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There is a theory that the reason those glyphs (in most languages, whether characters or ideograms) tend to have a similar, conservative aspect ratio is that th
by gumby 4y ago
There is a theory that the reason those glyphs (in most languages, whether characters or ideograms) tend to have a similar, conservative aspect ratio is that they use a part of the early visual system that was useful in finding/tracking footprints (evidence of prey or threats)
In the case of characters, especially hanzi/kanji, ones that are hard to recognize/distinguish either evolve (simplify and/or develop disambiguating features) or fall into disuse. Clearly “hard to recognize” is driven by physiological structures that are by definition “natural”
- amelius 4y agoIf true then why are Latin and Arabic glyphs so different?
- gumby 4y agoI wrote “in most languages” specifically thinking of Arabic-derived scripts, but don’t know of any others. Older scripts, and those descended from other roots, seem to have this property. Of course in practice Arabic writing is as easy or hard for humans to learn as any other system, so the evolutionary pressure/affordance to get rid of hard parts still applies. But the theory of early visual system affordance could in principle be studied (though I don’t think fmri is really solid enough yet). Any historical implications of course will always have to remain theoretical. Writing has technological constraints as well; look at cuneiform vs, say, Pali. Since Arabic evolved after predecessor systems already existed, technological affordances clearly had a, or the, major influence. Edit: I read your comment again, and just to be clear: your question is really “why is Arabic different”. Latin, Georgian, Aramaic, Brahmic, Chinese, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Maya pictographs, all have roughly the same form factor.
- lmm 4y agoThey're not?