Latin has seen better days

Now it is quite rare that I find something on the World Wide Web that is worth looking at and today I am writing about one of them. So, someone, I follow on Twitter discovered a new interesting project called “Dotsies” and after having a look at it – I have to say that I am very impressed. The idea behind the thing is simply to look at replacing the Latin script for reading. As you may know that the Latin script is now over 1000 years old and it has served its time well.

Having originally been designed to allow people to easily write, it takes up too much space today when devices are getting smaller and smaller. Dotsies are a little different to how the Arabic numbering system replaced the old roman numeral (such as how we write 12345 and not MMMMMMMMMMMMCCCXLV).

The main change as I am sure you have seen in the image above is that each letter has now been changed into dots (and a further small dot for capital letters). As I am sure you will see this ends up allowing more text to be displayed at any given time which is again useful for small devices. I am going to show you in a minute some sample text but remember that this is read exactly the same as English – nothing changes other than what is used to write the letter in the first place so all you need to learn is what dot is what which is something you could learn in 30 minutes if you put your mind to it.

Now here is the sample text or Lorem Ipsum who knows what it is used for?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque quis nulla nisl. Ut laoreet ullamcorper risus at vehicula. Nullam purus erat, bibendum non molestie eget, placerat ut dolor. Maecenas neque arcu, faucibus ac feugiat quis, mollis adipiscing mi. Sed tempus, mauris id dictum porta, nisi quam elementum metus, in dictum lorem erat vitae metus. Mauris augue erat, pellentesque a malesuada eget, ullamcorper aliquet leo. Vivamus placerat pharetra metus, sit amet feugiat nisi rutrum at. Fusce erat neque, blandit quis tincidunt at, vulputate non est. Nullam dapibus sapien ac odio viverra at vestibulum massa blandit. Nullam a ante felis, eu rutrum tortor.

Now the same again but this time using the Dotsies method.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque quis nulla nisl. Ut laoreet ullamcorper risus at vehicula. Nullam purus erat, bibendum non molestie eget, placerat ut dolor. Maecenas neque arcu, faucibus ac feugiat quis, mollis adipiscing mi. Sed tempus, mauris id dictum porta, nisi quam elementum metus, in dictum lorem erat vitae metus. Mauris augue erat, pellentesque a malesuada eget, ullamcorper aliquet leo. Vivamus placerat pharetra metus, sit amet feugiat nisi rutrum at. Fusce erat neque, blandit quis tincidunt at, vulputate non est. Nullam dapibus sapien ac odio viverra at vestibulum massa blandit. Nullam a ante felis, eu rutrum tortor.

Now I am sure two things just popped into your mind. The first is how are you even meant to be able to read it. First, when you are first learning it you would have the text larger until you get good at reading it at which point you then start to make it smaller and smaller like modern-day text (same way as when you learnt your first writing language).

The second thing you are likely thinking is how the hell you even learn to read it. Well, the good news due to you do not actually have to learn a new language – it is pretty easy. Pop over to Dotsies and with some effort and time you will be able to read it easily – I have and already working on getting my PDA to use this.

Any comments, spam them below. I have added a new CSS class so if you want to use it in your comments and everything then go right ahead. Oh and no, I am not going to be writing using Dotsies yet. I might actually whack up a copy of this website so you can read it like that soon.