Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Alphabets


Aging is a pesky thing

Having a great desire to understand the world about me, I did in my youth become familiar with the Greek alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet and the the Cyrillic alphabet (Russia).  To my regret, however I never did learn Devanagari (India), which looks rather pretty. 

I have minor qualifications in Italian and German so I find that I can have a fair stab at understanding something in a European language as long as I can read the alphabet.  That is assisted by the fact that most languages these days have borrowed heavily from English

But in my late '70s I have lost most of that.  I can still read Greek with difficulty but that's about it.  And I can with patience look up a Russian dictionary because Cyrillic is based on Greek.

But now that I have a patriotic Serb in my life, I am trying to relearn Cyrillic.  I recently sent her an email in Cyrillic.  It is below:

драга
добро јутро
ај лове ју
Џон 

And I am pleased to note that one of the characters in it is a Serbian one -- not part of standard Cyrillic

The message was warmly received



1 comment:

  1. Good for you being a life-long learner! I am writing from Boston and I taught high school and college writing. I am writing a memoir. Good luck to you!

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