Re: Strokes per character. I would expect the number of strokes in a character to correlate with the frequency of use of the character, i.e., more frequently used characters having fewer strokes.
Looking at the English alphabet though, I note that the character complexity in terms of my own writing speed doesn’t really vary that much at all. I wonder if it would apply to logographic languages better, where more strokes/character are required.
Existing letter forms were driven by the incentive structures of times long gone. The desire for greater speed strikes me as a recent requirement, not that I know anything about the subject.
As I understand it, in times gone by, logographic writing was considered an art form. More strokes would provide greater opportunity to show one's skill.
Great work!
I am doing a study in this line. I am a Neuroscientist.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and wishing you the best!
Kind regards
A fun article.
Re: Strokes per character. I would expect the number of strokes in a character to correlate with the frequency of use of the character, i.e., more frequently used characters having fewer strokes.
Oh yes, that makes much more sense than what I said. I only have access to the overall average though so I can’t check that
Thinking about it more, word frequency will have a big impact for alphabetic languages and some impact for non-logogram languages.
Lots of sites list language letter frequencies.
Detailed English word frequency data https://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/
Non-English corpora https://web.archive.org/web/20060207144812/http://devoted.to/corpora
Looking at the English alphabet though, I note that the character complexity in terms of my own writing speed doesn’t really vary that much at all. I wonder if it would apply to logographic languages better, where more strokes/character are required.
Existing letter forms were driven by the incentive structures of times long gone. The desire for greater speed strikes me as a recent requirement, not that I know anything about the subject.
As I understand it, in times gone by, logographic writing was considered an art form. More strokes would provide greater opportunity to show one's skill.