Christopher's Expat Adventure: Handwriting

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Handwriting

When I was a kid, we learned how to write in cursive in the fourth grade.
I remember all of the worksheets we had to fill out and we were supposed to write at a 45 degree angle.
Nowadays I don't believe that they even teach cursive in school.

Czech Cursive ABCs

In Czechland and Slovakia, the upper-case S and lower-case T always seems odd to me. The upper-case S looks more like an L without the bottom flourish.

The lower-case T kind of looks like an S or an A to me, depending on who writes it.

The upper-case Zed looks like an L and I can never quite tell what a lower-case Zed reminds me off.

Sometimes my cleaning lady will leave me a note. She doesn't speak English and I don't have any problem with a note in Czech. It's just that sometimes I can't quite figure out which letters she's used.

At least it's not Germany. Sometimes I feel completely illiterate there and here's why.

Fraktur is a common German blackletter type that came about in the mid-16th century. It just seems so busy that I struggle to read it. And by "struggle" I mean that I can't read it at all.

${\mathfrak {A}}{\mathfrak {B}}{\mathfrak {C}}{\mathfrak {D}}{\mathfrak {E}}{\mathfrak {F}}{\mathfrak {G}}{\mathfrak {H}}{\mathfrak {I}}{\mathfrak {J}}{\mathfrak {K}}{\mathfrak {L}}{\mathfrak {M}}{\mathfrak {N}}{\mathfrak {O}}{\mathfrak {P}}{\mathfrak {Q}}{\mathfrak {R}}{\mathfrak {S}}{\mathfrak {T}}{\mathfrak {U}}{\mathfrak {V}}{\mathfrak {W}}{\mathfrak {X}}{\mathfrak {Y}}{\mathfrak {Z}}$

${\mathfrak {a}}{\mathfrak {b}}{\mathfrak {c}}{\mathfrak {d}}{\mathfrak {e}}{\mathfrak {f}}{\mathfrak {g}}{\mathfrak {h}}{\mathfrak {i}}{\mathfrak {j}}{\mathfrak {k}}{\mathfrak {l}}{\mathfrak {m}}{\mathfrak {n}}{\mathfrak {o}}{\mathfrak {p}}{\mathfrak {q}}{\mathfrak {r}}{\mathfrak {s}}{\mathfrak {t}}{\mathfrak {u}}{\mathfrak {v}}{\mathfrak {w}}{\mathfrak {x}}{\mathfrak {y}}{\mathfrak {z}}$

Then there's Sütterlin script that was taught in German schools from 1915 to 1941, although some schools still taught it up until the 1970s.

Even younger Germans today have a difficult time trying to decipher Sütterlin. I find it easier to read Russian than some German texts. I may not know all of the words in Russian but I can at least I understand all of the letters. Cursive Russian is a different story.