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bennyfactor
Nov 21, 2008

HEY GUNS posted:

a number of icons of the virgin mary show her wearing a veil made of cloth with arabic writing around the edges. sometimes this is real arabic writing, sometimes it is fake as gently caress

Fake Arabic was pretty common not only in late medieval / renaissance art but also fancy housewares and even on money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Kufic

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aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Fakin' it is eternal

bennyfactor posted:

Fake Arabic was pretty common not only in late medieval / renaissance art but also fancy housewares and even on money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Kufic

Man a lot of these are really beautiful

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

aphid_licker posted:

Fakin' it is eternal


Man a lot of these are really beautiful

You should get some calligraphy stone



Also known by different variations upon "arabic writing stone"

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

Guildencrantz posted:

There's a shitload of fake rune writing on random Norse objects as well. I think I posted about this before, but apparently the consensus is that, since engraving runes on people's things was a legit profession and they were supposed to be magic, the fake runes must be forgeries. Meaning charlatans who couldn't actually write, but could copy the symbols, fooled illiterate Vikings out in the boonies into paying them for writing gibberish on their axes or combs or whatever and then skipped town before anyone caught on.

Edit: that, or Asgeir Fuckface somewhere secretly carved fake runes into his sickle and went around going "look what a cool thing I bought, that's my name on it no it totally is you guys"

"Hey Ragnar check out these sweet runes on my axe. They mean Strength and Courage*."
*Actual translation: potatoes on sale

I guess at least it's not tattoos. :v:

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice

bloom posted:

"Hey Ragnar check out these sweet runes on my axe. They mean Strength and Courage*."
*Actual translation: potatoes on sale

I guess at least it's not tattoos. :v:

I dunno, it'd be pretty impressive to have the runes for a plant that only existed in the other hemisphere imo

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

cheetah7071 posted:

I dunno, it'd be pretty impressive to have the runes for a plant that only existed in the other hemisphere imo

:doh:

I may not have thought my post all the way through.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface
If anyone cares I finally got around to making my Paleolithic/fantasy themed CYOA in the games forum. I figured some people in this thread might enjoy it.

Der Waffle Mous
Nov 27, 2009

In the grim future, there is only commerce.

bloom posted:

"Hey Ragnar check out these sweet runes on my axe. They mean Strength and Courage*."
*Actual translation: potatoes on sale

I guess at least it's not tattoos. :v:
Relatedly:
https://twitter.com/skrivafel/status/986344287381094405

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
I love stuff like that, it's like an easter egg for anyone who can actually understand it.

Like how in Return of the Jedi, Lando's copilot is speaking (profane?) nonsense in, IIRC, swahili. Swahili speakers were laughing out loud in cinemas to the confusion of onlookers.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

cheetah7071 posted:

I dunno, it'd be pretty impressive to have the runes for a plant that only existed in the other hemisphere imo

A hemisphere the Vikings did in fact get to, though! If anyone from Europe was going to have a word for potato pre-Columbus, it was them.

(Probably there weren't any in Newfoundland at the time, mind you)

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Polynesian had a word for sweet potato pie Columbus

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Arglebargle III posted:

Polynesian had a word for sweet potato pie Columbus

:yum:

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Arglebargle III posted:

Polynesian had a word for sweet potato pie Columbus

Well known European place Polynesia...

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

feedmegin posted:

A hemisphere the Vikings did in fact get to, though! If anyone from Europe was going to have a word for potato pre-Columbus, it was them.

(Probably there weren't any in Newfoundland at the time, mind you)

I'm imagining Vikings making it to Mesoamerica, and all I can think of is Olmec heads and Mayan step pyramids covered in runes that say poo poo like "Bjarni and Snarfi were here!!"

Chamuska
Apr 8, 2018

AgreegrA

Grand Fromage posted:

The people of Lebanon and coastal Syria are the modern descendants of the Phoenicians. There's never been a major resettlement/genocide of them as far as I know.

Their most important legacy is all around you--they invented the alphabet, and seem to have been the only people to do so. All other alphabets are descended from it. Korean's alphabet doesn't seem to be a direct derivation, instead being taken from strokes of Chinese characters, but they certainly knew of the concept of an alphabet when creating it.

Wait so The Etruscans picked up their alphabet?

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

The Etruscans got their alphabet from Greeks, but not the version the Greeks use today. For example, the alphabet the Etruscans borrowed from had H (the Greek letter eta) for the sound H stands for in English, but in the Ionic alphabet which later became standard for Greek, that letter came to stand for an open e sound because in Ionia they'd stopped pronouncing intial h-sounds kind of like in Cockney.

