Not Non-Latin (and not Latin either)

[paul d hunt]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I'm sure this must have come up before here on Typophile, but I'm not sure even how to google this topic, so I'm starting a fresh discussion. (If you can find an old one to point me to, I'd be glad to read that too) So here's the question:

What is a better term (if any) for Non-Latin scripts without using 'non' or 'Latin' to qualify them? I typically think of 'other' scripts as 'exotic', but I feel that maybe even that is a bit ethnocentric. Is there a solution to this dilemma?

[hrant]

Personally I've come to terms (pardon the pun) with it.
In fact that "non" can be a great motivator.

hhp

[Si_Daniels]

Non-Latin seems far less loaded than non-English or non-Western. How about, "beyond Latin", and as 99% of international fonts include basic Latin support, maybe "Latin plus..." or CP1252+?

Also Adobe doesn't need a phrase for this. A cute little shaded icon set in Adobe Gauge is what's needed, right? ;-)

[Dunwich Type]

I don’t really see non-Latin as ethnocentric; it’s simply a fact that those other writing systems are non-Latin. It’s not as if the Latin alphabet is limited to any particular nation or ethnicity.

[paul d hunt]

I'm curious, do speakers of, say Russian, refer to types as non-Cyrillic? I'm guessing that non-whatever is based on what language/script is being used.
Also, please do not confuse my personal views, discussions as originating from Adobe.

[Si_Daniels]

>Also, please do not confuse my personal views, discussions as originating from Adobe.

Sorry :-( your picture made me think you might be wearing your Adobe hat.

[paul d hunt]

nope, just a pixel-stetson

[Nick Shinn]

Why do you need to use the term at all?
Why not just refer specifically to whatever scripts you're talking about?

***

Is there a term that groups the Cyrillic-Greek-Latin triad of scripts?

[hrant]

The reason why non-Latin can often be a useful term where for example non-Cyrillic rarely can is that type production and typographic education has been so Latin-centric. That's why many of us speak of the problem of Latinization but very few people complain about Latin fonts that are made to look Russian for example.

hhp

[John Hudson]

Because of the way in which I work, and the way in which Tiro is organised, I'm blessed not to have to worry about such terminology: we do multiscript type design, and Latin is just one of the scripts. The relative importance of one script over another is project-specific, not part of our general outlook. Sometimes, a client needs a typeface in which one script ‘sets the tone’, as it were, for harmonised companions, but we don't have a Latin type department and a Non-Latin type department. It is in the latter situation that I think the term originated. Traditionally, type manufacturers and typesetters alike, in Europe and the Americas, have distinguished between ‘our typography’ and ‘everyone else's typography’, with the latter sometimes referred to as non-Latin and sometimes as exotics.

Hrant, I don't think using the term non-Latin ever stopped anyone from Latinising a ‘non-Latin’ script. Rather, it maintains a status quo in which the identity of other writing systems are expressed relative to Latin.

Paul, I would look at it this way: if you find yourself needing a term with which to refer to ‘everyone else’s typography’ maybe you need to reorganise the way in which you work. When you lose the need for such a term, you can be fairly confident that you are treating the typographic citizens of the world as equals.

[hrant]

John, I didn't mean that the term "non-Latin" has affected how much Latinization has gone on; I meant that the existence of the term and the general perceptions of cultural migration in type are related. So if we accept that the latter exists, it makes sense that the former does too.

hhp

[Si_Daniels]

>Cyrillic-Greek-Latin

"Pan-European", "WGL4", but these exclude Vietnamese and African languages to name but two

Cheers, Si

[charles_e]

Well, if it is the "non" that is bothersome, yet you have a need to speak of them as a common group, you could say "scripts that do not use the Latin alphabet." That is about all they have in common, no?

Now for the problem of the set of all sets . . .

[Maxim Zhukov]

• I typically think of ‘other’ scripts as ‘exotic’, but I feel that maybe even that is a bit ethnocentric.

‘Other’? Other than what? ‘Exotic’... (‘bizarre’? ‘weird’?). Are you joking? ‘Peculiar’ is another great way to define them non-Latins:

‘As we have divisions of mankind, so we also have similar divisions among letters. In general, type faces take five forms, as follows: Gothic, Roman, Italic, Block and Script. These five are the basis of all type faces, except in those languages like Hebrew and Russian, which have peculiar styles of their own.’ [A Manual of Style, Containing Typographical and Other Rules for Authors, Printers and Publishers, Recommended by the University of Chicago Press, Together with Specimens of Type. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949.]

I personally find the above entry to the Chicago Style Manual unbeatable.

• In fact that “non” can be a great motivator.

