Sunday, June 20, 2010

Magnificent Obsessions: When One Script isn't Enough

Sometimes things just all fall into place. First I wrote about how Chinese is a hard language to learn. Next came a follow up on various writing and calligraphy systems of the world including Chinese. On a completely unrelated note I wrote about how I don't like The Lord of the Rings.

And then out of the ether a webpage start making the rounds. Write Your Name in Elvish in Ten Minutes by Ned Gulley gives directions on how to take an English word and write it in an elvish script. I can imagine many tattoo artists using this page as a howto manual.

But there's more to Tolkien's various created languages then directly writing english in a new font. Much more. Books have been written on the languages and scripts Tolkien created. A short introduction to Tengwar, one of his languages, is on Omniglot.

Fair warning. Omniglot is a dangerous wonderful website for anyone who loves languages and writing. There are examples of many ancient and modern scripts. A section on fictional alphabets and undeciphered scripts. And it goes on and on and on. All with links to other resources and sites. Omniglot certainly qualifies as a magnificent obsession.

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