Writing systems

[English below]
La plupart des études scientifiques occidentales sur les systèmes d’écriture en Afrique portent sur l’orthographie latine et les effets des différentes orthographies sur l’éducation et l’alphabétisation sur le continent. Récemment, l’ajami, l’écriture arabe adaptée pour écrire les langues africaines a également fait l’objet d’un nombre important d’études en linguistique africaine et arabe. Par ailleurs, on trouve sur le continent africain quelques écritures indigènes développées par des locuteurs maternels des langues africaines, souvent sans expertises en linguistiques ou même illettrés. Jusqu’à présent, ces écritures ont fait l’objet de relativement peu de recherches. Alors que ces écritures indigènes existent dans différentes régions du continent, c’est en Afrique de l’Ouest qu’elles sont les plus nombreuses et où elles ont connu le plus de succès.
Mes recherches de terrain au Burkina Faso ont porté sur une telle écriture créée par Mahamadi Ouédraogo, un locuteur natif du mooré (Niger-Congo, Gur), qui n’a jamais été scolarisé selon le système scolaire occidental, mais qui a appris l’écriture arabe grâce à l’éducation coranique. Jusqu’à présent, son écriture récemment développée, qui affiche quelques caractéristiques rarement observées dans les écritures du monde, n’a fait l’objet d’aucune étude scientifique publiée et n’est pas documentée dans la base de données « World Writing Systems Database ». L’objectif de mon étude est de créer une première documentation scientifique sur cette écriture et de la mettre dans le contexte des autres écritures ouest-africaines, afin de dégager leurs points communs et leurs différences fondamentales, ainsi que les influences possibles entre ces différentes écritures. Dans cette partie comparative, je considère également les influences possibles des traditions d’écriture arabe et ajami ainsi que des alphabets secrets arabes.

Most Western scientific studies on writing systems in Africa focus on the Latin script and the effects of different writing systems on education and literacy on the continent. Recently, Ajamī, the Arabic script adapted for writing African languages, has also been the subject of a significant number of studies in African and Arabic linguistics. Furthermore, there are a number of indigenous writing systems on the African continent developed by native speakers of African languages, often without linguistic expertise or who are even illiterate. To date, these writing systems have been the subject of relatively little research. Whilst these indigenous scripts exist in various regions of the continent, it is in West Africa that they are most numerous and where they have enjoyed the greatest success.
My field research in Burkina Faso focused on one such writing system created by Mahamadi Ouédraogo, a native speaker of Mooré (Niger-Congo, Gur), who was never educated within the Western school system but who learnt Arabic script through Koranic education. To date, his recently developed writing system, which displays certain characteristics rarely observed in the world’s writing systems, has not been the subject of any published scientific study and is not documented in the ‘World Writing Systems Database’.  The aim of my study is to produce an initial body of scholarly literature on this script and to place it within the context of other West African scripts, in order to identify their commonalities and fundamental differences, as well as any possible influences between these different scripts. In this comparative section, I also consider the possible influences of the Arabic and Ajami writing traditions, as well as secret Arabic alphabets.

We present the first complete computational decipherment proposal for the Indus Script (~2600–1900 BCE), assigning Proto-Dravidian readings to all 605 known signs at HIGH confidence. The pipeline uses Simulated Annealing mapping inference with a 7,514-word Dravidian language model (DEDR-expanded), validated on two independent corpora: 1,670 Holdat seals (Mahadevan 1977) and 5,520 ICIT inscriptions (Fuls 2013) from 76 archaeological sites. SA achieves 83.7% mean consistency on the expanded corpus. The tripartite grammar model (INITIAL→MEDIAL→TERMINAL) is confirmed at 45.7% across 2,980 eligible inscriptions (6.3× null lift, p<0.001). External corroboration via 7 Elamite cognates (McAlpin 1981) and 13 Sanskrit substrate loanwords (Witzel 1999) yields Fisher p≈10⁻¹⁵. The competing Sanskrit hypothesis (Yajnadevam 2024) is falsified 0/34 against our readings. 41 evidence items (E01–E41) support the Proto-Dravidian affiliation. Erratum (v2): Cross-validation corpus re-attributed from Yajnadevam to ICIT (Fuls 2013); terminology and non-linguistic hypothesis assessment revised per Sproat 2014 benchmark. All code, data, and anchor inventory are open source at https://github.com/BitConcepts/glossa-lab

The Latin-script German is taken from the public-domain Project Gutenberg plaintext witness of Die Verwandlung and checked against the Wikisource public-domain page. The Hebrew-script version is a normalized, rule-based conversion into the German-in-Hebrew-letter style derived from Mendelssohn's Torah translation. Ruby-style superscript provides Kafka's German original, which serves as romanization. It follows the direction of the Hebrew scriot, that is, from right to left (RTL).

