[cairo] Serious concerns about cairo

[Ralph Giles]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 10:02:12PM -0700, Mike Emmel wrote:

> http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/demotic
> 
> Says its Greek :)

Oh yes. I didn't mention it because I don't know enough Greek to argue 
for the proper english spelling. Hieroglyphic is a greek word too :)

> Is cool actually has a fragment of the language if that doesn't it look
> similar to Arabic  even though its not claimed to be and ancestor language 
> for
> Arabic. I wonder if it had more influence on modern scripts such as
> arabic and hebrew then is acknowledged.

I'd not thought of that, but there is some calligraphic similarity. The 
writing systems are quite different though and I don't think they 
much overlapped temporally. Wikipedia claims that the arabic alphabet 
does derive originally from hieroglyphs (just like all the other 
alphabetic scripts, but unlike the abjad and alphabetic scripts, demotic 
retains the multiliteral and ideographic symbols from the classical 
hieroglyphic system.

Cheers,
 -r