According to an interesting article I read today on Facebook, a new typeface has been developed recently for Welsh.
The typeface was commissioned by the Welsh government, and is called Cymru Wales. It includes digraphs for double letters like dd, ll and rh, and is used by Transport for Wales / Trafnidiaeth Cymru, who run the trains in Wales.
It was designed by Smörgåsbord, a Dutch design studio with a Swedish name and offices in Cardiff. It is based partly on the styles of handwriting used in old Welsh manuscripts, such as the Black Book of Carmarthen / Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin and the Red Book of Hergest / Llyfr Coch Hergest, and was also inspired by other scripts such as Icelandic and Arabic.
Here are some examples:
[Source]
I haven’t found anywhere to get hold of the typeface yet.
Do you know of other typefaces that have been developed for specifically languages recently?
You can get it from here – https://vk.com/topic-178186634_39300099?post=7596 (or type here https://vk.com/board178186634 these – Cymru Sans & Wales Sans)
I see the lower-case “d” looks a lot like an ð Eth without the crossbar.
I have seen the double L in Unicode, but I don’t recall any letters “dd” or “rh”. Do these exist outside the BMP?
Robert – those letters only exist in the font, I think. They’re not part of Unicode.
Double ‘d’ looks like a pair of spectacles!
There seems to be no zero and no upper case ligature for double in this typeface.
There is a zero, and upper case ligatures – they’re just not shown in the image.