Source and method. The Latin-script German is taken from the public-domain Project Gutenberg plaintext witness of Die Verwandlung and checked against the Wikisource public-domain page. The Hebrew-script version is a normalized, rule-based conversion into the German-in-Hebrew-letter style derived from Mendelssohn's Torah translation; it is not a historical Kafka edition. Latin-script German source Mendelssohn-style Hebrew-letter rewriting I. ‫.י‬ Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen, von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichen Niedergleiten bereit, kaum noch erhalten konnte. Seine vielen, im Vergleich zu seinem sonstigen Umfang kläglich dünnen Beine flimmerten ihm hilflos vor den Augen.

This document is a practical conversion lexicon, not a fully collated diplomatic concordance of every word in every printed witness of Mendelssohn's Torah translation. The online witnesses available for this workflow confirm the two-script tradition of Mendelssohn's Torah translation and supply partial OCR/transcription evidence, but they do not provide a complete, clean, machine-actionable OCR corpus for the whole Pentateuch. Therefore the 10,000 entries below are selected as frequent German word forms using the wordfreq German frequency list and are rendered into Hebrew letters by the Mendelssohn-style Latin-to-Hebrew conversion rules developed in the preceding documents. The most common Torah/German function words are additionally covered by lexical overrides from the earlier Mendelssohn-style comparison work.

Horpa is an understudied, internally diverse Rgyalrongic cluster (Qiangic branch, Sino-Tibetan family) spoken across six counties in two prefectures of northwestern Sichuan. As this author demonstrated in an earlier article using individual-identifying morphological evidence, Northern Horpa (Stodsde) clearly belongs under Rgyalrongic (J. Sun 2000b). The phylogenetic affinity of less conservative Horpa languages (e.g., Rta'u) is however far less obvious. This paper, drawing on extensive recent fieldwork, offers a fuller range of cross-dialect evidence in important areas of Horpa verbal morphology to vindicate the ancestry of Horpa as a Rgyalrongic subgroup. It is shown that quite banal phonological and grammatical evolutions have caused the innovating Horpa languages to cast off much of their characteristic morphology, masking their true Rgyalrongic origins.

Arabic-Afrikaans Literature at the Cape Tuan Guru -the first official imam at the Cape -used Malayu as the medium of instruction in the Dorp Street madrasah (Muslim religious school) which he established at the end of the 18 th century. This changed in the middle of the 19 th century when Cape Dutch was adopted as the language of instruction. While the children were familiar with this language they could not read the Latin script since they were barred from attending the public schools. Cape Muslims could, however, read the Arabic script which they had to learn for liturgical purposes -though they could not speak Arabic. To overcome this conundrum, numerous scholars and teachers began to translate Arabic texts into Cape Dutch and then transcribing these in the Latin script. These "readers" came to serve as official textbooks in the madrasahs at the Cape. This article traces the development of this genre of literature which came to be known as Arabic-Afrikaans, comments on manuscripts that were identified by Adrianus van Selms, Achmat Davids and Hans Kähler and highlights the daunting challenge of transcribing Afrikaans phonetically in the Arabic script.

This paper investigates the so-called halḥam (h-l-ḥ-m) letter order, arguing that it served as the foundational organizational principle of the first alphabet and was transmitted via distinct 'letter families' that functioned as acrophonic mnemonics. By analyzing the Ancient North Arabian (ANA) corpora-including Dhofari, Taymanitic, Thamudic B, and Himaitic inscriptions-the study reconstructs three stable initial clusters: hlḥmq, ws²rbt, and s¹kn. It is further posited that these clusters were utilized as pronounceable pseudowords to facilitate literacy, predating and perhaps inspiring the later Arabic abjad-hawwaz mnemonic system.. Furthermore, the paper highlights a significant scribal evolution: while nomadic groups maintained these mnemonic families, sedentary societies such as those speaking Ancient South Arabian and Dadanitic eventually adopted institutionalized educational practices, including oral dictation and visual transcription. This transition reflects a shift from memory-based learning to regulated scribal practice, though the underlying halḥam order remained a constant across the Peninsula.

What is literacy? Do you mean literacy as opposed to illiteracy -not being able to read and write? So your work is about being able to read and write -about reading and writing, is that right? (an educated layperson in conversation with two of the authors, Edinburgh,

This contribution offers a methodological reflection on the writing and transcription
of the Calabrian dialect, to promote the preservation and valorization of regional
linguistic heritage. Through the analysis of specific phonetic and orthographic phenomena,
it highlights the need for a phonologically based graphic codification capable of
capturing the complexity of local varieties. Examples of spontaneous writing, normalization
proposals, and strategies for representing sounds not found in standard Italian are
examined. The work serves as a practical tool for authors, linguists, and speakers, providing
guidelines for a coherent transcription system that supports the intergenerational
transmission of the dialect

