Georgian is really easy. Each of its 33 letters makes one and only one sound, words are spaced, and there's no capital/lowercase. The most difficult part of reading it is pronouncing: the language does not care about syllables. Example: a popular Georgian band is მგზავრები ("Mgzavrebi" / Passengers).
Georgian does have a well-defined notion of ‘syllable’, it’s just that it allows an unusually wide range of consonant clusters in those syllables [0]. If you want a language which really doesn’t care about syllables there are better examples, e.g. Gokana [1,2]
Can confirm: I was on a holiday there and took reading it as a "side quest." Within a week I was fairly proficient. Note: this says nothing about understanding what you read, of which I had none!
It might be easier than you think to learn to read them. I learnt to read a foreign alphabet and compared to the actual language learning part you would be surprised how fast relatively our brains can adapt to new patterns (I’m still a slow reader in the second language I’m learning, but the beauty of reading is that you can take it at your own pace). Even if you don’t learn the language, you could have a new cool ability to write English words out in a different script :)
Start at က, work your way through Unicode in order: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%80%80#Translingual Some helpful Mon nationalist even made a writing animation for most letters before he got banned from Wikipedia. Fun fact: ပ is made with two strokes from opposite directions instead of a single one like you might naively expect.
I am fairly sure this is because, in many abugida scripts, the dominant writing material was palm leaf and the tool was a sharpened point or curved scalpel-like knife rather than a pen. If you curve inward from both sides, you don't have to contort your hand in a 180 degree pattern, which runs the risk of tearing the palm leaf. This is also why the shapes are all curves instead of hard 90 degree angles.
I've read that theory, too, but ဂ is written with just one stroke and if you look at palm-leaf manuscripts in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-leaf_manuscript there are plenty of angled shapes. (Ironically, the example Wikipedia uses for Burmese has a more square style instead of the now-dominant curves.) So I wonder whether it's all just a post-hoc rationalization for historical happenstance. It would be interesting to know whether e.g. Sundanese ᮕ is similarly written with two strokes.
So many of these scripts basically derive from Brahmi which was famously rock-cut (Ashoka monuments). That type of medium is well suited to angles. Major scripts including Tamil were also enscribed on to metal .. this image shows an evolution directly away from angular toward rounded. https://www.instagram.com/p/CpB1ygEPwJt/
Presumably this reflects a shift from courtly scribe closed-door literacy toward more popular literacy specifically including temple-trained monks who presumably could not have afforded either stonemasons or metal plates for general use.
Georgian is really easy. Each of its 33 letters makes one and only one sound, words are spaced, and there's no capital/lowercase. The most difficult part of reading it is pronouncing: the language does not care about syllables. Example: a popular Georgian band is მგზავრები ("Mgzavrebi" / Passengers).
> the language does not care about syllables
Georgian does have a well-defined notion of ‘syllable’, it’s just that it allows an unusually wide range of consonant clusters in those syllables [0]. If you want a language which really doesn’t care about syllables there are better examples, e.g. Gokana [1,2]
[0] https://www.lotpublications.nl/Documents/063_fulltext.pdf
[1] https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/papers/2011-hyman-go...
[2] https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/papers/2015-hyman-go...
Can confirm: I was on a holiday there and took reading it as a "side quest." Within a week I was fairly proficient. Note: this says nothing about understanding what you read, of which I had none!
It might be easier than you think to learn to read them. I learnt to read a foreign alphabet and compared to the actual language learning part you would be surprised how fast relatively our brains can adapt to new patterns (I’m still a slow reader in the second language I’m learning, but the beauty of reading is that you can take it at your own pace). Even if you don’t learn the language, you could have a new cool ability to write English words out in a different script :)
＃インウルード＜アイオーストリーム>
ユージングネームスペースエスティーディー；
Yes writing English words in a different script is fun.
That インウ should likely be インク. :)
Dont leave us hanging, is it Korean (hangul) ?
Japanese katakana
#include <iostream> using namespace std;
There are some mistakes though, like using ウ instead of ク in インウルード
Japanese: # In'urūdo < aiōsutorīmu > yūjingunēmusupēsuesutīdī
Start at က, work your way through Unicode in order: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%80%80#Translingual Some helpful Mon nationalist even made a writing animation for most letters before he got banned from Wikipedia. Fun fact: ပ is made with two strokes from opposite directions instead of a single one like you might naively expect.
I am fairly sure this is because, in many abugida scripts, the dominant writing material was palm leaf and the tool was a sharpened point or curved scalpel-like knife rather than a pen. If you curve inward from both sides, you don't have to contort your hand in a 180 degree pattern, which runs the risk of tearing the palm leaf. This is also why the shapes are all curves instead of hard 90 degree angles.
I've read that theory, too, but ဂ is written with just one stroke and if you look at palm-leaf manuscripts in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm-leaf_manuscript there are plenty of angled shapes. (Ironically, the example Wikipedia uses for Burmese has a more square style instead of the now-dominant curves.) So I wonder whether it's all just a post-hoc rationalization for historical happenstance. It would be interesting to know whether e.g. Sundanese ᮕ is similarly written with two strokes.
So many of these scripts basically derive from Brahmi which was famously rock-cut (Ashoka monuments). That type of medium is well suited to angles. Major scripts including Tamil were also enscribed on to metal .. this image shows an evolution directly away from angular toward rounded. https://www.instagram.com/p/CpB1ygEPwJt/
Presumably this reflects a shift from courtly scribe closed-door literacy toward more popular literacy specifically including temple-trained monks who presumably could not have afforded either stonemasons or metal plates for general use.