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Domain: ancientscripts.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to ancientscripts.com.

Comments · 7

  1. Re:In a world of art that's mostly disposable... by Gilmoure · · Score: 1 · on William Gibson's AGRIPPA Recovered and Revealed

    The Sumerians had a pretty decent system, as far as longevity goes. I think I'm going to have my autobiography printed up on clay tablets and stored in a salt cave in southern NM. Should get some longevity out of that.

  2. Aleph, No way by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 1 · on Tropical Storm Alpha Sets Naming Record

    Of course it should be the from the futhark. After all, who were more acqainted to rough seas than vikings! The aleph comes from a desolate desert.

  3. Musical Notes by myg · · Score: 1 · on Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs

    Actually, I remember from my Bar-Mitzvah that I had to sing my parshah. Although I know how to read Hebrew I didn't know how to read the musical notes which most Torahs carry.

    For those unfamiliar with semitic languages such as Hebrew, the vowels are somewhat optional and are not part of the normal string of consonants. Instead, they are little marks made in various locations around the consonants. For example, a dot to the left of a character in the middle is an "ewwww" sound. Move the dot to the top of the letter and its an "oh" sound.

    In addition to these vowels are various musical notes which tell you how to sing that particular passage (as a canter would). If I understand the history correctly the vowels and musical notes are not part of the "characters" (consontnats) of the Torah.

    Perhaps minor variations in the musical notes could be used to signify the Torah -- or would that invalidate it. I guess one other important thing to mention is that there is some built-in redundancy in the vowels and (if I remember correctly, it was almost 20 years ago) in the musical notes. For example, a bar under a letter is an "ah" sound but so is a T-shape under a letter (althoug there may be a subtle difference in pronounciation that I'm not aware of).

    A bit like a stream of data can be encoded in the less-significant bits of an image.

    And for anybody interested in the non-Roman alphabets, http://www.ancientscripts.com/ is a good place to start.

  4. Re:Pervasiveness of English by Cowboy+Bebop · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Tokyo Narita Airport Gets PDA Voice Translators
    Languages are born as quickly as they die, my friend. They're predicting that Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English will be the big three 100+ years from now. I'd love to know what English will sound like after 100 years of evolution. It's changed so much in the past 50 that you can see the differences clearly.

    If you like languages, please check out these websites. If you're bored, check them out too... you might learn that you are interested in something new!

    http://www.ancientscripts.com/
    http://www.omniglot.com
    http://www.langmaker.com/

  5. Re:Mmm Perl by Smallpond · · Score: 2, Funny · on Cultured Perl: Fun with MP3 and Perl, Part 2

    I think in Linear A, you insensitive clod.

    it actually looks a lot like Perl:
    sample

    - !//!!1\\\!!!

  6. Re:compared to say by digitalsushi · · Score: 1 · on French Government Bans Term 'E-Mail'

    "pan", for bread, is apparently from the "root language", a patched together half understood language that linguists have been working on figuring out. If you look, "pan" or a close cognate, is the word for bread in many different, non related languages. Just one of those words that kept making it up through.

    spanish->pan
    french->pain
    italian->pane
    japan ese,romanjii->pan
    portuguese->pão

    course, four of those are gimmes 'cause they're all just dialects of Latin, if you look at it that way.

    ok here's one i can back up a little more:

    the word "father" in a wide array:

    Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic English
    pita pater pater fadar father

    anyways, i'm no expert, just interested-- check out ancientscripts.com for a ton more about this stuff, and then hop over to omniglot when you want some more, but a little different.

  7. Extinguished languages by Mazzaroth · · Score: 4, Informative · on Dying Languages, Fading Formats
    Writing and reading is almost a given today. But humanity developped many languages and writing systems and most of them are now lost. Actually, every two weeks, a language dies - within the next century, half of the six thousand eight hundred languages on this planet will be dead. When a language dies which has never been recorded in some way, it is as if it has never been. (for more on language death, read this)

    There are still many ancient texts, from dead languages, that have never been deciphered, and some, not from such a distant past. Maybe you would like to give your best shot at some of them. Here is a list of texts and writing systems awaiting to be understood:

    Rongorongo, the hieroglyphic script of Easter Island

    The Voynich Manuscript, 200 pages, probably written in the 13 century

    Indus Valley scripts from Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, 4000 years ago

    Etruscan

    The Disc of Phaistos, from Crete, 3700 years ago

    Meroitic hieroglyphs of ancient Nubia

    Zapotec script
    Have fun!