Konkani was influenced by Portuguese due to centuries of colonialism in Goa, thus borrowing Portuguese vocabularies. This paper proposes a character-level machine learning approach to identify Portuguese loanwords in Konkani. A dataset of both Portuguese loanwords and native Konkani words was made where Character n-grams (2gram to 4-gram) were extracted using bag-of-characters, capturing orthographic and morphological patterns. Logistic Regression and Support Vector Machine models were trained and evaluated. Character-level features differentiate Portuguese loanwords from native Konkani words, even with a small dataset. Feature interpretability analysis showed that specific character sequences correlate with Portuguese lexical patterns. Error analysis points out the challenges from phonological adaptation and shared orthographic structures. This gives a method to detect loanwords and to document language, historical linguistics, and to preserve culture.

A written text, at its core, brings a linguistic message to a reader visually through a specific system of graphs organised around mapping principles and display conventions. The wide variety of the world's writing systems suggests that literacy is partly a matter of adaptations to the specific demands made by these systems. Graphs that map phonemes (alphabetic writing) shape reading in ways different from graphs that map syllables (Japanese Kana) and graphs that map morpheme-syllables (Chinese). Among these varied systems is one that, despite its use by several hundred millions of people (exceeded perhaps only by Chinese), has been under represented in the English language literature on literacy. In this Special Issue i , we have sought to bring attention to the distinctive aspects of the alphasyllabaries that are widely used across South and Southeast Asia and how these distinctive aspects penetrate literacy. i This Special Issue would not have been possible without the many reviewers who generously gave of their time and expertise: Rahul

We investigated children's spelling in the alphasyllabic writing system of Kannada, a South Indian language. Kannada represents language at roughly the level of the syllable, but its symbols or 'akshara' can be segmented visually to reveal the consonant and vowel segments within. Having been taught akshara as whole, fourth-and fifth-grade children were poor at constructing complex akshara from their consonant and vowel segments. Analyses of their errors showed confusions between the symbols for phonologically similar consonants, visually based errors, particularly on small diacritic marks, and influences of dialect. Kannada has been considered a transparent writing system, but the challenges that arise in mastering this visuo-spatially complex and extensive orthography suggest that previous studies have missed certain factors that contribute to the ease or difficulty with which a writing system is learned.

With over 400 lines, the oracle report KUB 5.1+ (CTH 561) is the longest Hittite record of an oracle investigation conducted before a planned military campaign by the Hittite ruler in northern Anatolia. It seeks divine approval for various strategies to test their effectiveness while also considering threats such as illness, casualties, and extreme weather. Since the text mentions many geographic names and provides information about the relative locations of different settlements, it has gained particular attention in studies of northern Anatolia's geography. Furthermore, the mention of the Hittite king's return from Assyria has sparked interest. Some scholars have interpreted the king's undertaking, referred to as kaskal kur uru aššur, as a military campaign, while others view it as an expedition or journey. Based on this and other information, researchers have proposed various dates for the text, with most suggesting it was commissioned by either Ḫattusili III or Tuthaliya IV. This article explores existing theories and offers a new perspective. It focuses on the invocation of the Storm-god of Nerik, who is called upon as the personal protective deity of the ruler, the use of the phrase =za=kan karp-+ Nerik in the accusative, and an oracle inquiry about an unnamed son (DUMU). Based on this and further evidence, I will argue that Ḫattušili III was the one who commissioned the oracle inquiry. The question about the son probably concerns Tutḫaliya and his rise to the throne as the successor to his father Ḫattušili III, as well as possible disputes over the throne with Kurunta of Tarḫuntassa, who, as the son of Muwattalli II, had a legitimate claim to the throne.

In this article we argue for understanding the development and rise of Hindi as an integrative force as opposed to the notion which treats it as standing for lingual imperialism, this is done through highlighting the ways through which Hindi speaks for 'Others'.

La tombe U-j d'Abydos, datée de 3200 avant notre ère, constitue une découverte capitale pour la compréhension des origines de la monarchie égyptienne. L'analyse des marques inscrites sur les jarres funéraires de cette sépulture, notamment les dipinti représentant des animaux, suggère un système symbolique complexe lié à l'identité royale. G. Dreyer avait initialement interprété ces figures (scorpion, poisson, coquillage, etc.) comme les noms individuels de souverains prédynastiques. L'objectif de cette étude est de proposer une lecture différente de ces images : dans ce contexte, les représentations d'animaux permettraient de définir une identité « constellative » du souverain, affichant non par des noms à proprement parler, mais par l'intersection de plusieurs attributs convergents, l'une des qualités fondamentales de la fonction monarchique : sa dimension « fulgurante ».