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice
By my understanding, there's generally two ways alphabets get adopted. One is an existing alphabet gets adopted wholesale with maybe a few letters changed to account for the uniqueness of the new language. The other is someone sees or hears about the idea of an alphabet, and then makes one from whole cloth for their language. The phoenecians are the only people to invent from whole cloth without even having heard of the idea from someone else

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


cheetah7071 posted:

By my understanding, there's generally two ways alphabets get adopted. One is an existing alphabet gets adopted wholesale with maybe a few letters changed to account for the uniqueness of the new language. The other is someone sees or hears about the idea of an alphabet, and then makes one from whole cloth for their language. The phoenecians are the only people to invent from whole cloth without even having heard of the idea from someone else

What's the sequence/chronology of Phoenecian and Hebrew?

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

CommonShore posted:

What's the sequence/chronology of Phoenecian and Hebrew?

Phoenician->Aramaic->Hebrew. There’s also paleo-Hebrew, which was used pre-exile (and continued to be used by those who weren’t exiled) and is independently derived from Phoenician.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Grevling posted:

but in the Ionic alphabet which later became standard for Greek, that letter came to stand for an open e sound because in Ionia they'd stopped pronouncing intial h-sounds kind of like in Cockney.

Eh? What's the spiritus asper for in that case?

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

cheetah7071 posted:

By my understanding, there's generally two ways alphabets get adopted. One is an existing alphabet gets adopted wholesale with maybe a few letters changed to account for the uniqueness of the new language. The other is someone sees or hears about the idea of an alphabet, and then makes one from whole cloth for their language. The phoenecians are the only people to invent from whole cloth without even having heard of the idea from someone else

Joke's on you, the Phoenecians got theirs from the Bolivians, who came from space.

Gully Foyle
Feb 29, 2008

Chamuska posted:

Wait so The Etruscans picked up their alphabet?

It's a pretty interesting chain. If I remember right:

Phoenician alphabet (Semitic language family) -> Greeks (Indo-European language) -> Etruscans (it's own language family essentially) -> Latins (Indo-European). And of course from Rome the alphabet gets spread around to Europe.

The History of English is a really cool podcast that spends a good chunk of change tracing the early language families and developments, and part of that on the alphabet too.

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

feedmegin posted:

Eh? What's the spiritus asper for in that case?

Attic Greek still had breathing, but adopted the Ionic alphabet before they also lost it. It was lost wholesale in all Greek eventually. I don't think they actually used spiritus asper in classical Greek though; that probably came about later, I want to say in the Middle Ages but it might date back to Hellenistic times.

Elyv
Jun 14, 2013



A neat little tidbit is that a lot, if not all, of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet are still close to being actual words, like Bet->Bayit, which means house. My understanding is then the Greeks took the letters with pretty much their original names , but the names don't mean anything in Greek.

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Elyv posted:

A neat little tidbit is that a lot, if not all, of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet are still close to being actual words, like Bet->Bayit, which means house. My understanding is then the Greeks took the letters with pretty much their original names , but the names don't mean anything in Greek.

With exceptions - omicron and omega literally mean 'little o' and 'big o' respectively.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

feedmegin posted:

With exceptions - omicron and omega literally mean 'little o' and 'big o' respectively.

That's cause the greeks wanted vowels n' poo poo for some reason.

Dalael
Oct 14, 2014
Hello. Yep, I still think Atlantis is Bolivia, yep, I'm still a giant idiot, yep, I'm still a huge racist. Some things never change!
I don't know who came up with the idea of adding spaces between words, but that guy was a genius.

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
y ws gng t sy tht smtc lngs lk hbrw nd rbc r mch sr t cmprhnd wtht vwls bt n hndsght, ths snt s bd fr n flnt nglsh spkr

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

y ws gng t sy tht smtc lngs lk hbrw nd rbc r mch sr t cmprhnd wtht vwls bt n hndsght, ths snt s bd fr n flnt nglsh spkr

A friend showed me the same concept with different text a few years ago. It's still fun to see in action, though it would take getting used to.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.
The world's first written language actually arose earlier than most of you think: it was an almost impossible to decipher collection of abstruse symbols that took a scribe 15 years to learn and could only represent the nouns "grain" "ox" "priest" and several hundred conjugations of the verb "to pay". All examples of it were destroyed by mobs of angry peasants for some reason.

Fo3
Feb 14, 2004

RAAAAARGH!!!! GIFT CARDS ARE FUCKING RETARDED!!!!

(I need a hug)

Gully Foyle posted:

It's a pretty interesting chain. If I remember right:

Phoenician alphabet (Semitic language family) -> Greeks (Indo-European language) -> Etruscans (it's own language family essentially) -> Latins (Indo-European). And of course from Rome the alphabet gets spread around to Europe.

