What writing systems do you know

[Nortaneous]

And the greatest disadvantage of right-to-left writing is that when a right-handed person (such as me) writes with a pen, their hand becomes full of blue ink. Ugh.
(Hey, am I the only one who has a spelling pronunciation of "ugh" as [ʔʌɣ]?)

No... I can't really think of another way to pronounce it. It's a slightly extralinguistic sound, like a tut.

I was sure it was [ʔʌx] or even [ʔʌχ].

[ʔʌχːːː] or [ʊi̯]

[richard1631978]

I can manage all of uppercase Greek & most Cyrillic.

I also know some more common Chinese characters, along with some basic Kanji & Hiragana.

[Jana Masala]

I know Malayalam, Devanagari, Tamil, Latin and Perso-Arabic, and am familiar with Greek, Cyrillic, Hangul, Katakana, Hiragana, Mongolian, Thai and Hebrew.

[Drydic]

And for heaven's sake don't mention the two arbitrarily-different letters for "sha"

What 'arbitrarily-different' letters? श Śa and ब ṣa? They are hardly arbitrarily different. Sure maybe for certain individual languages (Hindi, for sure; I happen to know that Bengali goes even further and merges all three of ś ṣ s into [ʃ]/[ç] [my source says "palatal [š]"]) their sounds are homophonous, but not in all languages.

I'm talking about Hindi, though I understand since the discussion is about Devanagari the terms are not synonymous. However I would say that you've used the wrong letters there. You've quoted श Śa and ब ba. You're looking for ष ṣa

I blame the font differences between the book listing the forms/transliterations and the actual computer font I copy/pasted them from. Just checked again, they are SO FUCKING CLOSE IN THE BOOK FONT ARGH.

This wouldn't've happened 3 years ago when I was actually working with Sanskrit (which is why I took issue with your statement originally...very bad form to mix those two letters up there).

[Ser]

To people who write in Devanagari: when... do you write the horizontal line in a word. Do you build it piece by piece with each letter? Do you draw it first?

No, AFAIK you draw it last. Because drawing it first would be stupid in handwriting, unless you had a really good idea how much space a word takes.

But hey, writing it first wouldn't matter if speakers were okay with extended pieces of a horizontal line without a letter, as in Arabic, where you can write كتابة like كتــابة, or كـــــتابة, or كتـــــــابة, etc.

It would only help if you're actually ambidextrous. But I've actually heard that even though they write "backwards", the strokes are still sort of designed to be written by a right-hander, in terms of the stroke order and so on.

What could be right-handed-friendly about the Arabic script? Pretty much all the strokes without exceptions go from right to left (and as far as I know what left-handed people complain about the Latin alphabet is writing with left to right strokes).

[finlay]

To people who write in Devanagari: when... do you write the horizontal line in a word. Do you build it piece by piece with each letter? Do you draw it first?

No, AFAIK you draw it last. Because drawing it first would be stupid in handwriting, unless you had a really good idea how much space a word takes.

But hey, writing it first wouldn't matter if speakers were okay with extended pieces of a horizontal line without a letter, as in Arabic, where you can write كتابة like كتــابة, or كـــــتابة, or كتـــــــابة, etc.

It would only help if you're actually ambidextrous. But I've actually heard that even though they write "backwards", the strokes are still sort of designed to be written by a right-hander, in terms of the stroke order and so on.

What could be right-handed-friendly about the Arabic script? Pretty much all the strokes without exceptions go from right to left (and as far as I know what left-handed people complain about the Latin alphabet is writing with left to right strokes).

It's more the fact that they get ink on their hands and/or can't see what they've just written. I think it's easier to write Arabic holding the pen in such a way that this isn't a problem for a right-hander, or that's what they say.

[Astraios]

It's just the way you hold the pen and paper. I have the paper at 270°, and hold the pen in such a way that my entire hand is always "below" the line I'm writing on, and I can write in both directions without smudging or blocking what I've just written.

[Cathbad]

I know Latin and Arabic, and can manage Greek and Cyrillic in most of its varieties (although reading Russian causes me... problems). Pretty poor, but that's that.

