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▲ fifilura 7 hours ago

Myanmar script along with Georgian script are the most beautiful. I wish I could read them.

▲CGamesPlay 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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).

▲bradrn 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> 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...

▲maratc 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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!

▲waterymelon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 :)

▲kccqzy 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

#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.

▲mejutoco 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dont leave us hanging, is it Korean (hangul) ?

▲thenthenthen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Japanese: # In'urūdo < aiōsutorīmu > yūjingunēmusupēsuesutīdī

▲yorwba 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲contingencies an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

▲yorwba 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

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.