Abstract
This study explores the potential integration of the Ge’ez/Amharic writing system into Chinese-language instruction as a means to enhance Ethiopian learners’ comprehension of Mandarin. The Amharic script—commonly referred to as Fidel—is derived from the ancient Ge’ez script and functions as a syllabic writing system. Since Amharic is serving as the working language of the Ethiopian federal government, this script remains widely familiar to millions of Ethiopians. In this study, the terms Ge’ez, Amharic, and Fidel are used interchangeably to denote Ethiopia’s traditional writing system. By examining the compatibility of tones between the Ge’ez script and Mandarin language, this research seeks to identify the possibility of studying Chinese by Geez script. Ultimately, the goal is to accelerate Chinese language acquisition and improving learning outcomes.

The study presents the development of a Ge’ez-based phonetic transcription system comparable to Hànyǔ Pīnyīn. This innovation, termed GECH Pīnyīn, derives its name from the first two initial letters of “Ge’ez” and “Chinese.” GECH Pīnyīn employs Ge’ez/Amharic characters to represent the four tones of Mandarin pronunciation, thereby adapting the Amharic writing system to the phonological structure of Mandarin Chinese. It integrates Ge’ez script with Chinese tonal diacritics to form a hybrid transcription system.

Based on serious analysis in phonetics, cross-linguistic transfer theory, and sinological studies, the paper synthesizes existing researches, identifies major research gaps, and proposes future study. Furthermore, by studying the parallel between Ge’ez melodic notation and the tonal system of Mandarin, the study demonstrates that Ethiopia’s native linguistic knowledge can be helpful as a cognitive bridge for understanding tones.

This study holds substantial implications for Chinese studies in non-Latin script contexts. It offers the potential to enable millions of learners to access Mandarin through their native writing systems, rather than relying exclusively on Latin-script-mediated approaches.
Keywords: Ge’ez script, Mandarin Chinese, GECH Pīnyīn, tone acquisition, cross-linguistic transfer, indigenous script-based pedagogy

Mésopotamie, Oxus, vallée de l'Indus... À la fin du néolithique, des cités émergent dans plusieurs régions du monde, connectées grâce au commerce. Sous l'impulsion d'élites religieuses et politiques, de nouvelles formes de vie en commun s'y inventent.

Hazaragi is a language & Literature and Book Publishing in Hazaragi. Interview slides by John Gulzari for  Khorrami News on TikTok on 12th April 2026.

In these slides, there are 30 questions on Hazaragi, Orthography, Literacy, Language Family, Phonetics, HALPARS, (Hazaragi; A Lnguage, Preservation, Advocacy, Revitalisation, Society) and various literature. Furthermore, we have also discussed the history of the Hazaragi language, leading researchers, types of literature, the use of literature, and future use of the Hazaragi Language by future generations and researchers.

Further, we discuss topics such as MACHID (Music, Arts, Culture & Hazara Identity -Dandenog), which most of the books cover. Also, we discuss the resources available to use.

Novel methodologies in archaeology are helping us to better understand
social identities in the past. In this EES-funded research, Pablo Barba
outlines how fingerprints left by past individuals in clay can be measured
to determine the age and sex of their owner, and how he is applying this
methodology to sealings to identify who was involved in administrative
activities at the beginning of the Egyptian state.

This volume defines a constrained procedural framework for evaluating phonemic material in Aegean syllabic inscriptions without assuming fixed reading direction. Building on the foundational caution articulated by Dr. Alice Kober that transcription does not determine pronunciation, the method treats ductus as an open variable and applies a strictly mechanical extraction protocol.

Bidirectional testing is conducted through terminal paired recovery, proceeding retrograde across segmented sequences. No phonemic repair, substitution, or normalization is permitted during extraction. Results are evaluated under conditions of recurrence: isolated correspondences are treated as non-admissible until supported by distributional clustering across the corpus.

Administrative registers are prioritized as primary test environments due to their constrained variation and repetitive structure. The method does not advance claims regarding linguistic ancestry, cultural transmission, or historical priority. Its function is procedural: to establish admissible conditions under which phonemic structures may be evaluated for stability under bidirectional constraint.

Subsequent volumes apply this framework to attested tablets and evaluate whether repeatable structural correspondences emerge under controlled conditions.

چکیده

قالی‌های ایرانی یکی از برجسته‌ترین سنت‌های هنری مرتبط با ایران به شمار می‌آیند. این آثار که طی قرن‌های متمادی تولید شده‌اند، بیانگر مهارت فنی، ظرافت زیبایی‌شناختی و لایه‌های پیچیده‌ای از معنا هستند. با این حال، در مجموعه‌های موزه‌ای، قالی‌های ایرانی اغلب در چارچوب دسته‌بندی‌های گسترده‌تری همچون «هنر اسلامی» قرار می‌گیرند. اگرچه این نوع طبقه‌بندی بازتاب‌دهنده چارچوب‌های تاریخی رایج در موزه‌هاست، می‌تواند هویت متمایز فرهنگی هنر ایرانی را تا حدی پنهان کند.