[clawgrip]

I am fine with the Roman alphabet, obviously. I can read Greek and Cyrillic somewhat slowly, I can read Devanagari and Gujarati slowly, I can kind of read Khotanese slowly, I can write Arabic but have trouble reading it (for obvious reasons), I have a working knowledge of Khmer but the rules are too complex for me to remember all the pronunciations, I can read Korean slowly but am not clear on the sound changes that are not represented in the orthography, and I can comfortably read hiragana, katakana, and maybe 1600 or more kanji (it is kind of impossible to count at this point) and am familiar with many (but by no means all) of the simplified/traditional versions of them. Mainland Chinese simplifications often confuse me. I may have left something out.

[treskro]

Latin alphabet: good
Cyrillic, Greek: I can read them both slowly, but I understand none of the languages which use them.
Hanzi/Kanji: relatively proficient knowledge of several hundred, probably not more than a thousand, though I can make semi-accurate guesses sometimes.
Hiragana, Katakana: good
Korean: kind of...not really...I can only make up a couple of letters, mostly bits and pieces from advertisements on placemats at Korean restaurants

[installer_swan]

Scripts I can read/write comfortably: Devanagari, Tamil, Farsi, Urdu (well basically the same, but with the retroflex letters and the ے)
I can also read Bengali & Gujarati, but out of touch enought that writing seems hard.
Oh and the Latin script of course, and Greek

To people who write in Devanagari: when... do you write the horizontal line in a word. Do you build it piece by piece with each letter? Do you draw it first?

No, AFAIK you draw it last. Because drawing it first would be stupid in handwriting, unless you had a really good idea how much space a word takes.

But hey, writing it first wouldn't matter if speakers were okay with extended pieces of a horizontal line without a letter, as in Arabic, where you can write كتابة like كتــابة, or كـــــتابة, or كتـــــــابة, etc

Yeah, but the convential way in Devanagari is to draw the overline after you finish writing the word, though in the closely related Bengali scripts it is built up piece by piece as Serafín suggests, and then Gujarati happily does away with the line altogether

[Avjunza]

Latin and Hiragana, plus about half of the Katakana.

[Mr. Z]

Latin and Hiragana, plus about half of the Katakana.

About your signature: it's funny, because "ran" means "three" in many of my conlangs (numbers were often borrowed). So 1+1 =... 3?

[Declan]

It's just the way you hold the pen and paper. I have the paper at 270°, and hold the pen in such a way that my entire hand is always "below" the line I'm writing on, and I can write in both directions without smudging or blocking what I've just written.

Agreed. The issue is poor teaching (or lack of it) because most handwriting lessons are given for right-handed people, not the direction of the writing system.

On topic, I can read Ancient Greek (and a little modern Greek), but my handwriting is probably a bit idiosyncratic because my main use of the letters is in Maths and Engineering, not my limited use of Ancient Greek.

[finlay]

I've not seen very many examples of Greek handwriting, but it's always been very difficult for me to decipher, because it's quite different from what i'm used to in mathematical and linguistic usage.

[Shihali]

Read/write comfortably: Latin, Hiragana/Katakana, Arabic, ~500 kanji (Japanese shinjitai style), Tengwar (nerdy but true)
Read uncomfortably: Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Hangul, another ~250 kanji (and the preceding 500 in Chinese traditional/simplified styles), Nasta'liq Arabic (it's as hard to read for me as Fraktur is for moderns used to Antiqua, and all the extra letters do not help)
Can make out a letter or two: Devanagari
No way no how: Armenian, Mongolian (Armenian all looks alike to me, and I can't find where Mongolian letters begin and end)

Basically, what I picked up in childhood or what I've actively studied. (Tengwar developed a niche for writing in English things I didn't want other people to read. Very fast weak encryption.) I learned to read the other European alphabets since you can hardly avoid running into them, hangul isn't too hard at a very low level (still getting the allophone table down), and I had to learn to read Hebrew because older books on Semitic languages invariably quote Hebrew and Aramaic words in the Hebrew alphabet. I'm still uncomfortable enough with Hebrew script that if I'm scribbling down some form for my own reference and the vowels aren't critical I'll use Arabic letters.

[hieroglyphs]

I've studied all writing systems, but which ones I'm comfortable transliterating depends on the project. I rely on notecards and such reference charts when working extensively with a given language. My specialty is the very hardest of writing systems, hieroglyphic ones.

