Eclectic Echoes

The British National Archives has a great section of their site with a tutorial on Palaeography — reading old handwriting, 1500 to 1800. (I thought I had found this by way of Journalisimo, or Moleskinerie, but I can’t seem to find it mentioned at either one now…maybe it was ??? ) Included in the lessons are a number of documents from their collection with interactive transcription tests. You are presented with the document line by line and given a text box to enter the transcription into, which is then checked for accuracy.

As I was exploring this, my 4 year old came over and thought it was a great game. He picked up his magnifying glass and started “helping” me make the transcriptions and asking me about the document. After explaining that these were images of very old writings and how writing has evolved over time, he caught right on — in fact he took over. Now his homepage includes links to the palaeogrphy page right beside Disney, PBSKids and Nick Jr.

We have turned the easier pages (a bit subversively) into a writing exercise. Johann is given the page to be transcribed (printed from the provided PDF) and then writes out each line in one of his notebooks. My wife or I then check his transcription, not so much for accuracy of the transcription as for his own letterforms.

It has turned into a wonderful tool, since he views it as a bit of detective work and enjoys the entire process. I was a little concerned at first that the old letterforms and spelling might be distracting or even undermine his own lettering. Fortunately, that has not proven to be the case. He already has a solid writing foundation and understands that these are old forms and no longer accepted in general writing. I do fear that we may have introduced him to ligatures a bit prematurely and may be seeing them in his own writing in the future — but is that really such a bad thing?

He is a bit thrown (as am I at times) by the interchangeable use of “u” and “v” or “i” and “j”. Some of the abbreviations — ommitting an “m” or “n” by putting a wavy line above the preceeding vowel — also give him a bit of a pause. Then again he does understand that “ye” is not “y” and “e” but is really the old english y-form of “Þ” and “e”. Þ (the character thorn) is pronounced “th”, so when we see “Ye” on modern signs they really mean “Þe” which is really “the” and is pronounced thē or thə not yē.

On a side note, am I mistaken or is there no SGML character entity for e-macron (ē) or schwa (ə) ?
Surely with their heavy use for liguistic purposes this is an oversight?