From: D. Starner (shalesller@writeme.com)
Date: Fri Oct 01 2004 - 12:22:59 CST
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.
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