این مقاله به بررسی شیوه‌های تفسیر قالی‌های ایرانی در بستر موزه‌ای می‌پردازد، با تمرکز ویژه بر مجموعه موزه ویکتوریا و آلبرت. با تحلیل برچسب‌گذاری موزه‌ای، رویکردهای مرتبط با فرهنگ مادی و تداوم نقش‌مایه‌های طراحی، این پژوهش نشان می‌دهد که چگونه چارچوب‌های کیوریتوریال در شکل‌گیری درک عمومی از سنت‌های هنری ایرانی نقش دارند.

This article examines Tangut lexical terms for cattle. Through comparison with Rgyalrongic languages, we demonstrate that several Tangut words originally meaning 'cattle' shifted to mean 'elephant', suggesting that while Tangut preserved native vocabulary for 'cattle', the traditional Rgyalrongic "trichotomy" of domesticated cattle (yak, cattle, dzo) has been lost in Tangut. Historical documents further illuminate the socio-environmental motivations behind this linguistic change, particularly the Tangut migration to lower-altitude regions where yak and dzo husbandry became impractical.

The languages and writings of ancient Egypt are a paradigmatic example to illustrate how the examination of grammar, lexicon and the relationship between language and writing highlights those constitutive characteristics of the Egyptian mentality (and in the broader sense of the East), according to which the word pertains to being and not to knowing and which is expressed in particular on the religious level. Given the fragmentation and asystematic nature of the Egyptian documentation that deals with its own conception of language, the article makes the most of the correspondences identified between the Egyptian vision underlying the use of hieroglyphic and hieratic scriptures and the theses of Cratylus and Hermogenes in Plato’s Cratylus. Plato was able to grasp the cognitive principles of that civilization from outside the Egyptian world and was able to interpret them in an anti-sophistic function, applying a different system of theoretical evaluation, which has come down to us in an organic thought.

Characteristics of the Manchu writing system provide an excellent testing ground for current theorizing about orthography acquisition. Using traditionally demarcated orthographic units called uju hergen-symbol blocks representing phonological syllables-we investigated the role of visual features and phonological representations in learning the Manchu symbol set. Novice Manchu learners (n = 196; 89.8% female; M age = 18.79) participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 focused on visual complexity effects and Experiment 2 on mapping complexity effects and switching costs. Among visual characteristics, the number of connected points was found to make a unique contribution to uju hergen recognition. Naming error rate was lower for a list of uju hergen with single (one-to-one) mapping between a phoneme marker and sound compared to a matched list but with multiple (one-to-many) mapping. No switching cost was observed between lists with low-and high-switching-demand. Established explanatory constructs of grain size, orthographic depth, and orthographic breadth, referenced together as the construct of orthographic scale, explain the results. But reading uju symbol blocks also requires processing within symbol blocks: at the visual level, connected points provide the sub-symbol cues to decompose discrete simple features and recompose them into phoneme markers; and at the level of phonological representation, the resultant markers must be read by appropriate symbol-to-sound mapping. Together, our study expands theorizing on orthography acquisition by bringing focus on the under-studied construct of intra-symbol processing.

Due to the persisting political significance of language in present-day Central and Eastern Europe, much attention is lavished on the history of languages, mainly their coalescence and ethnic provenance. Often, findings are sorted and interpreted in line with an obtaining Geschichtspolitik (politics of history). The talk, first, introduces the concepts of speech (evolutionary capacity), language (actualizations of this capacity), writing (scripts) and dialect continuum. Subsequently, a survey is offered—hopefully, without favor or prejudice—of the use of languages and scripts in relation to ethnic, political, and economic developments between the 5th and 10th centuries. Little evidence is preserved from the period (though more than in the areas west and east of Ruś). Gaps can be usefully filled up with anthropological, genetic and archeologic research.

We propose a computational approach to the decipherment of rongorongo, the undeciphered script of Easter Island (Rapa Nui). Building on calibration from the Mamari lunar calendar (Guy 1990) and distributional analysis, we identify 48 phonetic signs covering 93.6% of the classic corpus (14,906 glyphs across 13 tablets, A–S).

Validation

Permutation test: p = 0.0004 (26-sign core)
Leave-one-tablet-out cross-validation: Z = 3.54, p < 0.001
Leave-one-family-out (parallel copies removed together): Z = 4.65, p < 0.001
Removing all borrowed words strengthens the signal: Z = 5.88, p < 0.001
External validation (Pozdniakov 2007): vowel core 4/4, frequency correlation rho = 0.563, p < 0.01
Grammatical particle ratio: 31.1% (vs 32.9% in spoken Rapa Nui)
Confidence

A confidence matrix classifies 9 signs as near-certain (kill-shot + external confirmation), 31 as strong, and 7 as speculative. All readings are classified Exploratory (D) and remain hypotheses to be tested.

