Ancient Gothic

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PJMiller
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Ancient Gothic

Post by PJMiller »

I decided to take a break from placing anchors and have populated the 'Gothic' block of the new font (just the Roman so far).

Most of the characters were simple to do except for the character 'Othal' $10349. There is a picture of it in the Unicode Code Charts, but I also downloaded a scan of a page from the Wulfila Bible written in the fifth century in Gothic script. The characters on the page are a little different from the Unicode standard but the 'Othal' character is substantially different.

Also the 'Dags' character ($10333) is quite different.

Who is the greater expert on Gothic script, the Unicode committee or a scribe from the fifth century writing in his native language?

Maybe I will make the character half way between the two.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter?
MikeW
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by MikeW »

Pick up 5 works from different monasteries and likely there would be 5 versions of most all glyphs. I vote for making it your own unless you are producing a reproduction of that work.
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

PJMiller wrote:Who is the greater expert on Gothic script, the Unicode committee or a scribe from the fifth century writing in his native language?
The Unicode committee without a doubt. They have the benefit of hindsight and can look at manuscripts from different regions produced over many centuries. However, what Mike said.

The fonts from Pia Frauss may offer you some inspiration.
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PJMiller
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by PJMiller »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: The fonts from Pia Frauss may offer you some inspiration.
Looks like an interesting site, I will take a look later, right now I have to go to work.
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by honest.bern »

Follow the Codex Argenteus.

It is 30-odd years since I took the optional Gothic Language paper in finals, so I may have missed discoveries since then, but part of what made Gothic so easy was that there just wasn’t very much material. The Goths simply did not leave much written in Wulfila’s script (or any other).

If you want to vary the design, I would say: consider why the Gothic alphabet looks the way it does. Wulfila’s design is an uncial script because Greek bibles were written in Greek uncials. Modern cyrillic letters developed from a unicameral uncial script, just like Gothic. Robert Pfeffer’s Gothic fonts might give inspiration of how uncials could have developed into upper- and lower-case.
PJMiller
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by PJMiller »

I have (as always) done my own thing. I was just asking to see what other people do.

Yes I understand that old handwritten text varies quite a lot, especially as in those times there weren't many people who could read and write so one individual with a different style could have a disproportionately large influence over the way a language was written. I know that the style of writing varied over time and between regions, sometimes these were very big differences.

For instance in the Runic block there are two different versions of several glyphs reflecting the fact that there were different versions of the language in different regions.

But also the Unicode committee are not infallible, look at Armenian. The font in the Unicode Armenian block looks nothing like the text used in Armenia. It is as if they had used a Sans Serif Heavily Italicised decorative font for the Basic Latin block.
Last edited by Bhikkhu Pesala on Sun Nov 27, 2016 2:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Fixed typos
Dave Crosby
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by Dave Crosby »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:
PJMiller wrote:Who is the greater expert on Gothic script, the Unicode committee or a scribe from the fifth century writing in his native language?
The Unicode committee without a doubt. They have the benefit of hindsight and can look at manuscripts from different regions produced over many centuries. However, what Mike said.

The fonts from Pia Frauss may offer you some inspiration.
I had lost contact with Pia. THANK YOU!

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Lesley Prince
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by Lesley Prince »

'Ancient Gothic'? Are you talking about runes? If so, the major problem is that there are several runic 'alphabets' developed throughout the Scandinavian world at different times and places. Also, even if someone was working to, say, the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, they may well use idiosyncratic forms of the known characters. The Unicode block covers most variants, but even then there are several variants that they have (inevitably) missed. The problem is exacerbated when it is realised that sometimes one rune form may turn up in different futharks with differing sound values.
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PJMiller
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Re: Ancient Gothic

Post by PJMiller »

Gothic is not the same as runic.

The runes come from an earlier period and a different location.

Gothic is an ancient germanic language.
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