Oh I should imagine so - the scribes would have naturally started to join the minims (unattached down strokes) together after a while. The join between one letter and the next is called the ligature, but I'm not sure what the overall term for joined up writing is, or if there even is one (I probably missed that class, or fell asleep ;)). Certain letters lend themselves to ligatures, while others don't - think about writing present day English, and how certain letters then to get left unattached. It'd be the same for writers using Ancient.
Also, the point you make about some letters being similar - in practice, this isn't so unusual, and is why we have so much trouble with medieval texts now. Certain letters can look very alike, which is why scribes brought in marks and accents, to show what word was intended. In order to decide how much of a problem this was for the users of the language, you need to decide what percentage of the population were funtionally literate - ie able to read and write with some degree of competence. If it's a largely spoken language, with writing only being used for record keeping, and by the scientific/intellectual elite, it wouldn't matter if there was some ideographic confusion because everyone would know what they meant from the context of the word, without being too bothered by its actual structure.
*blinks*
I may be in the running for a place in that hall myself... *hangs head*
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Date: 2008-04-10 05:04 pm (UTC)Also, the point you make about some letters being similar - in practice, this isn't so unusual, and is why we have so much trouble with medieval texts now. Certain letters can look very alike, which is why scribes brought in marks and accents, to show what word was intended. In order to decide how much of a problem this was for the users of the language, you need to decide what percentage of the population were funtionally literate - ie able to read and write with some degree of competence. If it's a largely spoken language, with writing only being used for record keeping, and by the scientific/intellectual elite, it wouldn't matter if there was some ideographic confusion because everyone would know what they meant from the context of the word, without being too bothered by its actual structure.
*blinks*
I may be in the running for a place in that hall myself... *hangs head*