[KS] Writing in Blocks

[CHIRKOV D S]

Writing systems must be evaluated primarily or two things: economy and 
efficiency.

This is to be distinguished from linguistic implications of economy of 
sound, such as the Chinese use of tones.

An ideal writing system, is economical in length of strokes, and 
efficient in putting them together, all for the purpose of saving space 
while at the same time achieving rapid comprehension when being read 
back.

Whenever any serious writing was to be undertaken in Roman, Greek, or 
Cyrillic, scribes have always resorted to shorthand, abbreviations, and 
other devices, such as ligatures and titlo, as much as possible. 
Despite this, the Roman script, fine for making inscriptions on stone, 
took hold in Europe, and due to conservatism, is still with us in all 
its manifestations. It is by design, highly inefficient.

Indic scripts such as Devanagari take into account the longer  length 
of Indo-European words, and ancient scholars devised a system that was 
optimal in stacking consonants on top of each other, using the 
‘built-in-by-default’ vowel ‘a’, combining CCV into one unit, etc. 
Writing the Vedas in Roman script would be such as waste of ink and 
paper.

Korean hangul combines sounds in a way that is even more systematic 
than Devanagari.

In short: a Korean syllable ‘block’ of is more efficient and conveys 
more linguistic data than any Roman letter.
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