Comparison Between Rongorongo and the Syllable Sequence of Ancient Chants from the Easter Island
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0. Introduction L2/12-386
Doc Type: Working Group Document Title: Revised Proposal to Encode Additional Old Italic Characters Source: UC Berkeley Script Encoding Initiative (Universal Scripts Project) Author: Christopher C. Little ([email protected]) Status: Liaison Contribution Action: For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC Replaces: N4046 (L2/11-146R) Date: 2012-11-06 0. Introduction The existing Old Italic character repertoire includes 31 letters and 4 numerals. The Unicode Standard, following the recommendations in the proposal L2/00-140, states that Old Italic is to be used for the encoding of Etruscan, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, North Picene, and South Picene. It also specifically states that Old Italic characters are inappropriate for encoding the languages of ancient Italy north of Etruria (Venetic, Raetic, Lepontic, and Gallic). It is true that the inscriptions of languages north of Etruria exhibit a number of common features, but those features are often exhibited by the other scripts of Italy. Only one of these northern languages, Raetic, requires the addition of any additional characters in order to be fully supported by the Old Italic block. Accordingly, following the addition of this one character, the Unicode Standard should be amended to recommend the encoding of Venetic, Raetic, Lepontic, and Gallic using Old Italic characters. In addition, one additional character is necessary to encode South Picene inscriptions. This proposal is divided into five parts: The first part (§1) identifies the two unencoded characters (Raetic Ɯ and South Picene Ũ) and demonstrates their use in inscriptions. The second part (§2) examines the use of each Old Italic character, as it appears in Etruscan, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, South Picene, Venetic, Raetic, Lepontic, Gallic, and archaic Latin, to demonstrate the unifiability of the northern Italic languages' scripts with Old Italic. -
Thinking in ⅃TЯ
Nathan P. Gibson • University of Munich (LMU) • usaybia.net Thinking in ⅃TЯ Reorienting the Directional Assumptions of Global Digital Scholarship https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 Right2Left Workshop #DHSI19RTL Victoria, 8 June 2019 This presentation is licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 International License. Images may be subject to individual licenses (see captions). Outline Forward from Failures The State of Standards A Dizzying Tour of Directionality (Present Meets Future) (Past Meets Present) (The Past) Nathan Gibson, “Thinking in ⅃TЯ,” Right2Left DHSI, 8 June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 A Dizzying Tour of Directionality #sinistrodextrification Nathan Gibson, “Thinking in ⅃TЯ,” Right2Left DHSI, 8 June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 Modern Writing Systems Image: Adapted from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wi ki/File:WritingSystemsOfTheWorld. svg. Creator of the vector version: Pmx. Original work: Maximilian Dörrbecker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nathan Gibson, “Thinking in ⅃TЯ,” Right2Left DHSI, 8 June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 Selected Languages* with Primarily Right-to-Left Writing Systems by Number of First-Language Speakers #5 Arabic 319 (millions) #10 Lahnda (Western Punjabi, etc.) 119 #20 Urdu 69 #23 Persian 62 * Or macrolanguages. ** May include non-primary speakers Pushto 38** Source: Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles Sindhi 25 D. Fennig, eds. 2019. “Summary by Language Size” [and Kurdish 22** individual language profile pages]. In Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 22nd ed. Dallas: SIL Uyghur 10** International. Hebrew 5 https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size. Rohingya 3** Nathan Gibson, “Thinking in ⅃TЯ,” Right2Left DHSI, 8 June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 > half a billion people almost 10% of the world population Nathan Gibson, “Thinking in ⅃TЯ,” Right2Left DHSI, 8 June 2019, https://tinyurl.com/gibson190608 The State of Standards (Past Meets Present) Plain Text Logical vs. -
Early-Alphabets-3.Pdf
Early Alphabets Alphabetic characteristics 1 Cretan Pictographs 11 Hieroglyphics 16 The Phoenician Alphabet 24 The Greek Alphabet 31 The Latin Alphabet 39 Summary 53 GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS 1 / 53 Alphabetic characteristics 3,000 BCE Basic building blocks of written language GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 2 / 53 Early visual language systems were disparate and decentralized 3,000 BCE Protowriting, Cuneiform, Heiroglyphs and far Eastern writing all functioned differently Rebuses, ideographs, logograms, and syllabaries · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 3 / 53 HIEROGLYPHICS REPRESENTING THE REBUS PRINCIPAL · BEE & LEAF · SEA & SUN · BELIEF AND SEASON GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 4 / 53 PETROGLYPHIC PICTOGRAMS AND IDEOGRAPHS · CIRCA 200 BCE · UTAH, UNITED STATES GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 5 / 53 LUWIAN LOGOGRAMS · CIRCA 1400 AND 1200 BCE · TURKEY GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 6 / 53 OLD PERSIAN SYLLABARY · 600 BCE GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 7 / 53 Alphabetic structure marked an enormous societal leap 3,000 BCE Power was reserved for those who could read and write · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 8 / 53 What is an alphabet? Definition An alphabet is a set of visual symbols or characters used to represent the elementary sounds of a spoken language. –PM · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 9 / 53 What is an alphabet? Definition They can be connected and combined to make visual configurations signifying sounds, syllables, and words uttered by the human mouth. -
