Typophile

eastern western writing

designtn

On a recent trip my father made to Vietnam, he picked up an interesting piece of cultural artifact. He went to an institution where people wrote poems. I cannot think of an equivalent in Western culture.

This is written on a thin handkerchief—the image measuring approximately 6" x 6".

At first glance you would think the writing is Chinese calligraphy. It is not.
Rotate the image 90º counter clockwise and upon close examination, the writing is in Vietnamese (roman characters) calligraphy.
Though very tough to read for someone who is able to read Vietnamese.

I thought this piece of artifact is interesting because I have never seen a written language written to mimic another.

Here is the link
http://designtn.com/type/chinese_vietnamese.jpg

:tony

Riccardo Sartori

That's really fascinating!

Hrant H Papazian

Yes, quite interesting.

> I have never seen a written language written to mimic another.

Actually that happens often* but this is certainly an extreme case!

* http://www.flickr.com/photos/48413419@N00/266618453/

hhp

designtn

@hrant "I have never seen a written language written to mimic another."

I have seen it before but what I posted I think is very well executed.
I thought it was Chinese calligraphy until my father told me it's not.

bigbill

Sorry for posting this, it's really lame, but very similar to this actually!
http://static.funnyjunk.com/pictures/chinese.jpg

Riccardo Sartori

I would be curious to know how it's perceived by someone which is accustomed to chinese calligraphy.

ahyangyi

Compare the Chinese characters 本 and 事 to them, it's fun. By the way, the way to compose alphabetic letters vertically with a vertical baseline reminds me of Mongolian Script: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_alphabet .

Jabez

I would be curious to know how it's perceived by someone which is accustomed to chinese calligraphy.

At first glance (if I hadn't read the opening post), I'd have assumed they were traditional characters in a script that I'm unfamiliar with.

Note: I'm not "someone accustomed to chinese calligraphy". My thoughts are based on having studied Standard Script / 楷书 for two years for my GCE O'Levels. That was about 10 years ago.

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