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Unicode Dicks

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Re: Unicode Dicks

#101

Post by ardy42 »

Umofomia wrote: post #77
thaumasiotes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese writing to this day doesn't indicate the sound of the word at all. A fortiori, it doesn't indicate vowels. The first written Semitic language, Akkadian, _does_ indicate vowels, because doing so is mandatory in the writing system Akkadian used, the cuneiform originally developed for Sumerian. (Egyptian is closely related to the Semitic languages, but not quite closely enough that it's called Semitic. Instead b…

> Chinese writing to this day doesn't indicate the sound of the word at all. A fortiori, it doesn't indicate vowels. That's not true. The vast majority of Chinese characters (estimated at around 90% or more) are phono-semantic compounds, which were also devised based on the Rebus principle that the OP of the thread mentioned. These compounds consist of an element that hints at a word’s pronunciation (the "phonetic"),…

> That's not true. The vast majority of Chinese characters (estimated at around 90% or more) are phono-semantic compounds, which were also devised based on the Rebus principle that the OP of the thread mentioned.

See this very interesting article that constructs a writing system for English using the same principles: https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

Re: Unicode Dicks

#102

Post by anonymfus »

wl wrote: post #11

This symbol has a couple of uses in writing ancient Egyptian. The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. This symbol is used to denote maleness or strength. For example, 𓂓𓏺 is ka for "spirit." 𓂓𓂸 is…

It's interesting that "𓂓𓂸" displays correctly oh the same Windows Phone where separate penis character is censored.

Re: Unicode Dicks

#103

Post by kijin »

anonymfus wrote: post #102
wl wrote: post #11

This symbol has a couple of uses in writing ancient Egyptian. The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. This symbol is used to denote maleness or strength. For example, 𓂓𓏺 is ka for "spirit." 𓂓𓂸 is…

It's interesting that "𓂓𓂸" displays correctly oh the same Windows Phone where separate penis character is censored.

Maybe it's marked as a kind of modifier that only appears in combination with another letter, since that seems to have been its primary (though not the only) use case according to wl.

Re: Unicode Dicks

#104

Post by nickm12 »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #22
wl wrote: post #11

This symbol has a couple of uses in writing ancient Egyptian. The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. This symbol is used to denote maleness or strength. For example, 𓂓𓏺 is ka for "spirit." 𓂓𓂸 is…

The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vow…

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but one thing I have read is that ancient writing was in some ways used as an aid to memory, rather than a means of communication. Imagine you have your cultural sagas and songs that are memorized and passed down from generation to generation. When writing arises, you use it as a way to make it easier to recite. You might not really care much about the "missing" vowels and you save parchment. Once you start down this path, you might go quite far before it occurs to someone to add vowels.

Re: Unicode Dicks

#105

Post by IvyMike »

PeterisP wrote: post #82
thaumasiotes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with the Chinese writing system. :p It's not similar to English at all. Compare this translator's note from https://www.amazon.com/Xunzi-Complete-Text/dp/0691169314/ : > The other feature of this translation that warrants comment is the handling of rhymed lines. The Xunzi contains numerous rhymed passages... Both Watson and Knoblock often overlook them, as do many translations of the Xunzi into modern Ch…

As a counterpoint, I'll offer this - Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the lat…

> Query does not rhyme with very

Doesn't it?

Re: Unicode Dicks

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

jordigh wrote: post #33
cozzyd wrote: post #12

The google-noto-sans-egyptian-hieroglyphs-fonts package provides the required fonts to enjoy this page on Fedora/CentOS 7.

I had to install fonts-ancient-scripts in Debian.

Thank you. I assume the author lives in the Apple land, and doesn't realize it's not just Windows that doesn't ship with fonts for all possible emojis and alternate characters by default.

Re: Unicode Dicks

#107

Post by aidenn0 »

IvyMike wrote: post #105
PeterisP wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I'll offer this - Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the lat…

> Query does not rhyme with very Doesn't it?

depends on the dialect; some pronounce query with a long E

Re: Unicode Dicks

#109

Post by usrusr »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #67
usrusr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still strange, given the rebus principle of phonetic hieroglyph use mentioned above: why would I use a pictures of a bee and a rock to form the sound baroque? Why not a bar and a rock (or a ba, whatever that would be)? If you take existing, drawable words you implicitly get the vowels with the consonants, unless explicitly ruled out by convention. Maybe the answer is dialects, that there was much wider consensus over…

I'm not sure what is obvious or implicit to you was obvious or implicit to people speaking/writing ancient egyptian languages. Hebrew still (mostly) lacks vowels (and Arabic has a few, but is missing some we'd expect as important to pronunciation), to this day. I wonder if we asked a contemporary Hebrew speaker if "you implicitly get the vowels with the consonants" when you combine phonetic representations, if they w…

When you have a symbol representing a word, it represents all the defined (by convention) properties of the word. All the semantics, all the the vocalization. The defined part, that is. You don't get any undefined parts, e.g. if you had separate symbols for "read (past tense)" and "read (present tense)" they would "naturally" include relative speed but not relative pitch. If vowels are significant at one point in the language's use, but the rebus principle allows for mismatching substitutions it would be a strong indication that at some earlier point they were not, either because they had regionally differing conventions (while still mutually understood) or because they were just filled in ad-hoc based on context (e.g. how pitch is decided upon when speaking a language where it is not significant: just make it sound pleasant and/or communicate macro structure).

Of course, over time weird things do happen and you might end up with a mess like english where the relationship between phonetic encoding and actual vocalization is incredibly weak and serves only as a hint for narrowing down the actual encoding+context to semantics to vocalization lookup chain.

Re: Unicode Dicks

#110

Post by ChristianBundy »

Twisell wrote: post #61
ChristianBundy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "censored in Android" is like saying "censored in Linux".

But what the point if your correspondent can’t see your 𓂸 on the sms app?

My SMS app has no problem with sending or receiving that character. For reference, I'm using Google Messages version 3.7.052 on a Google Pixel XL.
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