The Origin of the Alphabet: an Examination of the Goldwasser Hypothesis
Colless, Brian E. The origin of the alphabet: an examination of the Goldwasser hypothesis Antiguo Oriente: Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente Vol. 12, 2014 Este documento está disponible en la Biblioteca Digital de la Universidad Católica Argentina, repositorio institucional desarrollado por la Biblioteca Central “San Benito Abad”. Su objetivo es difundir y preservar la producción intelectual de la Institución. La Biblioteca posee la autorización del autor para su divulgación en línea. Cómo citar el documento: Colless, Brian E. “The origin of the alphabet : an examination of the Goldwasser hypothesis” [en línea], Antiguo Oriente : Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente 12 (2014). Disponible en: http://bibliotecadigital.uca.edu.ar/repositorio/revistas/origin-alphabet-goldwasser-hypothesis.pdf [Fecha de consulta:..........] . 03 Colless - Alphabet_Antiguo Oriente 09/06/2015 10:22 a.m. Página 71 THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET: AN EXAMINATION OF THE GOLDWASSER HYPOTHESIS BRIAN E. COLLESS [email protected] Massey University Palmerston North, New Zealand Summary: The Origin of the Alphabet Since 2006 the discussion of the origin of the Semitic alphabet has been given an impetus through a hypothesis propagated by Orly Goldwasser: the alphabet was allegedly invented in the 19th century BCE by illiterate Semitic workers in the Egyptian turquoise mines of Sinai; they saw the picturesque Egyptian inscriptions on the site and borrowed a number of the hieroglyphs to write their own language, using a supposedly new method which is now known by the technical term acrophony. The main weakness of the theory is that it ignores the West Semitic acrophonic syllabary, which already existed, and contained most of the letters of the alphabet. -
An Introduction to Roman Epigraphy an Inscription in the Lapis Niger
To read or not to read: an introduction to Roman epigraphy An inscription in the Lapis Niger (‘Black Stone’) The Lapis Niger, an area of ill-omen and an early cult site in the Forum Romanum, was paved in black stone by Sulla around 80 BC. It provides the earliest evidence of Rome’s comitium (an assembly meeting-point) and contains one of the oldest surviving inscriptions in ancient Rome. The archaic inscription found within this area, often called a cippus (CIL 1.2.1), is an excellent case study, both for archaic Rome and for the use of inscriptions as evidence. This unassuming slab of grey tufa has the distinction of being one of the most confounding objects from antiquity. Even the name, Lapis Niger, often used by scholars for the inscription, is a term coined by the ancient sources for the area around Sulla’s pavement (not the inscription itself). To assess some of the mysteries behind this inscription one must examine it both as a text and as a monument. This involves looking not only at the writing but how it was displayed and in what context it was placed. In this respect the inscription falls within a number of fields, and requires literary, archaeological, geographic and sometimes geological analysis. This study will consider a number of different approaches to show to illustrate both the insights and the limitations of this source. The role of context: what can urban and archaeological contexts tell us about an inscription? The location of this inscription and the fact that it remains in situ provides a wealth of information (especially in Rome, a city that is notorious for ‘eating itself’: materials are often moved and reused). -
A STUDY of WRITING Oi.Uchicago.Edu Oi.Uchicago.Edu /MAAM^MA
oi.uchicago.edu A STUDY OF WRITING oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu /MAAM^MA. A STUDY OF "*?• ,fii WRITING REVISED EDITION I. J. GELB Phoenix Books THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS oi.uchicago.edu This book is also available in a clothbound edition from THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS TO THE MOKSTADS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO & LONDON The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada Copyright 1952 in the International Copyright Union. All rights reserved. Published 1952. Second Edition 1963. First Phoenix Impression 1963. Printed in the United States of America oi.uchicago.edu PREFACE HE book contains twelve chapters, but it can be broken up structurally into five parts. First, the place of writing among the various systems of human inter communication is discussed. This is followed by four Tchapters devoted to the descriptive and comparative treatment of the various types of writing in the world. The sixth chapter deals with the evolution of writing from the earliest stages of picture writing to a full alphabet. The next four chapters deal with general problems, such as the future of writing and the relationship of writing to speech, art, and religion. Of the two final chapters, one contains the first attempt to establish a full terminology of writing, the other an extensive bibliography. The aim of this study is to lay a foundation for a new science of writing which might be called grammatology. While the general histories of writing treat individual writings mainly from a descriptive-historical point of view, the new science attempts to establish general principles governing the use and evolution of writing on a comparative-typological basis. -
