On Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:31:44 -0400, Anton Sherwood <bronto@...>
wrote:

> A foreigner cannot readily tell what's essential and what's analogous to
> serifs. (Hilariously, I've seen more than one Angerthas font in which
> the dots separating groups of runes in Tolkien's chart are included as
> part of an adjacent glyph.)

You remind me of a record store back when bins of 12-in (~30 cm) vinyl LPs
were browsable. One store had transcribed the name of an LP [publisher]by
hand lettering (all capitals, no less!) onto a tab at the top of a stiff
divider between LP's from diffecrent companies. IIrc, the company's logo
resembled this, typographically:
COMPAGNIE
FRANÇAISE
DU SON
(Positioning of the 3rd line is approximate)

Well, that was transcribed onto the divider tab all in one line, or
possibly two. The cedilla of the Ç, carefully written, had migrated to the
top of the S!

Story has it (details unconfirmed) that when the rock band Mötley Crüe
began a show in Germany, the audience (in a cheerful mood) started
chanting the band's name, following German pronunciation. ( I find that
"...üe" awkward; of course, it's probably never found in German.)

Some time ago, I was horrified at the indiscriminate and utterly-ignorant
misuse of diacritics (meaningless decoratives) in the company name of
JĀSÖN [cosmetics]; wrote them a courteous letter, hard-hitting but polite.
(I have long forgetten what absurdity they originally had.)

> Nakanishi's slim /Writing Systems of the World/

Oh, my! I used to own a copy; hope I still have it. I loved that book. It
was a time decades before WWS.
(Full(er) name is Akira Nakanisihi; iirc, he is/was a well-to-do
businessman (publisher?) who has a private collection of manuscripts and
other specimens. Imho, he's an independent scholar. I just Googled on his
name -- ~2.8 million hits...)

Best regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley _.=|*|=._ Waltham, Mass.
Dilettante independent scholar