Wednesday 27 March 2013

Latest Nerdy Obsession, Part 2

To continue my obsession with writing systems and languages -

In my study of learning to read and write in Block Script, I decided to kick it old school and go back to basics! I want to do some practice in writing the script before I get all fancy and inundate my art journal with it. I went to Incompetech and printed out some 2cm square graph paper. (Love that site, by the way!) At lunch time I studied the information and sample text, and then tried to write a little of my own. I experimented with using a dot to separate words, combining blocks, different word endings, etc.


I just copied out some of the phrases from the back cover of the book I'm reading at the moment. It was fun and I really felt like a little kid all over again, copying out her Ps and Qs all huge and wobbly! I realised very quickly that transcribing the text very much depends on the phonemes, or sounds of how words are pronounced. I spent a lot of time muttering, "arrr...." "stoooo...." "werrrrr...", etc! It could get very interesting, for example, people may pronounce 'the' as 'thuh', 'theh' or 'thee'. This depends on their accent, but also on what words come before and after it in spoken speech. But there's also the standard written form 'the'. Block Script is obviously designed to follow spoken words - there are different symbols for the sounds 'uh' 'eh' and 'ee'. Could a person's accent and therefore their origin be detected in the written script? Fascinating!

Before I go ahead with any more research, I'm going to get myself a proper notebook and writing materials to practice with.
To Daiso!

Also, I downloaded a really cool app called Zen Brush which allows you to draw or do calligraphy on your i-whatever-you-have. I've been using it to practice my Block Script a little:

Badly-drawn capital K.

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