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Posted By: Bingley Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 07:10 AM
http://www.omniglot.com/

This one is devoted to the world's writing systems and which languages use which writing system. Interesting in itself, and has some intriguing-looking links.

Bingley
Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 12:35 PM
Thank you for this, Bingley. I love the domain name all by its own se'f.

Posted By: RhubarbCommando Re: Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 01:43 PM
Fascinating, indeed - many thanks for this one, Bingley.
However, I was a tad disapointed to find that the "Alternative Scripts" page, "Scripts invented for Books, Games or Movies" section, did not contain Elvish.
Nor Dwarvish, for that matter.

Posted By: maahey Re: Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 02:55 PM
Thanks much for sharing, Bingley! A veritable wealth of information is contained within its pages.

Is this the Akkadian that Gilgamesh is written in and do you know more about the translation of this epic?

Posted By: Bean Re: Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 03:19 PM
Great link, Bingley! I ended up stumbling on a learn-Korean page I'd seen before but this morning I had some time to really look at it, and now I can at least read the syllables "Tae kwon do" as they appear on my belt! Thanks!

Posted By: Jackie Re: Yet Another Website - 03/18/03 11:04 PM
Do we have a new acronym? (YAW) Here's something from the site: Ideograms - symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas.
Don't you-all think this would be kind of hard to teach, not only to children but especially to outsiders?

Posted By: Bingley Re: Yet Another Website - 03/19/03 04:38 AM
Rhuby, see Tengwar and Cirth, the alphabets used to write the Elvish languages Quenyan and Sindarin, and Dwarvish.

Maahey, I've read the Epic of Gilgamesh in the Penguin translation, which I found very readable. Online, this site looks very comprehensive, with a summary and links to complete translations and learned and not-so-learned and downright wacky commentary.

http://www.hist.unt.edu/ane-09.htm

Bingley
Posted By: Capfka Re: Yet Another Website - 03/19/03 12:21 PM
Great page, Bingley. A lot of the people I work with would understand my purple prose translated into any of the alphabets/syllabaries about as well as they understand the English.

I shall adopt the Analog Mesan text for all future documents.

- Pfranz
Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu Re: Yet Another Website - 03/19/03 01:59 PM
wow. that is just way cool. as if I had time to spend there, too...

how many of the rest of you have doodles in your notebooks from school of alternate alphabets and fonts? gotta dig those up...



Posted By: Jackie Re: Yet Another Website - 03/19/03 05:12 PM
About all I doodled were square houses with triangle roofs, then drew all kinds of bisecting lines, then filled in the pattern. Maybe the occasional spiral, for variety.

Posted By: consuelo Re: Yet Another Website - 03/19/03 10:53 PM
Uh-oh. Nobody told me I was supposed to remember what my doodles were. I guess I'm in truble now.

Posted By: Capfka Re: Yet Another Website - 03/20/03 09:06 AM
People who try to read my handwriting wind up assuming that they're looking at a different form of alphabet anyway ...

- Pfranz
Posted By: RhubarbCommando Re: doodles - 03/20/03 11:00 AM
I guess I'm lucky, then: I had all my doodles collated and bound and now they reside in Lancaster University Library with all the other PhD theses.

Posted By: AnnaStrophic You hear the one about - 03/21/03 03:45 PM
... the German scholar who was writing his highly-awaited thesis on the Meaning of Life? This was back in the pre-computer days, mind y'all. He was taking a sabbatical in the south of France to finish the tenth and final volume of the manuscript when suddenly fire broke out in his villa. He hurried to lug out the heavy volumes, one by one -- and when he was running in to get the final one, the fire official stopped him.

"It's too dangerous," the official said.

"But it's the most important volume!" the scholar replied.

"Why?"

"It's got all the verbs in it!"
Posted By: Capfka Re: You hear the one about - 03/21/03 05:23 PM


- Pfranz
Posted By: birdfeed Re: You hear the one about - 03/21/03 06:23 PM
Frighteningly plausible.

Posted By: RubyRed Re: Yet Another Website - 03/22/03 03:26 AM
>About all I doodled were square houses with triangle roofs<

Yep, I doodled those, too, Jackie. Then there were the hearts.....I spent my entire freshman year drawing hearts. Never satisfied with my symmetry, I would fill whole pages with hearts, attempting to perfect those congruent curves!

Still can't draw a perfectly symmetrical heart.......such a failure I am.

Posted By: Jackie Re: Yet Another Website - 03/22/03 09:03 PM
Still can't draw a perfectly symmetrical heart Same here, sigh. I astonished my husband, though, a few years ago. He wanted an outline of a bull's head, so he could cut that shape out of wood, for the Cub Scout lassoing activity. He found a drawing that he liked, and was all set to do the painstaking convert-it-from-a-small-graph-onto-a-bigger-one thing, when I stopped him. I took the drawing, folded it in half lengthwise, laid it on top of a piece of plain paper also folded lengthwise, and just cut around the outline. Voilą--a perfectly symmetrical bull's head, completely suitable for the purpose. And drawing half a heart, then unfolding the paper, is still the only way I can get a symmetrical one.


Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Yet Another Website - 03/22/03 11:23 PM
As our medical professionals will tell you, real hearts aren't symmetrical, anyway. Is there a word for heart-drawing?

Posted By: TEd Remington Is there a word for heart-drawing? - 03/22/03 11:50 PM
Coreography

I was thinking "heartistry", but yes, coeureography is better!



Posted By: Rapunzel Heartist - 03/23/03 11:15 PM
I spent my entire freshman year drawing hearts

Yes, but were there any initials in the hearts?

Posted By: Jackie Re: Heartist - 03/23/03 11:44 PM
Rapunzel, you're back! Did Dr. Bill magick you back? Wonderful to see you again, and congratulations on your graduation!

Posted By: RubyRed Re: Yet Another Website - 03/24/03 06:12 AM
>Is there a word for heart-drawing?<

Laughing! Yes, Jackie, it is "beingateenager"!

As Rapunzel asked....were there initials in them thar hearts? But of course, Rapunzel! See above word for corroboration!

Posted By: Rapunzel Re: Heartist - 03/24/03 03:51 PM
Did Dr. Bill magick you back?

I think perhaps he did. Imagine my surprise when, after having posted my "glad to be back" message, I see that Uncle Bill mentioned my name in Q&A only a few days ago! Coincidence? I think not.

Congratulations on your graduation!

Thank you very much. It feels great to have gotten this far. Now I just have to deal with small questions like where to get a job related to my major, whether I should go to grad school, where I should go to grad school if I choose to, and so on.



Coreography

!

Posted By: RhubarbCommando Re: Heartist - 03/25/03 01:04 PM
Lovely long-haired lady - it is so good to see you back amongst us, where your brown monkey, grey donkey and red turkey are a-waiting you!
Best Congratulations on graduating - what's the next step?

Posted By: Zed Re: Yet Another Website - 03/27/03 12:06 AM
A week late and a few dollars short as usual but I hadn't read this thread before.
I've read the Epic of Gilgamesh in the Penguin translation -(Mar 18th)
Bingley, it must be an amazing translation engine. I didn't even know Penguins could write!

Posted By: sjm Re: Yet Another Website - 03/27/03 12:10 AM
> I've read the Epic of Gilgamesh in the Penguin translation -(Mar 18th)
Bingley, it must be an amazing translation engine. I didn't even know Penguins could write!


He said translation, not transcription - who says one must be able to write in order to translate? Given their stumpy wings, the penguins probably just dictated their translation to a scribe.

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