From Newsgroup: sci.lang

Yesterday I saw the Mainland Chinese movie G+2 Zh|| Y-2 Zh|4 (o!nu|?E+CuA+)
aka _No More Bets_, which deals with human trafficking of Chinese
nationals to scam centers in SE Asia and the scams propagated from
there against Chinese victims. (It's a real world problem; the BBC occasionally reports on it.)

The movie is set in a fictional country. What quickly tipped me
off was the fictitious script displayed on various signs. Or so
I thought. Various references on the Internet suggest that Khmer
script was used in the movie. Except that it doesn't look like
Khmer to me, or any of the scripts in that area. But then again,
Latin letters come in all sorts of fanciful typefaces.

Here are two screenshots:

Road signage:
https://shell.uugrn.org/~naddy/nomorebets1.jpg

The entrance to the scam compound: https://shell.uugrn.org/~naddy/nomorebets2.jpg

"F|ibrica de panch||es" is Portuguese for 'firecracker factory'. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panch%C3%A3o

So is this a real script? The strokes look blackletter-ish and in
fact a Google image search proposes "visual matches" that show
German blackletter writing, which is nonsense of course, but there
is a certain visual similarity, because both look like written with
a broad nib.


PS: The movie's IMDb entry:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28076784/
The first 100 minutes or so are quite good, if unsubtle, but then
it veers into CCP propaganda.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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