Monday, November 7, 2011

A proposition made by Eric Spiekermann and Kostas Petridis about the evolution of Greek scripture

In order to avoid obstacles and misunderstandings about the way of reading and understanding Greek Spiekermann and Petridis suggest:
the Greek vocal alphabet must contain 20 letters (α, β, γ, δ, ε, δ, ζ, θ, ι, κ, λ, μ, ν, ο, π, ρ, s, τ, υ, φ, x). 


So there will take place replacements such as 
ου -> υ 
ξ -> κs
ψ -> πs
η, ι, οι, ει -> ι
ω, ο -> ο
ε, αι -> ε
Stop using the letter ξ which is quite difficult, replace the letter ζ in z which is being used in latin typefaces but also in several greek ones in order to minimize it's difficulty. Only one typographic symbol for s and remove the descendings of x.
They also suggest the elimination of double consonants because they have already stopped being pronounced as double.
However a problem remains about the vagueness in pronunciation of "ντ", "γκ", ("γγ"), "μπ".
Using the existing pronunciation system it is not clear if we should pronounce them like "d", "g", "b" or "nd", "ng", "mb" and this vagueness will be continued because of important changes that are taking place.The disappearance of the pronouncement of the mb, nd, ng, is a trend nowadays
mostly in northern Greece but also in the southern.


Here is a visual example.
 


Two different people ordered these two signs, the first one pronounces the word "Λαγκαδάς" like "Langadas" and the second one like "Lagadas". There is also a third version in which every letter is translated from Greek to the latin alphabet and so we have "Lagkadas".


In conclusion, the only thing that they achieved is confusing the drivers rather than informing them.
(+design magazine/page 23/issue 24/October 2007)

No comments:

Post a Comment