Latin without Cross Sign and Arabic Without Dots

AzizMostafa AzizAli

Dear Friends,

Is it possible to remove the Cross sign from the Latin letters "f" and "t" without sacrificing readability?!

2. Why unnecessary dots are added sometimes to the Latin text?

3. Is it possible to remove dots from the Arabic text without sacrificing readability, as shown below?!

Comments, feedback and suggestions are welcome.

All the Best for All with Flowers https://t.me/FlowerCrosswords/68

André G. Isaak

"Why unnecessary dots are added sometimes to the Latin text?"

Unless you are referring to the faux-arabic example you give above (in which case the dots are there to make it look arabic), I don't really understand what you are asking about. Or are you viewing the dots in i and j as unnecessary?

The dot on the i may not seem necessary for legibility in printed text, but try reading the word 'minimum' in cursive or tightly-spaced blackletter without the dots. They definitely contribute to legibility. Since j is historically just a variant of i it inherited the dot.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

André G. Isaak said:

"Why unnecessary dots are added sometimes to the Latin text?"

Unless you are referring to the faux-arabic example you give above (in which case the dots are there to make it look arabic), I don't really understand what you are asking about. Or are you viewing the dots in i and j as unnecessary?

@ To make it look Arabic and more confusing?! Or just to make fun of Arabic dots?!

Adam Jagosz

You can use the handwritten form of f for a less "Christian" appearance:

And some people write "t" similarly as in the Sutterlin script or Kurrentschrift:

Oh, and some fonts simply leave out the left part of the cross-stroke (e.g. Ubuntu):

AzizMostafa said:

@ To make it look Arabic and more confusing?! Or just to make fun of Arabic dots?!

Yes, exactly that.

Adam Jagosz

Btw, how do we write C avoiding the crescent shape?!

John Hudson

1. No. The crossbars of f and t are integral to these letters. Without them, f looks like ſ (long s, which sometimes has a spur on the left side, but sometimes is just thehook and stem), and t can be mistaken for l.

2. In the green text? This is stylised to mimic the appearance of Arabic letters. The dots are just there to make it look more Arabic. It's pretty silly.

3. Removing the disambiguating dots from Arabic letters is going to introduce possible ambiguous readings. I thought for a moment that maybe colour was being using to disambiguate in that example, but then saw that three different colours were used for ط so apparently not distinguishing ط and ظ?

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Well Vafflard did get rid of half of the bars, way back... In the "f" even completely removing it is pretty safe in terms of legibility (because only type designers and historicists know what a long-s is) but not readability; however in the "t" it would be an unmitigated disaster. (BTW every time I see a long-s I hear a lisp in my head, like from an upper-class twit from Monty Python. :-)

Arabic dots: AFAIK they were originally added to reduce ambiguity, so...

André G. Isaak

AzizMostafa said:

André G. Isaak said:

"Why unnecessary dots are added sometimes to the Latin text?"

Unless you are referring to the faux-arabic example you give above (in which case the dots are there to make it look arabic), I don't really understand what you are asking about. Or are you viewing the dots in i and j as unnecessary?

@ To make it look Arabic and more confusing?! Or just to make fun of Arabic dots?!

As I said, to make it look Arabic. I doubt their intention was to make it confusing or to make fun of Arabic dots, though you'd really have to ask the designer about that. But I suspect that without the dots many might not recognize it as a faux Arabic given that the majority of English speakers (I suspect) are more likely to picture Naskh when they think of Arabic than they are Kufi.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Long live –judicious– cultural exchange between scripts.
https://www.flickr.com/groups/cross-script-letterforms/

Nick Shinn

Replace all crossroads with roundabouts.

John Savard

If someone were to remove the dots from the Arabic script, the result would be equivalent to, in the Latin alphabet, using one letter for both d and t, another letter for both b and p, and a third letter for both g and k. That would reduce readability.

The cross-stroke in f and t is indeed needed for legibility, but one could have an equally legible alphabet for writing Latin-alphabet languages if, say, one replaced the letter f by, say, the Greek theta, and the letter t by the Greek delta. One could use Cyrillic as a guide to get lower-case letters that would fit in. Or should I say "leддers дhaд would ѳiд in".