Key readings

Na1  "raaraa raaraa raaraa raa te o ua" — Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant: the sun, of the rain
Ca3  "i te ata, i te tiraki, i te tahua" — In the shadow, in the rising, in the ceremonial place
Pv7  "mai mai mate mate ura" — Come, come, die, die, red (Grand Texte death passage)
The Santiago Staff (2,489 glyphs) is best interpreted as a name list (94% unique entries), consistent with earlier hypotheses by Guy and Butinov-Knorozov.

Supplementary Materials (data tables, interlinear readings, confidence matrix, robustness checks) available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19352915

Linear A appears on a variety of material supports, in ‘administrative’ and ‘non-administrative’ contexts, including on clay tablets found within the Minoan palaces, and stone vessels found on peak sanctuaries. This paper reexamines the visuality of the signs – their components, similarities and differences in their formation, and tool marks – in order to explore how different communities of practice (e.g. stone masons and Palace ‘scribes’) formed signs and created inscriptions. For example, the MA sign often appears as a cat face on stone vessels (it is fully articulated in an early form of the sign in Cretan Hieroglyphic). The visual properties of this sign, however, are not the same in every instance of its appearance on stone vessels; sometimes it occurs with ears, nose, and eyes, but in other cases the facial features are omitted and the sign is recognisable only by the overall round shape of the face and ears (rendered either by small triangles or lines). This ‘stripped back’ version of the sign occurs more often on the clay tablets, although more visually ‘full’ versions are present in that corpus too. This slippage across media demonstrates that different communities of practice sometimes created signs in similar ways – perhaps showing, for example, that those who inscribed the clay tablets were aware of how those who inscribed stone vessels wrote Linear A and vice versa. This paper will challenge the binary divisions between ‘decorative’ and ‘plain’ sign formations, ultimately leading us to question how we define the differences between different communities of Linear A users and creators.

The Meitei society before the eighteenth century was a self-sustaining civilization deeply rooted in its indigenous belief system, shaping its cultural and social framework. This study examines the sociocultural conditions of the Meitei people, focusing on their spiritual traditions, social hierarchy, ecological practices, and martial ethos. Through a qualitative historical approach, relying on secondary sources, memoirs, and ethnographic studies, the study highlights the central role of ancestral reverence, rituals, and traditional governance in shaping Meitei identity. The findings suggest that despite later transformations, the core cultural values of the Meitei people persisted, reflecting their adaptability and resilience. By analyzing these historical dimensions, this study provides insights into a thriving society that maintained its foundational identity even amidst external influences.

Estos Once Juegos de Sergio Aschero permiten aplicar la socialización y el intercambio lúdico entre los jugadores.
Se basan en diversas formulaciones que el Doctor Aschero formula desde una óptica diversa donde la lógica actúa como amalgama.
A disfrutar con ellos y a seguir aprendiendo desde las diversas opciones que se plantean para una formación multidisciplinaria.

Negli oltre quindici secoli di storia letteraria georgiana, non sono molti i poeti ai quali i georgiani hanno riservato la particolare ed affettuosa premura di riferirsi ad essi chiamandoli solo col nome proprio, a testimonianza del loro maggior valore. L'ultimo, in senso cronologico, a meritarsi tale onore fu Galak't'ion T'abidze. Per un georgiano suonerebbe assai strano riferirsi alle sue composizioni dicendo, ad esempio, Cavalli azzurri di T'abidze, oppure L'effimero di T'abidze. Galak't'ion T'abidze è semplicemente «Galak't'ion» -e non occorre aggiungere altro. Per tutti i critici letterari egli fu un fenomeno unico, irripetibile, eccezionale, impossibile da inquadrare in uno qualunque dei movimenti letterari che hanno caratterizzato il secolo scorso. La sua grandezza sfugge alle maglie di qualsiasi categorizzazione e nessuno, tra gli altri poeti georgiani del ventesimo secolo, può essergli paragonato.

This study isolates Linear A sign A312 as a discrete corpus-bounded unit to determine its functional behavior across all known attestations. All seven occurrences are enumerated and reviewed for positional behavior, paleographic consistency, and functional variability. A WA syllabic hypothesis is tested through substitution across phonemic corridors. WA substitution yields no failures and no contradictions across the attestation set. A312 is identified as a primary candidate for a WA syllabic value capable of logographic use in specific administrative contexts.

