Written Speech

[Kathy Li]

Just in case anybody wanted to look at some of the structure and etymology of written Chinese, I thought I'd throw out the zhongwen.com link.

[semiramis]

*UBERTACKLEGLOMP*

OMGOMGOMG!!!!! I LOOOOOOOOVE YOUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!

*has been endlessly frustrated by having to deal with babelfish when trying to type a particular character becuase comppy at home doesn't have the Chinese typing program installed*

[Kathy Li]

You're welcome! Glad it's useful.

[Peter Murray]

So far, the list of symbols seem to be:
1 The wizard's knot
2 a closed circle, and a variant with an arrow
3 the Eye or seer symbol and a non-cursive version.

So, I've tried drawing out these four:
Edited out the image, as there's a revised version on the next page.
Does this look about right to you?

[semiramis]

I actually imagined the eye a bit different, like either an actual eye or rather similar to the Eye of Horus (which would make sense, considering that the ailuran religion seems to parallel Egyptian religion).

Uhh... there was another one mentioned, I swear there was, I just can't remember it....

Oh! suddenly remembered something. When Fred is giving his ID thingy to Tom and Carl, I remember him using a Greek letter, and I think a Hebrew one as well (or was it Arabic...?). So perhaps the speech incorporates parts of other languages?

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by semiramis:
I actually imagined the eye a bit different, like either an actual eye or rather similar to the Eye of Horus (which would make sense, considering that the ailuran religion seems to parallel Egyptian religion)...

I haven't read Book of Night with Moon, so I was going by the description earlier in this thread, which said it was two curves with a slanting line across.

Oh! suddenly remembered something. When Fred is giving his ID thingy to Tom and Carl, I remember him using a Greek letter, and I think a Hebrew one as well (or was it Arabic...?). So perhaps the speech incorporates parts of other languages?

There's a thread somewhere which says that part of it turned out to be an ancient prayer to Aphrodite - considering what the Speech is it would make more sense in the series for some languages to have retained symbol names from it.

[Birdhead]

So perhaps the speech incorporates parts of other languages?

More likely, other languages incorporate parts of the Speech. The Language of Life itself, from which all others come, right?

[PK]

Tui: That would seem to make more sense. *g* Though in one of the feline wizard books, I believe Rhiow is thinking about some of the specialized working vocabulary for... blast, what is it... fire or power in the Speech coming from Ailurin, because of cats' intense association with fire.

On the other hand, considering the Speech IS supposed to be The Language of Life Itself (and I sometimes wonder if the Speech in some sense is the One, what with being the mode of creating and defining everything else; that however is going not only on the concept of the name being the thing but on the Biblical reference at the start of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and through him all things were created" -- and I may be getting carried away; on the other hand, DD isn't shy about using any references she pleases... incidentally, do you know where the particular flood story Rhiow is talking about elsewhere in that book comes from? I'm almost sure I've seen it elsewhere but can't place it...er, possibly that should be in another topic.)

As I was saying before wandering off. As the Speech is supposed to be, as you say, the Language of Life Itself, it's quite possible Rhiow has the etymology of the word-roots she's talking about backwards. I think the cats' attitude makes it easy to forget that they don't necessarily know as much as they think they do, sometimes.

[Peter Murray]

Ah. Found another symbol, in A Wizard Alone:

(p256 pb)The line of light, the single character for connection in the Speech, stretched and stretched after her as she went.

But if it's a straight line, and all the characters are joined together, how do you tell if it's a long gap, or "connection"? So I added a squiggle .

So 1) knot 2) unchanging or changeable 3) seer 4) connection.
Edited out picture (again) as it's updated below.

[talkingbeast]

There was an interesting bit in the home decorating section of the Chicago Tribune over the weekend. An artist had designed some really unusual lamps. Guess how one of them worked? You took a pencil and completed a circle in a drawing; this closed the electrical circuit (or something) and the light came on. Wizard's knot!

[semiramis]

That's so nifty. Kinda creepy, too, because it's so.. so. I wonder if (s)he'd read the YW books?

I wanna lamp like that....

[Birdhead]

That's so cool! I want one.

Arg. Poot. *smacks*

PeterMurray, (we have to find an abbreviation for you), I like the one that's "changeable." Actually, I do like what you've got, for some reason. Possibly because it looks like writing, not just symbols, if you know what I mean.

[Wilf]

There are three main ways of writing lanaguages down on paper: symbol-per-word (pictograms, like Chinese, and early Ancient Egyptian); symbol-per-syllable (like most hiroglyphics) and symbol-per-sound (alphabets like English). the first tend to have hundreds or thousands of symbols, the second 70-100, and the last 20-30. Given the number of symbols in Speach, it is likely that it is the symbol-per-syllable type.

On a side note on hiroglyphics: it almost certainly started otu as picture-per-word. However, fairly soon they started using the picture to represent the sound of the object. Example (in Enlglish): Using a piccy of the sun for the sound "sun", and then using the piccy of the sun for tee words "sun" and also "son".

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by Birdhead:
PeterMurray, (we have to find an abbreviation for you), I like the one that's "changeable." Actually, I do like what you've got, for some reason. Possibly because it looks like writing, not just symbols, if you know what I mean.

The Speech is described in the books as cursive, and resembling Arabic writing (or shorthand written by someone insane?), so I went with the idea that the symbols should join up, and drew them that way.

[Kathy Li]

Wilf wrote:

There are three main ways of writing lanaguages down on paper: symbol-per-word (pictograms, like Chinese, and early Ancient Egyptian); symbol-per-syllable (like most hiroglyphics) and symbol-per-sound (alphabets like English). the first tend to have hundreds or thousands of symbols, the second 70-100, and the last 20-30. Given the number of symbols in Speach, it is likely that it is the symbol-per-syllable type.

That's a little simplistic.

Remember that we don't know the number of symbols--only the number of keys on a keyboard to enter the symbols. And not all languages use keyboards the same way. As we've said above, Chinese can be entered with an English keyboard, and it as thousands of characters.

And a couple of your categorizations are incorrect. Arabic is an abjad--where the symbols only represent consonants. (vs. an alphabet vs. an abugida, etc. etc.) I'm going by this page of The World's Writing Systems, which is fun browsing for the writing freak.