Definition by the absence of something is hardly reliable. Besides, there is always something disparaging about such definitions. Unfortunately, that was the pattern for centuries: infidel, non-white, un-american, unchristened, sans-culotte, etc.

• I’m curious, do speakers of, say Russian, refer to types as non-Cyrillic?

I do, on occasion.

• Is there a term that groups the Cyrillic-Greek-Latin triad of scripts?

I use ‘LGC’ (cf. ‘CJK’).

[Si_Daniels]

LGC isn't unheard of, but the order of the languages could be seen as a "ranking", as is sometimes the case with CJK.

[Maxim Zhukov]

• LGC isn’t unheard of, but the order of the languages could be seen as a “ranking”, as is sometimes the case with CJK.

Of course, when it comes to ‘LGC’ (or ‘GLC’) we are talking scripts, not languages, so the potential problems with ‘ranking’ could only relate to the genetic seniority, which is pretty obvious, not the perceived superiority. From the oldest—the ‘G’—to the youngest, the ‘C’. I don’t see it as an issue.

[Si_Daniels]

>I don’t see it as an issue.

Maybe, but between language, culture, type, there's plenty of room for people to get offended.

[hrant]

> Are you joking?

Why would he be? "Exotic" is a common synonym
for non-Latin. In fact at least one font classification
system uses that (although I forget which it was).

BTW I'm currently working on a commission involving
Cyrillic and Armenian fonts, and the subject line of the
client's emails is "exotic fonts"!

"Peculiar" BTW suffers from being already used in type,
to mean -loosely- non-alphanumeric metal sorts (and by
extension glyphs). Being old-fashioned, I've used it here:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/manademo/

> Definition by the absence of something is hardly reliable.

Reliability is only one factor, and nothing exists without
its opposite. In my case that "non" does in fact motivate me,
in giving me something to counteract, to refute, to improve.

hhp

[John Hudson]

Charles: you could say “scripts that do not use the Latin alphabet.”

I don't see what one gains from such an awkward formula. In any case, I would only use the phrase ‘the Latin alphabet’ to refer to the subset of letters used to write the Latin language and their order (as I refer to the English alphabet or the Finnish alphabet, etc.). What we call the Latin script would be better called the Roman script, but ‘Latin script’ is too ingrained in our usage for even me to try to change it.

[paul d hunt]

not that i use any of these terms except when trying to write or talk about certain things, i definitely don't think in any of these terms because i don't believe that thinking is in words. but i was missing having some engaging (for me) discussion on typophile and it's always insightful to hear all your thoughts.

[charles_e]

I don’t see what one gains from such an awkward formula.

Yes, that was my point.

[Florian Hardwig]

The DIN classification scheme has a – quite ethnocentric – extra group: Gruppe XI: Fremde Schriften [foreign scripts]. There is an issue of Spatium magazine dedicated to this questionable dump drawer.

[Nick Shinn]

I started out doing fonts in the Latin script, although I didn't think of them as such -- I just produced the standard encoding in my neck of the woods, at the time.

When Adobe started bundling fonts with Greek and Cyrillic characters, I decided to give it a try (not the bundling!)
My relationship with the Greek and Cyrillic scripts has become too intimate for me to think of them as "non-" anything, they are Greek and Cyrillic.

At the ATypI conference in St Petersburg, I realized on numerous occasions that many of the Russians I was speaking with about type knew far less about the "exotica" of Cyrillic than I had recently learned, for instance, its history, and non-Russian Cyrillic characters, such as the Big Yus that Maxim had persuaded me to include in my fonts--one fellow though it was a funny looking Zhe.
Another young designer thought the 19th century form of lower case "p", with its forked extenders, was unusable today: a good understanding for me to have, but I explained to him that an authentic revival shouldn't have anachronisms--so this is the same situation I face in my own script culture, where there is often a tendency to compromise otherness, to make it more acceptable to convention.

[hrant]

> there is often a tendency to compromise otherness, to make it more acceptable to convention.

Good point. And it's worth pointing out that most non-Latin scripts have less of this baggage than Latin (which can be both good and bad - it depends how you use that).

hhp

[William Berkson]

Paul, I wonder if the CNN solution might work. They refer to everything as "International" and then label each country by name, the US, France, China, etc. Usually by 'International' CNN means non-American, but it's sufficiently flexible as to not alienate non-American viewers by calling them 'foreigner' in their own countries. It seems to work pretty well.

Incidentally I heard that CNN will fine a newscaster if they use the word 'foreign' instead of 'international'.

So International Scripts, and then Latin, Greek, Arabic, Chinese, etc. Then if you want to you can label groups positively: European scripts (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic), East Asian (CJK), South Asian, Semitic, etc. Also if you know you are discussing with other native readers of a particular script, I don't see anything wrong with non-latin, non-cyrillic, etc.