This paper presents a reproducible decipherment framework for the Rohonc Codex developed by Lackadaisical Security. The proposed solution models the manuscript as a structured cipher system rather than an undeciphered natural script in isolation, using symbol reduction, directional analysis, recurring lexical patterns, illustration concordance, and historical anchoring to recover coherent readings across the corpus. The framework identifies a reduced underlying symbol system, consistent translation behavior across multiple pages, and repeated historical, religious, and calendrical structures. The resulting readings support an Old Romanian/Vlach textual layer preserved through a protective encoded writing system. Particular emphasis is placed on reproducibility: the decipherment is not presented as a speculative gloss set, but as a testable framework supported by public documentation, phase-based analysis, lexicon materials, and an external toolkit that allows independent users to apply the model directly to codex segments. This upload serves as a summary-level public paper accompanying the broader release archive. Full phase documents, supporting materials, translation notes, and technical resources are available through the public site and GitHub repository.

We propose that the Andean khipu is a structured data archive carrying numbers and text simultaneously on the same physical medium. Computational analysis of the Open Khipu Repository (619 khipus, 54,403 cords, 110,677 knots) identifies a syllabic content channel encoded in long-knot turn counts, complementing the established decimal number system (Locke 1923). A 13-symbol syllabary with 3 position-dependent alternations (16 effective symbols), derived by brute-force optimization and independently replicated (p = 0.004), achieves approximately 97% lexical coverage on testable text-bearing cords. The syllabary produces archaeologically grounded results: a toponymic system confirmed by colonial-era place names, personal names and kinship terms consistent with Andean social structure, and at least eight distinct document types — all structured forms, none prose. The khipu is the Inca equivalent of a spreadsheet, and we can now read it as one.

The Zapotec script (c. 500 BCE-900 CE)-the earliest writing system in Mesoamerica-remains substantially undeciphered despite partial identification of its calendrical components. This paper proposes that the non-calendrical elements of the Zapotec script encode acoustic performance notation of a distinct and previously unrecognized type: instrument tablature, body positioning instructions, and architectural resonance guidance for ceremonial performance at Monte Albán. Unlike the other scripts in the resonance notation framework (Rios, 2026a-d), the Zapotec system encodes not wave physics or performance timing but the physical mechanics of instrument production-specifically, fingering positions for globular flutes and whistles, jaw resonance cavity instructions, and spatial positioning within Monte Albán's deliberately acoustic-engineered ceremonial spaces. Three convergent pillars of evidence are presented: (1) sign morphology analysis demonstrating that speech scrolls encode wind instrument airflow, dot clusters encode finger hole positions, bars encode open holes or note duration, jawbone signs encode resonating cavity position, footprint signs encode performer spatial placement, and hill glyphs encode elevation-based frequency registers; (2) Helmholtz resonance calculations for five Zapotec instruments excavated at Monte Albán producing musical pitch matches of 98.6-99.5% accuracy, with two independent instruments calculating to the same pitch (A5) indicating deliberate tuning standardization; and (3) cross-civilizational corroboration with the Mayan pyramid at Chichén Itzá, whose acoustic architecture produces quetzal bird call frequencies through deliberate Bragg diffraction engineering-confirming that Mesoamerican cultures intentionally encoded bird-frequency acoustics in their ceremonial architecture and notation. The Zapotec place name Cuicatlán-meaning The Place of Song-confirms the acoustic identity of the civilization's geographic consciousness. This paper completes a five-civilization unified acoustic notation framework spanning 7,000 years of human history. Five falsifiable predictions are provided. Copyright © 2026 Abelardo Rios Jr.

Rongorongo, the undeciphered script of Easter Island (Rapa Nui, c. 13th-19th century CE), has resisted all attempts at linguistic decipherment for over 150 years. This paper proposes that rongorongo is not a linguistic writing system but a functional acoustic notation system-specifically, a chanting performance guide encoding wave physics, frequency, amplitude, and harmonic instruction. Building on the resonance notation framework previously applied to the Indus Valley Script (Rios, 2026a) and the Vinca Script (Rios, 2026b), we present three convergent pillars of evidence: (1) systematic sign morphology analysis revealing a complete biological frequency scale-birds for high pitch, turtles for low frequency, tuna for amplitude, and fish for standing waves-consistent with known Pacific acoustic traditions; (2) physical Helmholtz resonance calculations demonstrating that every rongorongo-inscribed non-tablet object calculates to a musically significant frequency, including the Tangata Manu statuette at 99.3% accuracy for C5; and (3) cross-civilizational corroboration with the Marshall Islands mattang stick chart system, a documented Pacific wave physics notation with preserved meanings confirmed by modern oceanographers. The paper further demonstrates that the original Rapa Nui name for the tablets-kohau motu mo rongorongo, meaning 'lines to sing'-and the boustrophedon reading direction itself encode the acoustic oscillation principle. This framework offers the first physically testable, non-linguistic decipherment of rongorongo, with five falsifiable predictions.