Rongorongo Script: Carving Techniques and Scribal Corrections
Journal de la Société des Océanistes 129 | juillet-décembre 2009 Varia Rongorongo Script: Carving Techniques and Scribal Corrections Paul Horley Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/5813 DOI: 10.4000/jso.5813 ISSN: 1760-7256 Publisher Société des océanistes Printed version Date of publication: 15 December 2009 Number of pages: 249-261 ISBN: 978-2-85430-026-0 ISSN: 0300-953x Electronic reference Paul Horley, « Rongorongo Script: Carving Techniques and Scribal Corrections », Journal de la Société des Océanistes [Online], 129 | juillet-décembre 2009, Online since 30 December 2012, connection on 30 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jso/5813 ; DOI : 10.4000/jso.5813 © Tous droits réservés Rongorongo Script: Carving Techniques and Scribal Corrections by Paul HORLEY* ABSTRACT RÉSUMÉ Studies of three original rongorongo tablets (Tahua, L’étude menée sur trois tablettes rongorongo origina- Aruku Kurenga and Mamari) revealed clear traces of les (Tahua, Aruku Kurenga et Mamari) montre claire- two-stage carving (pre-incising with an obsidian flake ment que les signes ont été tracés au cours de deux and contour enhancement with a shark tooth). Most étapes successives : pré-incision avec un éclat d’obsi- probably, the texts were written in short fragments with dienne puis gravure des contours avec une dent de requin. shark-tooth engraving applied before passing to the next Il est probable que de courts fragments de textes étaient fragment. Additional multiple engraving sessions might écrits et gravés à l’aide d’une dent de requin avant de been performed for finished inscription, aiming to tracer le fragment de texte suivant. -
The Greek Alphabet Sight and Sounds of the Greek Letters (Module B) the Letters and Pronunciation of the Greek Alphabet 2 Phonology (Part 2)
The Greek Alphabet Sight and Sounds of the Greek Letters (Module B) The Letters and Pronunciation of the Greek Alphabet 2 Phonology (Part 2) Lesson Two Overview 2.0 Introduction, 2-1 2.1 Ten Similar Letters, 2-2 2.2 Six Deceptive Greek Letters, 2-4 2.3 Nine Different Greek Letters, 2-8 2.4 History of the Greek Alphabet, 2-13 Study Guide, 2-20 2.0 Introduction Lesson One introduced the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet. Lesson Two continues to present the building blocks for learning Greek phonics by merging vowels and consonants into syllables. Furthermore, this lesson underscores the similarities and dissimilarities between the Greek and English alphabetical letters and their phonemes. Almost without exception, introductory Greek grammars launch into grammar and vocabulary without first firmly grounding a student in the Greek phonemic system. This approach is appropriate if a teacher is present. However, it is little help for those who are “going at it alone,” or a small group who are learning NTGreek without the aid of a teacher’s pronunciation. This grammar’s introductory lessons go to great lengths to present a full-orbed pronunciation of the Erasmian Greek phonemic system. Those who are new to the Greek language without an instructor’s guidance will welcome this help, and it will prepare them to read Greek and not simply to translate it into their language. The phonic sounds of the Greek language are required to be carefully learned. A saturation of these sounds may be accomplished by using the accompanying MP3 audio files. -
Universal Iconography in Writing Systems Evidence and Explanation in the Easter Island
Universal Iconography in Writing Systems Evidence and Explanation in the Easter Island and Indus Valley Scripts Richard E. McDorman © 2009 Summary Iconography has played a central role in the development of writing systems. That all independently derived ancient scripts began as arrangements of pictograms before evolving into their elaborated forms evinces the fundamental importance of iconography in the evolution of writing. Symbols of the earliest logographic writing systems are characterized by a number of iconographic principles. Elucidation of these iconographic principles provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of structural similarities in unrelated, independently evolved writing systems. Two such writing systems are the ancient Indus Valley and Easter Island scripts. Although separated by vast tracts of time and space, the two writing systems share between forty and fifty complex characters, a problem first identified by Hevesy in 1932. Previous attempts to explain the similarities between the Indus Valley script and the rongorongo of Easter Island, which have relied on notions of cultural contact or historical derivation, have proved unfruitful. In reconsidering the problem, a novel approach based on comparative iconographic principles can explain the resemblances between the two scripts as the product of the universal iconography displayed by all writing systems in their pictographic and logographic stages of development. The principle of iconography in writing systems It has been noted that graphically similar symbols have been employed to represent semantically cognate ideas in a number of early, unrelated writing systems. 1 One explanation for this phenomenon is that there exist universal iconographic principles that bear upon the minds of those creating these scripts, thereby influencing the graphical form of the glyphs 2 that comprise the newly created writing systems. -