Versions of the Latin script have been made into typefaces that imitate the Thai script, the Chinese script, Devanagari, the Hebrew script... as well as Arabic. Some still say that such imitations of other scripts are not necessarily offensive, even today. Even though they can be used in contexts where they're not intended to give offence, I've noted that there will be many who prefer to err on the side of caution... and I've given that as a reason for the current popularity of the typeface Papyrus.

Claudio Piccinini

"Faux" typefaces, if done “formally and superficially” are very embarassing.
As a kid, I quite liked them. As a kid.

To answer the first question… I’d have to understand it. :-(

Igor Freiberger

Aziz, it seems you also need to change X, Ð, 4, 8, +, #, &, £, ₽, and many others.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

Well, there are mainly three letters to distinguish, namely, l, f and t? Right?
How if "l" is made hook-free, f and "t" are made cross-free with right hooks respectively on the top and bottom?

AzizMostafa AzizAli

John Hudson said:

3. Removing the disambiguating dots from Arabic letters is going to introduce possible ambiguous readings. I thought for a moment that maybe colour was being using to disambiguate in that example, but then saw that three different colours were used for ط so apparently not distinguishing ط and ظ?

Well, that's a well-known greeting exchanged by south East Asians during the Fast-breaking Holidays in Arabic Malay (Jawi, Pegon, or Gundul) script that reads:

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri 1441H/2020 =1441H/2020 سلامت هاري راي عيد الفطري

Maaf Zahir Dan Batin = معاف ظاهير دان باطين

Minal Aidin Wal Faizin = من العائدين والفائزين

and roughly translates into English:
                        Happy Fast-breaking Holidays 1441H/2020
                        May God forgive All our and your ins and outs, and

                        Praying that All are winners & returnees for the next Fasting Month.

2. The greeting has been colored to celebrate these days.

3. Still awaiting the feedback by someone form there who is acquainted with Arabic Malay (Jawi, Pegon, or Gundul).

André G. Isaak

AzizMostafa said:

Well, there are mainly three letters to distinguish, namely, l, f and t? Right?
How if "l" is made hook-free, f and "t" are made cross-free with right hooks respectively on the top and bottom?

You could do that if you wanted the f and t to be unrecognizable.

Igor Freiberger

Aziz, you can simply use small caps to avoid f and t.

Anyway, please note there is no "cross sign" in these letters. They have an intersection of constitutive forms that are reminiscent of the bars you find in majuscules F and T. They are definitively not "crosses with hooks".

Scripts and letters have cultural and historical background. If you find playing with dots inadequate or even disrespectful to Arabic, you can understand the same criterion applies to Latin.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

John Savard said:

If someone were to remove the dots from the Arabic script, the result would be equivalent to, in the Latin alphabet, using one letter for both d and t, another letter for both b and p, and a third letter for both g and k. That would reduce readability.

Not as confusing as you think as dots are not so discriminating making letters readable without them. The Arabic-minded will intuitively go on adding them to differentiate not only

1. the one-dotted ف from the two-dotted ق,

          but also the dotted that share shapes with the dot-less, as follows:

2. one dot above to differentiate ذ from د .

3. one dot above to differentiate ز from ر
4. one dot above to differentiate ض from ص .
5. one dot above to differentiate غ from ع .
6. one dot above to differentiate ظ from ط
7. one dot below or above to differentiate ج and خ from ح .
8. three dots above to differentiate ش from س , and the most challenging one is to add,

9. one, two dots above or below or three dots above to differentiate ب ن ت ث from ى .