The History of English is a really cool podcast that spends a good chunk of change tracing the early language families and developments, and part of that on the alphabet too.

I listened to some history of english podcasts a couple of years ago, it's pretty good but I've forgotten most of it.
Recently though I've been relistening to history of the ancient world (I last heard it about 4 years ago), and got to the episode about the phoenicians yesterday. That podcast says the phoenicians had a colony on Sardinia and so they traded a lot with the etruscans, so maybe there was some influence directly? I imagine in writing/alphabet at least if they are trading.
Also they mention that the Greeks did eventually adopt the phoenician alphabet (and added all the vowels in), but that was way later because at the time of the phoenicians trading with sardinia and the etruscans the Greeks were in their 'dark ages' after the bronze age collapse. E: Well the mainland I guess, not so much Cyprus and Anatolian Greeks.

Fo3 fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 20, 2018

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

y ws gng t sy tht smtc lngs lk hbrw nd rbc r mch sr t cmprhnd wtht vwls bt n hndsght, ths snt s bd fr n flnt nglsh spkr

y r cnt s hrd t rndr ths wy th

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo

Fo3 posted:

I listened to some history of english podcasts a couple of years ago, it's pretty good but I've forgotten most of it.
Recently though I've been relistening to history of the ancient world (I last heard it about 4 years ago), and got to the episode about the phoenicians yesterday. That podcast says the phoenicians had a colony on Sardinia and so they traded a lot with the etruscans, so maybe there was some influence directly? I imagine in writing/alphabet at least if they are trading.
Also they mention that the Greeks did eventually adopt the phoenician alphabet (and added all the vowels in), but that was way later because at the time of the phoenicians trading with sardinia and the etruscans the Greeks were in their 'dark ages' after the bronze age collapse. E: Well the mainland I guess, not so much Cyprus and Anatolian Greeks.

The mycenaean greeks used linear b, derived presumably from the minoans. It was iirc a syllabary, not an alphabet. That got lost and the phonecian-derived alphabet shows up later on.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

Dalael posted:

I don't know who came up with the idea of adding spaces between words, but that guy was a genius.

Apparently it was monks in Ireland, who took one look at Latin writing and decided,"Well gently caress that."

feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

Jerusalem posted:

Apparently it was monks in Ireland, who took one look at Latin writing and decided,"Well gently caress that."

You see dots between words earlier than that. Eg Trajans Column

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit
on the note of elaborate forgeries of nonsense scripts, there's a good chance that is precisely what the voynich manuscript is: something a noveau riche merchant paid for in order to impress his fellows

maybe the guy showing it off was completely laughed out of the room by his peers, but a half century later lunatics now think it contains hidden knowledge of the bolivian atlanteans

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

I've been trying to find out when the spiritus asper came to be used for breathing, but so far the only information I've been able to find is that it's "post-classical". The Ionic alphabet was adopted almost everywhere around 400 BC, so for a while aspiration before vowels may have just not been part of standard orthography.

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

I have a feeling some of the random runic inscriptions might actually be obscure spells.

Certain runes were associated with certain deities and/or concepts which is where the Runic magic comes in. Basically using say the wealth rune on your coin purse to help you prosper at trade or a victory rune and Týr's rune on your axe to give you an edge in combat. Someone writing a bunch of seemingly incoherent nonsense on a bowl or cloak or threshold might be some spell lost to time.


I should stress that I've only read like 4 books on this and some of them were primarily about the magical sigils of early modern Icelandic magic which may have developed out of runic magic. So I might be full of poo poo.

Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

Grevling posted:

I've been trying to find out when the spiritus asper came to be used for breathing, but so far the only information I've been able to find is that it's "post-classical". The Ionic alphabet was adopted almost everywhere around 400 BC, so for a while aspiration before vowels may have just not been part of standard orthography.

Hellenistic times according to a philologist I could ask, but in the beginning it was only used sporadically. From approximately the 10th century they began to be used more consistently.

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GoutPatrol
Oct 17, 2009

*Stupid Babby*

Banana Canada posted:

Go shopping in mainland China for some clothes with hip "English" slogans or design elements and you'll see variations on all of this today. Badly translated or misspelt phrases, copied non sequitur words or sayings, "lorem ipsum" style lifting of blocks of texts from a random book or news article, voweless gibberish, etc.

A year ago I had some students in Taiwan making flower arrangements for mother's day. They were wrapped in some kind of fancy paper that had English on it. I took one and read it. It consisted of the same two articles over and over again:

A Dave Barry column about horseracing/gambling? (can't remember exactly)
The scandal about Nancy Reagan's astrologist

This is apparently used in Taiwan/China for many different kinds of flower arrangements. And I can't even remember if I told this story before in this thread or another.

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