Encoding Diversity for All the World's Languages
Encoding Diversity for All the World’s Languages The Script Encoding Initiative (Universal Scripts Project) Michael Everson, Evertype Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland Bamako, Mali • 6 May 2005 1. Current State of the Unicode Standard • Unicode 4.1 defines over 97,000 characters 1. Current State of the Unicode Standard: New Script Additions Unicode 4.1 (31 March 2005): For Unicode 5.0 (2006): Buginese N’Ko Coptic Balinese Glagolitic Phags-pa New Tai Lue Phoenician Nuskhuri (extends Georgian) Syloti Nagri Cuneiform Tifinagh Kharoshthi Old Persian Cuneiform 1. Current State of the Unicode Standard • Unicode 4.1 defines over 97,000 characters • Unicode covers over 50 scripts (many of which are used for languages with over 5 million speakers) 1. Current State of the Unicode Standard • Unicode 4.1 defines over 97,000 characters • Unicode covers over 50 scripts (often used for languages with over 5 million speakers) • Unicode enables millions of users worldwide to view web pages, send e-mails, converse in chat-rooms, and share text documents in their native script 1. Current State of the Unicode Standard • Unicode 4.1 defines over 97,000 characters • Unicode covers over 50 scripts (often used for languages with over 5 million speakers) • Unicode enables millions of users worldwide to view web pages, send e-mails, converse in chat- rooms, and share text documents in their native script • Unicode is widely supported by current fonts and operating systems, but… Over 80 scripts are missing! Missing Modern Minority Scripts India, Nepal, Southeast Asia China: -
The Alphabets of the Bible: Latin and English John Carder
274 The Testimony, July 2004 The alphabets of the Bible: Latin and English John Carder N A PREVIOUS article we looked at the trans- • The first major change is in the third letter, formation of the Hebrew aleph-bet into the originally the Hebrew gimal and then the IGreek alphabet (Apr. 2004, p. 130). In turn Greek gamma. The Etruscan language had no the Greek was used as a basis for writing down G sound, so they changed that place in the many other languages. Always the spoken lan- alphabet to a K sound. guage came first and writing later. We complete The Greek symbol was rotated slightly our look at the alphabets of the Bible by briefly by the Romans and then rounded, like the B considering Latin, then our English alphabet in and D symbols. It became the Latin letter C which we normally read the Bible. and, incidentally, created the confusion which still exists in English. Our C can have a hard From Greek to Latin ‘k’ sound, as in ‘cold’, or a soft sound, as in The Greek alphabet spread to the Romans from ‘city’. the Greek colonies on the coast of Italy, espe- • In the sixth place, either the Etruscans or the cially Naples and district. (Naples, ‘Napoli’ in Romans revived the old Greek symbol di- Italian, is from the Greek ‘Neapolis’, meaning gamma, which had been dropped as a letter ‘new city’). There is evidence that the Etruscans but retained as a numeral. They gave it an ‘f’ were also involved in an intermediate stage. -
Jtc1/Sc2/Wg2 N4128 L2/11-280
JTC1/SC2/WG2 N4128 L2/11-280 2011-06-29 Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set International Organization for Standardization Organisation Internationale de Normalisation Международная организация по стандартизации Doc Type: Working Group Document Title: Preliminary proposal for encoding the Moon script in the SMP of the UCS Source: Michael Everson Status: Individual Contribution Action: For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC Date: 2011-06-29 1. Introduction. The Moon System of Embossed Reading, also known as the Moon alphabet, Moon type, or Moon code) is a writing system for the blind which embossed symbols chiefly derived by applying simplifications to the shapes of the letters of the Latin alphabet. It was introduced in 1945 by William Moon (1818–1894), a blind Englishman from Brighton, East Sussex, who founded the Brighton Society for the Blind in 1860. The Moon script is easily learned, particularly by those who have newly become blind and who find Braille daunting. There is evidence that some people who get used to reading by touch are able to transition from Moon script to Braille. Moon was adopted in Britain and in North America, though it was more popular in the 19th century and earlier 20th century than it is today. Nevertheless, a variety of printed literature exists in Moon script, and efforts are being made to adapt modern embossing technology 2. Processing. Short texts in Moon script are written from left to right, but longer embossed texts have boustrophedon directionality: at the end of a line there is a sort of parenthesis which guides the fingers to the next line, which the reader then follows.