In "A Parliament of Rooks," when Daniel walks into the Dreaming, the Alphabet on his wall changes into another script. Is this an actual alphabet, and can anyone identify it?

Hmm I checked my copy and it seems that the alphabet consists mostly of misshapen and slightly warped versions of Greek and Latin characters. There seems to be an alpha, delta and a phi turned to the side and used as part of other letters, there is also a Cyrillic (g) used as part of the Latin (R) although it probably has it’s roots in Greek as well. There are a few umlauts (sp?) floating around, but everything is pretty identifiable and there seems to be no hidden meaning behind the positions and shapes.

P.S. This is my first post on this forum (although I've been lurking for quite some time) Let me take this opportunity to say what a wonderful bunch of hopeless geeks you all are, and what an honor it was to eavesdrop on your learned discussions. Thank you and may whatever god or anthropomorphic personification of an idea you happen to believe/imagine bless you

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Oprion,

Thanks, Oprion! Welcome to the board! have a sticker!

im an idiot that doesnt know anything that has a quick question (just to get that out of the way) i have not been able to find or read the "Parliament of Rooks"..
i was wondering why the birds that are surrounding the lone one in the middle, will either attack or fly away (as one)??

Oh, now that would be telling! The story Parliment Of Rooks which we're discussing is in the sixth collection of The Sandman called Fable & Reflections, which may be at a library if you're lucky, or may almost definately read while sitting at any good sized book shop. Neil's answer is found at the end of the story

And welcome to the boards! go down to World's End to say hi!

People have been KILLED for answering that question, hawk.

In the Sandman annotations (http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~wald/sandman-index.html) it says that various other such collectives are in current usage. This intrigued me. Can any of the native speakers here think of any more such collective nouns? (Parliament of rooks, murder of crows...) And just HOW current are those? Would you use them in every-day conversation?