March 16, 2008
Tibetanized Roman Letters
While reading about the on-going uprising in Tibet against the Chinese occupation, I came across a number of nice examples of Roman letters styled to resemble Tibetan writing. Here is one:
Update: Several readers have noticed that the "Tibetanized" letters are really "Devanagarized". That is true, but I think that the intention is to make the letters look Tibetan. The visual impression of Devanagari and Tibetan is similar, especially to the eye of people who don't actually know one or the other. If you have fonts for both, here's a comparison. This is the Tibetan word chos "dharma" in Tibetan letters: ཆོས. This is how it looks written in Devanagari: चोस्.
I suspect that the reason is a matter of font availability. Fonts containing Devanagarized roman letters are readily available; one such is Samarkan, which Partha Talukdar suggests is the font used in this example. To my knowledge,Tibetanized Roman letters are not so readily available.
Posted by Bill Poser at March 16, 2008 02:43 AM