Re: Another explanation for dain daiin...

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Not unless the VMS is older than we think. There is
> a squiggle in Chinese which means "repeat the 
> previous character". There is one in Japanese [...]
>  And the modern "simplified
> characters" are nothing but an adaptation of the
> cursive script [...]
> Ancient Egyptian hieratic and demotic are likewise
>  "data-compressed" hieroglyphs.
> [...] Closer to us, you often see a "2" in
> Indonesian and in Malay, which just means "repeat
> the previous word." It comes in handy when you have 
> to write "mahasiswa-mahasiswa,
> mahasiswi-mahasiswi" [...] it's borrowed from
> Sanskrit, of course).

As in Thai, where you have a 'repeat last word'
squiggle, and another one which means 'etc.'.
The former would not score very high in a character
frequency count. It might occur once or twice per
page. The latter is essentially only used in the
name of the country's capital. This writing system
dates from 1283. Again, lots of it borrowed from
Sanskrit.

FWIW, Rene

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