Our sounding boards

Indian signs deploy cool tricks to make sounds work across scripts. An L dangles, an S curves. It all weaves into a symphony

- TANYA GEORGE

Weird things happen when you make words work across scripts.

The letter W gets its name from the French double v é (pronounced doo-bluh-vay), which translates to “double v”, which is exactly what it looks like. Now try and match that sound in Marathi. It requires some more letterforms and some matras that don't connect well if you don't have a good font. These connections used to be easier to write and paint. But these days, even hand-painters are influenced by digital font templates. This is more likely to crop up in North Indian languages, as in the Hussunally and Company sign in Hindi and Bangla, where the shirorekha does not connect. The letters were carved into wood separately and then arranged on site.