My name is David

A very good friend has discovered some kind of neat new toy and he's been introducing me to Farsi as it is written. Given that he's a very private person, I'm a bit torn about naming him, so I won't (public writing about even mildly personal information throws up these issues from time to time — lots of fodder for the sociologists and lawyers). Some will know him, some will not. It matters little in the end.

There's a wonderful flow to many (if not most) words and even names. It just looks so loose and fluid. Like many eastern scripts, it brings up images of high quality paper, quill and ink along with a steady and well practiced hand. Unfortunately David, or the Hebrew version (da-vod, if I've got it right; which often as not I don't) isn't exactly a flowing thing of beauty, but it's mine and I'm happy to have it.

I know some people with wonderful, nearly example level cursive handwriting. My Mom's shorthand was a thing of beauty (and I sometimes wish I'd learned it). It does seem to me that these kinds of abilities are dying out. One could argue that the western move to print things also moved us toward our current relatively boring, easily engineered vector based type. It's easy to read and reproduce, but no longer visually impressive.

And the rest of us?

I can only speak directly to what I know. My own writing skills have declined appreciably. It's a sad, sad thing. I used to be able to do relatively precise lettering at about a 7 point font... now I can barely scrawl on a white board.

And my children? Oh my! It's a good thing they've grow up in a world where most of their actual wrist and ink based writing will be based on scrawling a signature somewhere. Anything more in depth is probably asking too much.