktur yet again (was: Re: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?)"

    Dean Snyder wrote:

    >Mark E. Shoulson wrote at 10:41 PM on Saturday, May 22, 2004:
    >
    >
    >
    >>And not a single Hebrew-reader I spoke to,
    >>native or not, could even conceive of Paleo-Hebrew being a font-variant
    >>of Hebrew. They found the proposition laughable.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >I'm a Hebrew reader, and I consider it a font change.
    >
    >I would like to see the evidence to back your assessment.
    >
    I've given you evidence: I *tried it out* on a bunch of experienced
    Hebrew readers, some of them native, and they couldn't even work out for
    sure which end to hold up.

    >I'm guessing none of your test subjects have read Paleo-Hebrew texts,
    >like the Dead Sea scroll ones. If not, how can they make judgements on
    >this issue? It would be like testing readers of Roman German who had
    >never read Fraktur - they wouldn't recognize it as a font change either
    >(which it is, of course, in Unicode).
    >
    I'm sure none of them have. But I dispute your claim. Even if the
    German readers couldn't read the fraktur, I'll bet they could recognize
    it as Latin letters, just in a font they can't completely make out. In
    fact, just for laughs, I'll try an experiment out this evening: I'll
    show my children (aged 6 and 8) some fraktur text and ask them what it
    is. It's unlikely they'll ever have seen it before. Maybe I'll even
    show it to them in German text, so it's even less likely for them to
    recognize. And maybe even some Suetterlin. Just to see if they say, at
    least, "It's some letters... I can't really read them, though..."

    Where's *your* evidence that Roman German readers wouldn't recognize
    fraktur? You asked for mine, and I've given some.

    ~mark



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