xkcd #2912: Cursive Letters ( imgs.xkcd.com )

xkcd.com/2912

Alt text:

𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻.

sagrotan ,
@sagrotan@lemmy.world avatar

I recently found an old letter from my grandpa to my grandma during the war in Old German handwriting. A lot of spikes. Decided to learn to read it. Nice journey, I recommend. (Not necessarily old GERMAN handwriting, but, you now, old handwriting in your mother tongue).

IWantToFuckSpez , (edited )

German Kurrent is almost an entire alphabet on its own. Like how the hell can you read this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lessing_Kleist-Brief.jpg/800px-Lessing_Kleist-Brief.jpg

And then they also have Sütterlin which is almost alien https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/S%C3%BCtterlinschrift.png

RandomStickman ,
@RandomStickman@kbin.run avatar

For Kurrent the umlauts next to the capital letters looks identical to the small e lol

force ,

that’s because they are, umlauts came from writing vowel digraphs as the first letter with the second letter above it, for example ueber/veber -> uͤber/vͤber -> über/v̈ber -> über (although über in particular didn’t actually originally have the spelling ueber). “e” turned into two lines, which now is represented as two dots/a diaeresis on most computer fonts. that’s why, if you don’t have access to diacritics (e.g. on technology), you write ä/ö/ü like ae/oe/ue (and why you have names which are spelled like Goethe instead of Göthe)

RandomStickman ,
@RandomStickman@kbin.run avatar

Oh that's neat!

midori ,

Some of this looks like it could be AI generated

maynarkh ,

TIL my cursive is half Kurrent. I guess every place has its own cursive style.

nxdefiant ,

“Three rings for the Elven Kings under the sky…”

kernelle ,

Cursive is still the main form of writing in Europe, haven’t seen many people writing in print/block.

zerofk ,

For the longest time I was confused when seeing Americans talk about cursive, because I thought they meant italic print. What they call cursive is just handwriting to me.

kernelle ,

Really shows you how US-centric many platforms are, I like seeing other cultures having very different things they deem “normal”.

Anticorp ,

They’re all easy to read when you know cursive.

shadearg , (edited )
@shadearg@lemmy.world avatar

Exactly. Randall Munroe turns 40 before the end of this year.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel, I guess?

Edit: In the 80s, children were seriously evaluated for learning disabilty if they could not read cursive, as it was considered a developmental necessity. They didn’t joke around with this back then.

UsernameIsTooLon ,

insert language is easy to read when you know insert language

I think part of the problem lies in how cursive directly derived from print letters so shit like S and Z makes you wonder who came up with this.

psud ,

When you know the right cursive. We used slightly clearer letter shapes in Australia in the 80s

Though knowing any cursive makes it easier to decode unfamiliar ones

Honytawk ,

Machine coding is also easy to read if you know binary

Good thing it is the 21st century where those things aren’t needed anymore

Empricorn ,

You may be cool, but you’ll never be “Capital L” cool…

Magnetar ,

Today is you 𝓛ucky day.

Imgonnatrythis ,

Lowercase b should be lower on y axis

asteriskeverything ,

Honorable shoutout to words that have “br”

TimewornTraveler ,

little b should be in the low left corner

AgentGrimstone ,

I never liked the lower case “r” and “s.” They’re so awkward to make.

randomaccount43543 OP ,

explainxkcd.com/2912

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