Monday, February 9

We discussed in class early alphabets and how they were important to civilizations, such as allowing information to travel faster and other people being able to read and learn how to write. Alphabets were easier to work with since there were fewer characters to remember and they were more simplistic. We also pointed out differences in the styles of the letters between different cultures, like the Greeks and Romans. Both were geometric based forms, but the Romans had the serif. We also talked about how Hangul was formed, by the shapes the tongue makes in the mouth when forming the words, and that it was to combine the language and script the Koreans were using. I feel that the most useful thing I learned today was looking at the letter forms and really seeing the differences in the details, which matter. I felt that it was interesting that there were similarities between the ways the Romans and Greeks wrote their alphabet, but the difference was in the details.
After talking about different substrates, or what the letters were written on, I wondered why they chose baby animals, or just animals in general, to make their parchment out of?