At 03:03 -0400 2001-07-06, DougEwell2@cs.com wrote:
>Compare the motivations behind these scripts to that of scripts that appear
>in fictional literature and popular culture. Although nobody denies the
>greatness of J.R.R. Tolkein as an author and scholar, it is extremely
>unlikely that he intended the beautiful and carefully designed Tengwar and
>Cirth scripts to be used by real humans to write real languages for use in
>everyday life.
Tolkien knew that others shared his "secret vice" and was delighted
when school children wrote him to say they had made an Elvish
vocabulary. He wrote letters to some of them using his alphabets. He
published an appendix explaining the writing system. Why? For the joy
of it. Why do people devise Tengwar modes for Hebrew and Yiddish, and
practice Tengwar calligraphy in Russian and Sindarin?
And they encode texts using it. Would Tolkien have approved? Very
much so, I am sure -- he would have been fascinated by it.
We don't use Egyptian or Luvian or Ogham for use in every day life,
well at least most of you don't (I confess to refrigerator notes
written in the script-of-the-week).
-- Michael Everson
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