Anyone mind if I put a "writing in tongues" question up ?
Yesterday I had an odd but interesting conversation with a man who is half french, half lebanese. He speaks and writes both french and arabic as a native, and was educated in both languages. His written arabic is beautiful - elegant, graceful and very stylish. His written french and english is hideous - a whole genus of dead spiders being smeared lopsidely across the page.
He says that he started his education in France, and learnt to write first in the latin alphabet. At that point his handwriting was OK, but then the family moved back to Lebanon and arabic became his primary script. As his hand adapted to writing in arabic his latin style deteriorated to its current lack of grace.
He reckons that the two writing styles are so mutually incompatible that one person cannot have attractive handwriting in both, and that one must overide the other.
What do you reckon. Is this a singular personal experience, or is it a general theory ?
I don't see how they're mutually incompatible at all--just different.
Could the Arab use of calligraphy as an art form have something to do with it? I mean, perhaps Lebanese schools place more emphasis on developing neat, attractive handwriting than European or American schools do.
I know plenty of people who write beautifully in English and Chinese - two completely different systems. I don't think it has anything to do with 'incompatibility' of writing systems but more to do with individual ability.
The explanation sounds very strange to me. Learning how to write is a matter of developing fine motor skills. Once you have them, you can use them to write. If you learn to write in a new alphabet, it is awkward at first, but with enough practice you should be able to write like a native (for lack of better terminology...). Now, it might be conceivable that the directional differences (left vs. right) are causing the variations in his handwriting. I don't think the various styles of the alphabets attribute to his "problem".
I somehow feel there must be an underlying reason. Does he have strong empathy or antipathy towards one language or its speakers? It seems very strange to me that someone who has the appropriate motor skills produces such different results, as you say.
There is an interesting chapter in "The Witch of Portobello" by Paulo Coelho, where Athena (the main character in the book), takes lessons of Arabic calligraphy in Lebanon. She's been brought up by Lebanese parents, in London.
A short excerpt:
<blockquote>Quote
<hr>The first lesson, and perhaps the most difficult, was: ‘Patience!’
Writing wasn’t just the expression of a thought, but a way of reflecting on the meaning of each word. […] ...and now I’m being forced to do the most difficult thing in the world – slow down. Why is patience so important?’
‘Because it makes us pay attention.’
<hr></blockquote>
I used to blame my study of Middle English for bad spelling and my study of Arabic for my lousy (English) handwriting.
I would have used better excuses if I'd had any handy, but these were the best available.
I think russians have much lower tolerance for untidy handwriting than in the UK. In the soviet days, schools spent a lot of time getting everyone's letters the same height, neat hooks etc.
If i have to sign my name in cyrillic (for example, on a list of volunteers or a log book) my handwriting always looks far worse than everyone else's (all the others being soviet-educated). Yet in the UK my handwriting is averagely bad - not conspicuously worse than everyone else's.
Compare my cyrillic writing to my latin writing and, viewed objectively, they're both as tidy as each other. But Russia has much higher standards of handwriting generally, giving them yet another reason to despise me.
from my own experience i would say that my hebrew handwriting is pretty good...
but that's because i had to do a lot of writing my reports and correspondence in
longhand so my secretary could correct and type them out... meanwhile for the
past 30 years i almost never needed handwritten english... i type it out since i
usually email... so my english cursive has deteriorated to the level of a primary
school kid...
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