Happy exploring with Flowers

John Hudson

Early Arabic manuscripts were written without dots, which is one of the things that makes Quranic textual studies such an interesting subject. Yes, it is possible to mentally add the dots in many contexts, but often those contexts are informed by assumptions about the text. The root system of Arabic can be both helpful and misleading when dots are missing: it will sometimes help determine the probable identity of a word in context, but in other situations will present ambiguities of meaning which can only be resolved with addition of the disambiguating dots.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

John Hudson said:

Early Arabic manuscripts were written without dots, which is one of the things that makes Quranic textual studies such an interesting subject. Yes, it is possible to mentally add the dots in many contexts, but often those contexts are informed by assumptions about the text. The root system of Arabic can be both helpful and misleading when dots are missing: it will sometimes help determine the probable identity of a word in context, but in other situations will present ambiguities of meaning which can only be resolved with addition of the disambiguating dots.

Absolutely true!

Arabs did not make use of dots before the Glorious Quran. Dots then marks were later developed by Arabs for non-Arabs. Nowadays, Arabs overlook the mistakes made in dotting and marking words communicated through Computers or Mobiles that are still not so well-developed. That's why we have published this free and friendly telegram and computer application:

https://typedrawers.com/discussion/3631/flying-high-quranic-arabic-jawi-pegon-gundul-fonts

All the Best for All with Flowers. https://t.me/FlowerCrosswords

AzizMostafa AzizAli

On 26.06.2020, I received a worthy feedback in Jawi (Arabic-Based Malay) from a Malaysian teacher named Haj Hamdan Abdul Rahamn through the telegram (https://Telegram.org/) group: http://T.me/joinchat/A5lgLUKF8yLAIBj9FtoDBg.

Removing the dots from his reply, I launched this transliteration contest through (https://T.me/FonJawi/569).

Fortunately, last night,  a Malaysian teacher from Selangor responded through

http://T.me/joinchat/EUuPohpwg670h-aXbEL6Rw

Her name is Miss Afifah Tamyes and she has won a copy of QalamBatar (Attached QB-English)

Looking forward to translating her Romanized Malay transliteration through this contest https://T.me/FlowerCrosswords/72

All the Best for All with Flowers

AzizMostafa AzizAli

Hi Friends,

Looking forward to seeing the Cross of letters "f" & "t" and the dots of letters "i" & "j" replaced with the flower-like asterisk (*) .

So, why exchanging the Cross? Why not exchanging Flowers?

All the Best with Flowers

Thomas Phinney

AzizMostafa AzizAli said:

Hi Friends,

Looking forward to seeing the Cross of letters "f" & "t" and the dots of letters "i" & "j" replaced with the flower-like asterisk (*) .

So, why exchanging the Cross? Why not exchanging Flowers?

All the Best with Flowers

Certainly, you could do that for fun or as an experiment.

But your new t and i would look awfully similar to each other. And just generally making these four letters more similar to each other when before they were in two pairs, is probably not going to be good for legibility. (Although I guess they will all be less like any other letters, so that is a plus.)

John Savard

Adam Jagosz said:

AzizMostafa said:

@ To make it look Arabic and more confusing?! Or just to make fun of Arabic dots?!

Yes, exactly that.

Since he presented two opposing possibilities, that is not actually an illuminating answer.

Why do people use typefaces which resemble the script of a different language?

The most common reason is to indicate that a product or service is related to the culture that uses that language. Thus, for example, a restaurant that serves Chinese food might use a typeface constructed from brushstrokes, resembling those from which Chinese characters are drawn, for the sign giving the name of the restaurant.

That way, the restaurant is saying "I am Chinese" without the sign being in Chinese, which the customers they hoping to attract cannot read.

So the intent isn't to make fun of the Chinese writing system, nor is it to confuse those who are reading the sign.

AzizMostafa AzizAli

Thomas Phinney said:

Certainly, you could do that for fun or as an experiment.

But your new t and i would look awfully similar to each other. And just generally making these four letters more similar to each other when before they were in two pairs, is probably not going to be good for legibility. (Although I guess they will all be less like any other letters, so that is a plus.)

Ya, worth experimenting! 

In addition to t and i, have you not regarded how words with double t and double f will look like?!  Wont they fly high flowers as Arabic does with its petal-like letters, especially (هـ)?

https://Typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/43808#Comment_43808

Hope that will be promising for legibility!