The volume under review (hereafter also Hawkins 2024) encompasses the final research output of J. David Hawkins, a towering figure in the study of the Anatolian hieroglyphic inscriptions, which had been put in writing in ca. 1400-700 BCE with the use of the indigenous logo-syllabic script. This field, originally situated on the margins of Hittitology, received an enormous boost in the last fifty years, largely due to the efforts of J. David Hawkins. In particular, one has to stress the importance of Hawkins, Morpurgo-Davies and Neumann 1974, a monograph that established new values of several key syllabic glyphs. This led to the demonstration that the language of the Anatolian hieroglyphs represents a variety of Luwian, an Indo-European Anatolian language, which had been primarily known through passages and isolated words that are embedded in Hittite cuneiform texts that come from Boğazköy/Hattusa (for the most recent documentation of the Luwian lexicon in cuneiform transmission, see Melchert 2024). Furthermore, the New Readings of J. David Hawkins, Anna Morpurgo Davies and Günter Neumann facilitated the comparison between Luwian and the closely related Lycian languages, as well as the more distantly related Hittite. Seizing on the opportunities opened by the New Readings and other advances in the decipherment of the Anatolian hieroglyphs, J. David Hawkins devoted the rest of his scholarly career to the interpretation of the texts recorded in this script. For several decades, he was assisted in this task by his close friend Anna Morpurgo-Davies, whose linguistic erudition provided a perfect match to Hawkins' philological acumen. The intermediate result of this lifelong academic endeavour is Hawkins 2000, a commented edition of the Anatolian hieroglyphic inscriptions known at the time that postdate the fall of Hattusa and emanate from post-Hattusa states (also known as Neo-Hittite, Syro-Hittite, or Syro-Anatolian States). The publication of Hawkins 2000 has drastically raised the profile of the Anatolian hieroglyphic studies. The Luwian language has by now become an integral part of the Hittitological research curriculumwitness three editions of the Luwian manual, the latest one being Payne 2014. The efforts of J. David Hawkins also promoted the unification of transliteration standards: all the scholars that join the field under discussion in our millennium avail themselves of the basic conventions advocated in Hawkins 2000, which notoriously include the transliteration of the Anatolian hieroglyphic logograms into Latin. The availability of common conventions and standard teaching tools implies that the decipherment of newly found inscriptions written in the Anatolian hieroglyphic script is no longer an

This paper approaches Jahera through five interconnected perspectives. First, it situates the narrative within 1930s Manipur, a time when pre-modern religious and feudal structures coexisted with emerging currents of rational thought, empirical inquiry, and individual autonomy. Second, it considers how British colonial rule, through the spread of English education, introduced modernist ideas that gradually weakened the theocratic monarchy and nurtured a literary culture attentive to the lives of ordinary people, thereby establishing the novel as a popular form. Third, it examines the love story between the Hindu and Muslim protagonists, whose relationship-hemmed in by rigid orthodoxy-becomes emblematic of the clash between irreconcilable traditions. Fourth, it contrasts Chandidas's reformist vision with Kunja's corrosive ego, illustrating how individuality, when severed from devotion and ethical responsibility, can devolve into destructive force. Finally, Jahera's unwavering devotion to Kunjo is interpreted as an expression of Bhakti, embodying a spirit that transcends imposed identities and affirms a deeper human impulse toward freedom and unity, challenging sectarian and hierarchical boundaries.

This paper approaches Jahera through five interconnected perspectives. First, it situates the narrative within 1930s Manipur, a time when pre-modern religious and feudal structures coexisted with emerging currents of rational thought, empirical inquiry, and individual autonomy. Second, it considers how British colonial rule, through the spread of English education, introduced modernist ideas that gradually weakened the theocratic monarchy and nurtured a literary culture attentive to the lives of ordinary people, thereby establishing the novel as a popular form. Third, it examines the love story between the Hindu and Muslim protagonists, whose relationship-hemmed in by rigid orthodoxy-becomes emblematic of the clash between irreconcilable traditions. Fourth, it contrasts Chandidas's reformist vision with Kunja's corrosive ego, illustrating how individuality, when severed from devotion and ethical responsibility, can devolve into destructive force. Finally, Jahera's unwavering devotion to Kunjo is interpreted as an expression of Bhakti, embodying a spirit that transcends imposed identities and affirms a deeper human impulse toward freedom and unity, challenging sectarian and hierarchical boundaries.

Language expresses thought, preserves thought, and also suggests or creates thought. But language in its unwritten or oral form cannot perfectly carry out these functions. At a very early stage of man's history, attempts were made to present in some visible way, the thought which spoken language .o.ru.y.i to the ear. By so doing, man came about the concept, script' Looking at the concept of African script, the pulpose of this paper is to see the gen-eral ideas deiived or inferred from specific instances about it. The pupJr *-.uyt thoughts or notions formed by people about the-.script' Constraints of African scripts are pointed out. The effect of colonialism on African script is also discussed and recommendations made' The paper concludes that the provision of proper script for African languages will help the languages to develop more effectively along line wrth African way of thought and world view.