We dot the y


I am preparing now textures with letters for our toy with words. But such games have one peculiarity: if you don’t translate the game into any language, you don’t see purchases from native speakers of this language. Therefore, the release of the game will be localized in 42 languages. These are many, many different letters, each of which is processed in Photoshop and inserted into the texture, the place in which is worth its weight in gold. We have to delve into the structure of modern alphabets in order to take only those letters that are really needed in modern words.

Having plunged into this process, I discovered for myself how much the phrase “dot the and” is not complete. The points are far from being placed not only on top.

The number of spellings of Latin letters in Unicode is truly great. There are no dashes, dots and squiggles next to the letters. These are mainly diacritical signs showing that this letter must be read somehow differently. As a rule, over time, the number of diacritics in languages ​​decreases. People try to simplify the alphabet. Is it possible that after centuries of simplifying alphabets there are still unusual options? Yes, and some more!

Let's start with the letter i . The phrase "dot the I" was born in the Middle Ages, when scribes copied texts in italics - without breaking the pen. Wherein:

  • The letter i without a dot (just a short stick) merged with other letters, so they began to highlight it with a dot on top.
  • Since the word was often written together, all the points were placed after writing the main part of the word.

So this phrase-proverb originated, which means the completeness of some action or the absence of an unspecified, etc. Let's see how words with the letter i are written without dots and the same words, but with dots over i . Does it really make sense at these points?


Although the clerks were unlikely to write these very words, the dots clearly help to make out short sticks. Are there two points over i ? Yes, in French the letter ï is still used.


In Russian, the letter i was used before the 1918 reform. Moreover, there was a time when it was written with two dots! It turns out that in Russian, too, dotted the And. And here is another interesting point: the letter s used to consist of two letters: ъi . Therefore, we can say that the scribes dotted the letter Y !

There are languages ​​where you have to place a lot of points. Among the languages ​​I dealt with, Finnish is the leader in the number of dots above. Look here:


Three words and 26 dots above the letters! But the points are not only set on top. For example, in Catalan, a period can be put between the letters of a single word.


They put a point on top, put it on the side, do not put it on the bottom? In Vietnamese pose!


The Vietnamese language, by the way, is well suited if you want to draw a lot of beautiful squiggles in Latin letters. Well, isn’t it fine?


In addition to points, there are many other letter modifications, such as strikethrough. Maybe some letters in themselves are not liked by native speakers and this rejection is expressed in strikethrough. See for yourself:


This is of course a joke, in each language the story of the appearance of crossed out letters is different.

In the Cyrillic alphabet there are also interesting modifications of letters. For example, in the Kazakh language, some consonants have legs! The letters D , C and U are also present in the Russian alphabet , but this is somehow familiar, but the asymmetrical leg of the letters K and H is unusual.


Learning alphabets is a surprisingly exciting experience. As if plunging into other worlds. Perhaps in my next life I could very well become a linguist, but for now I need to “dot all the S” - finish preparing the texture 2048x2048 with letters and finish the game itself.

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