From Brahmi, I recommend Tocharian B because it'll really give you perspective on what a Brahmi system is. I also highly recommend Ethiopic, which is a "gray area" writing system between the original Semitic "consonant-only" abjads and Brahmi. If you really want to appreciate writing systems, the earlier the better. They all crapulesce after the beginning, as the users forget and destroy the original simplicity of the given system. Chinese is the absolute worst example ; it is also the most complicated writing system to ever exist, a product of cultural factors, cough.

After that, for Brahmi, be sure to study the original Asoki Sanskrit, some Old Dravidian script, and Angkorian Old Khmer, for a nice comparison.

Brahmi are interesting, but in comparison to the direction the Greeks took, massively incompetant and typically Indian-Asian. But it is worth appreciating that their system indicates vowel length, though I prefer Arabic above all (I think orthographic vowels are cumbersome).

[masako]

I've studied all writing systems, but which ones I'm comfortable transliterating depends on the project. I rely on notecards and such reference charts when working extensively with a given language. My specialty is the very hardest of writing systems, hieroglyphic ones.

From Brahmi, I recommend Tocharian B because it'll really give you perspective on what a Brahmi system is. I also highly recommend Ethiopic, which is a "gray area" writing system between the original Semitic "consonant-only" abjads and Brahmi. If you really want to appreciate writing systems, the earlier the better. They all crapulesce after the beginning, as the users forget and destroy the original simplicity of the given system. Chinese is the absolute worst example ; it is also the most complicated writing system to ever exist, a product of cultural factors, cough.

After that, for Brahmi, be sure to study the original Asoki Sanskrit, some Old Dravidian script, and Angkorian Old Khmer, for a nice comparison.

Brahmi are interesting, but in comparison to the direction the Greeks took, massively incompetant and typically Indian-Asian. But it is worth appreciating that their system indicates vowel length, though I prefer Arabic above all (I think orthographic vowels are cumbersome).

What are you talking about?

[Skomakar'n]

Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hiragana, Katakana and the Persian subset of Arabic (I don't know the vowel diacritics) are the ones I can use, and some Hanzi/Kanji.

Out of these, Greek, and to some extent Cyrillic, are the only ones besides Latin that I can read fluidly. It takes an inconvenient time for me to read the rest of them, usually. Katakana comes third, probably.

[sucaeyl]

I've studied all writing systems, but which ones I'm comfortable transliterating depends on the project. I rely on notecards and such reference charts when working extensively with a given language. My specialty is the very hardest of writing systems, hieroglyphic ones.

From Brahmi, I recommend Tocharian B because it'll really give you perspective on what a Brahmi system is. I also highly recommend Ethiopic, which is a "gray area" writing system between the original Semitic "consonant-only" abjads and Brahmi. If you really want to appreciate writing systems, the earlier the better. They all crapulesce after the beginning, as the users forget and destroy the original simplicity of the given system. Chinese is the absolute worst example ; it is also the most complicated writing system to ever exist, a product of cultural factors, cough.

After that, for Brahmi, be sure to study the original Asoki Sanskrit, some Old Dravidian script, and Angkorian Old Khmer, for a nice comparison.

Brahmi are interesting, but in comparison to the direction the Greeks took, massively incompetant and typically Indian-Asian. But it is worth appreciating that their system indicates vowel length, though I prefer Arabic above all (I think orthographic vowels are cumbersome).

What are you talking about?

He answered the second question in my original post. Thanks, hieroglyphs!

[installer_swan]

Brahmi are interesting, but in comparison to the direction the Greeks took, massively incompetant and typically Indian-Asian. But it is worth appreciating that their system indicates vowel length, though I prefer Arabic above all (I think orthographic vowels are cumbersome).

What do you mean by incompetent? The fact that voicing/aspiration is denoted not by a diacritic but different symbols for each consonant?

[Zwap]

Study ALL the writing systems!

[Jipí]

Brahmi are interesting, but in comparison to the direction the Greeks took, massively incompetant and typically Indian-Asian.

I'd like to know your political views on immigrants. (Or maybe probably better not.)

[Nortaneous]

Latin, Cyrillic, and I taught myself Roman cursive as halfassed encryption.

[clawgrip]

You consider Roman cursive to be a form of encryption? I suppose it could be considered that if you're talking about secretary hand or something.

Secretary hand: