…not even particularly burned out, either. Just taking it easy. If there’s going to be a slow period during this election, it’s going to be now; and I’ve been obsessing over politics for nine months on this blog and several years in general. I’m taking a couple of weeks of not-worrying-about-it time.
Still, no reason not to do something in the meantime, and Edward’s quest for a book title earlier today gave me the idea (by the way, Edward, I’m wounded. Wounded! I even have a copy of the story! You only had to ask). Wednesday will be Solve the Mystery Day for a while; starting with this thread a place will be made to ask those interesting little questions that have befuddled you for years. Name of a particular song, movie that starred that guy, who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb, that sort of thing. BTW, this will be an expressly non-political set of threads: attempts to get cute about that will be treated as spam, and treated accordingly (ie, deleted without apology). The idea is to pick brains, not fights.
Why are the letters of various alphabets shaped the way they are? Is it because of the surfaces upon which the various civilizations wrote.
And, is it true that Da Vinci wrote backward as code, or was it because he was left handed and didn’t want to drag his sleeve through the ink?
crionna, to answer your first question, sometimes yes and sometimes no.
Greek, for example, was – literally – carved in stone a lot throughout its lifetime. It’s worth noting that it’s only the lower-case letters that really have curves; the only upper-case letters that have curves are theta, omicron, phi, psi, and omega, and all of those can be rendered with straight lines as well without confusion. I suspect that the reason for this was the carving-in-stone; it’s a lot easier to get a straight line than a curve. Curves came as a result of the freedom granted by ink and paper.
Many Oriental languages, on the other hand, were originally pictographic – that is, many of their characters originally actually looked (relatively) like the objects they were meant to represent. Chinese má, “horse”, originally looked like a horse; Japanese ni, “sun”, looks like the sun rising over the horizon. (Ni is, incidentally, used in the Japanese name for the country, Nihon; there’s a correlation between this and the nickname “Land of the Rising Sun”, although I don’t remember in which direction it goes.)
I have no idea about Da Vinci. 🙂
by the way, Edward, I’m wounded. Wounded! I even have a copy of the story! You only had to ask
Cool…how’s your typing? Getting rusty? Wanna offer us Summer Reading installments of the story over a few days? (Yes, I’m too cheap to go out and buy the collection.)
Question: Another short story, I’m afraid. This one even more obscure. I haven’t read it, but it was recommended by my 11th grade English Teacher…you know, the one who changes your entire worldview sort of teacher, but even he couldn’t find it. It was called either “The String” or “The Pearl” (although I’m more sure it’s “The String.” I’m pretty sure there’s a story titled “The Pearl” and that’s not it). Luther, as we nicknamed our teacher, said it was the best short story he had ever read, but he didn’t tell us much more…any clues?
There is a novella called The Pearl by John Steinbeck, but it can’t be that – even when Steinbeck’s novels are out of print, they’re easy enough to find.
There is a short story by Guy De Maupassant called “A Piece Of String” – though again I would have thought it quite easy to find. (I found it online quite fast, just based on vague memories of title, without being able to remember who wrote it.)
Does this help? What was the story about?
I wonder if that’s not it Jes (Guy De Maupassant’s “A Piece Of String”). I’ll google and get back to you.
thanks!
Many Oriental languages, on the other hand, were originally pictographic – that is, many of their characters originally actually looked (relatively) like the objects they were meant to represent. Chinese má, “horse”, originally looked like a horse; Japanese ni, “sun”, looks like the sun rising over the horizon. (Ni is, incidentally, used in the Japanese name for the country, Nihon; there’s a correlation between this and the nickname “Land of the Rising Sun”, although I don’t remember in which direction it goes.)
The nickname “Land of the Rising Sun” comes from the literal translation of the characters that make up Nihon (日本). Ni, as you noted, means “sun” (and day), and one of the many meanings of the character for hon is “origin”. The Japanese long believed that their island nation was where the sun came up. Some are not yet convinced they’re wrong.
Most Japanese kanji are not actually Japanese in origin, but were borrowed (or lifted wholesale) from the Chinese (the word kanji [漢字] literally means “Chinese character”). There are in fact a whole class of Japanese words which are rendered exactly the same in Japanese as in Chinese (and pronounced very similarly, such as Chinese dianhua to Japanese denwa, telephone [電話]).
In addition to kanji, there are two phonetic syllabaries in Japanese called hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ). Both have the same sounds, but the former looks very flowing and cursive, while the latter is a collection of angular chicken scratches and is used much like italics are in English: for emphasis and for the rendering of foreign words, names, and loanwords. Both syllabaries are derivatives of kanji; hiragana are simplified forms of the handwritten cursive versions of kanji which were used solely for their sound, while katakana are based on fragments of kanji which have the desired sound.
I just /knew/ I’d get in trouble for using that many italic tags.
cool character though!
OK, one more. When people exclaim “Jesus H. Christ” what does the “H” stand for?
I had to google this ASAP –
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_033.html
I like the first answer myself..
OK, one more. When people exclaim “Jesus H. Christ” what does the “H” stand for?
I’ve always heard it as “Henry” when it’s said in full. Might just be anecdotal.
Personally, I usually say either “Jesus Hillary Clinton” (not because I have an especially exalted opinion of Sen. Clinton, merely because the initials match and it’s silly), or “great bouncing cherry-flavored gummi christs”.
Why are there no penguins in the Northern Hemisphere? Penguins can swim long distances, and I know there are penguins near the equator, so how come they haven’t spread north over the several million years that they’ve been around?
Is it because of the Great Auk? If so, now that we’ve killed them off, will it be likely that penguins will move into their niche?
(sorry this isn’t about a book or short story)
btw, Steinbeck’s The Pearl was pretty good.
Further on penguins…
How incredibly cool is it that two extremely similar birds (the penguin and the great auk) should evolve independently on different ends of the world?
And wouldn’t this be definitive proof that creationism is bunk? Why create two practically identical animals for identical habitas when you could get away with just one?
It’s not just Oriental writing systems that were originally pictographic. With the arguable exception of Korean Hangul, all extant writing systems are derived from pictographic writing systems. Hangul is an alphabetic system designed to resemble Chinese characters. It was designed from scratch in the 15th century.
Recent discoveries suggest that the Phoenician alphabet—the basis of all other alphabetic systems including Roman (ours), Cyrillic (Russian), Greek, and Arabic (via the Nabatean alphabet)—was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics (obviously pictographic) by Semitic-speaking soldiers in the Egyptian army.
And wouldn’t this be definitive proof that creationism is bunk? Why create two practically identical animals for identical habitas when you could get away with just one?
Just to see if their evolution paths would change based on whether the pole nearest them was covered with land or water?
My bio teacher once asked a creationist neighbor to explain the existence of fossils that carbon-dating shows to be many, many times older than the creationist version of the story allows.
Answer: God created them to test our faith, and unbelievers and fossil hunters like you failed the test.
I don’t think penguins and great auks would convince most creationists.
rita: I don’t think penguins and great auks would convince most creationists.
Probably not. But the Babelfish is a dead giveaway.
crionna: Just to see if their evolution paths would change based on whether the pole nearest them was covered with land or water?
Unlikely, as they inhabit coastline, and both poles have similar amounts of coastline. Except that one’s, um, an outie, and the other’s an innie, if you know what I mean.
Catsy, thank you for the clarification. 🙂
Dave, I didn’t mean to imply that Oriental writing systems were the only pictographic writing systems. (Much of Linear B, for example, is directly pictographic, as is much of the Mayan language.) On the other hand, I’d need to see some pretty compelling evidence to convince me that the Phoenician alphabet was a direct descendant of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and I’m not sure I’ve seen any evidence that the ancient Norse language was pictographic in any way.
My bio teacher once asked a creationist neighbor to explain the existence of fossils that carbon-dating shows to be many, many times older than the creationist version of the story allows.
Answer: God created them to test our faith, and unbelievers and fossil hunters like you failed the test.
Ah, last-Tuesdayism…
EDG:
I didn’t mean to imply that Oriental writing systems were the only pictographic writing systems.
I didn’t think you did but I wanted to clarify things.
On the other hand, I’d need to see some pretty compelling evidence to convince me that the Phoenician alphabet was a direct descendant of Egyptian hieroglyphs
The evidence is there. And it’s one of the more fascinating archaeological stories of the last decade. Give me a few hours and I’ll post it up on my web site. I’ll trackback when I’ve got it done.
I’m not sure I’ve seen any evidence that the ancient Norse language was pictographic in any way.
Yah, that’s why I wrote extant up above, I’m not sure about it.
“Hangul is an alphabetic system designed to resemble Chinese characters. It was designed from scratch in the 15th century.”
But by this standard, Cyrillic is also non-pictographic, since it was designed from scratch but intended to resemble an extant system. Also see the Cherokee alphabet.
“Yah, that’s why I wrote extant up above, I’m not sure about it.”
Futhark not extant? Don’t tell the Asatru.
I’m not sure the extant standard is meaningful. You’d be implying that originally pictographic orthographies were somehow more likely (or exclusively) able to survive, which I don’t think you’re really arguing.
Braille is, of course, not pictographic, but I might be straining the notion of an alphabet.
Is Tengwar extant?
I declare this the orthography thread.
Recent discoveries suggest that the Phoenician alphabet—the basis of all other alphabetic systems including Roman (ours), Cyrillic (Russian), Greek, and Arabic (via the Nabatean alphabet)—was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics (obviously pictographic) by Semitic-speaking soldiers in the Egyptian army.
Are you sure about that? Last I checked — which was a few years ago, I admit — Phoenician was the result of applying a 90-degree rotation (counter-clockwise, IIRC) to the Sumerian syllabary.
[I say “Sumerian” here because I don’t remember offhand which particular branch of the Mesopotomian languages it was. I think it was straight-up Sumerian, but it could well have been Akkadian.]
Of course, it’s possible that there was a step in between, so that Phoenician came from Sumerian via Egyptian, but I too would be eager to see this new evidence.
OK, here’s my random question then (which may be obviated by Dave’s evidence): why the 90-degree rotation?
I’m not sure the extant standard is meaningful. You’d be implying that originally pictographic orthographies were somehow more likely (or exclusively) able to survive, which I don’t think you’re really arguing.
Not really — just that, presumably, there were a lot more pictographic orthographies “back in the day”, which is not an implausible hypothesis.
“just that, presumably, there were a lot more pictographic orthographies “back in the day””
No, other way around. It implies that all current systems are derived from pictographic systems, but that there are dead systems that aren’t. That may be coincidentally true (I don’t think it is), but I don’t see any utility in the distinction, unless you want to imply that pictographic origin leads to competitive fitness.
No, other way around. It implies that all current systems are derived from pictographic systems, but that there are dead systems that aren’t.
No, I meant what I said. If one assumes that, for example, 99% of the original orthographic systems were pictorial, then simple attrition over the ages means that it’s quite likely that only those systems derived from pictographic orthographies would survive — assuming nothing more than statistical independence between orthography and survivability of a “culture”.
Your point about competitive fitness is well-taken, but competitive fitness as the sole explanatory hypothesis only applies if the initial conditions are identical, which I have explicitly postulated is not the case.
OK, here’s a complete change of pace: does anyone know where (or rather, whether) I can get a copy of the completel Israelis Brunnlein (The Fountains of Israel, I believe) by Johann Schein? I sang four of them a few years ago and they’re absolutely amazing — I highly recommend listening to the samples on Amazon — but I can’t find any recordings that contain the full set (all 26 or more). Any advice?
Here’s a link to one of the Amazon recordings. I’ve sung Die Mit Tranen and Dennoch Bleibe (of the five that are excerpted), as well as Wende Dich Herr, Da Jakob and Ich Bin Die Wurzel (which isn’t there, hence my query). Ultramegabonus points for an a cappella rendition, incidentally.
About penguins: actually, very few penguins live near the Equator, and those that do live on the west coast of South America, where there’s a current that brings cold water up from the Antarctic. They do swim long distances, but can’t cover nearly as much distance as flying birds, and thus are much less likely to wander into the northern hemisphere by accident. Also (for the same reason) they don’t migrate much. I would think that the combination of not being migratory and being restricted to cold or temperate waters would explain why they are not in the northern hemisphere.
I don’t think it would be because of any similar birds here; there are lots of birds that occupy similar ecological niches, and what makes one species drive another extinct is less similarity per se than an ability to decisively outcompete it. Also, offhand, I’d think that the similar species of the northern hemisphere would include all the auks and murres and the like, not just the Great Auk.
(When I was in New Zealand I saw my first ever penguins in the wild — two different species. It was wonderful.)
From hieroglyph to alphabet
I’ve been fascinated with writing systems since I was a kid. One day I was paging through Webster’s Dictionary and I stumbled upon the table illustrating alphabets of the world: Roman (ours), the old German Gothic, Greek, Cyrillic (Russian), Hebrew,…
Hangul is an alphabetic system designed to resemble Chinese characters. It was designed from scratch in the 15th century.
Nitpick: The Hangul writing system is actually closer to being a phonetic syllabary like hiragana and katakana than an alphabet. It kind of straddles the line. It is made up of 24 alphabetical charcters (a primary consonant, a vowel, and an ending consonant) which are assembled into and read as syllables.
</linguisticpedantry>
In response to Catsy‘s comment, a question that’s been bugging me for a while:
How is “syllabary” pronounced?
I’ve never heard it spoken, although I see it written frequently; my dictionary tells me that the second “a” is short, but then it also tells me that the accent goes on “syl”, which seems to make for an almost unpronounceable word.
So two questions, really: is the second “a” long, short, or something else altogether? and on which syllable does the emphasis go?