7 ms·

One of my favorite Unicode oddities is in the cyrillic block. Some books used to use the letter "ꙩ" when writing the word eye (ꙩко). The letter was (from what

One of my favorite Unicode oddities is in the cyrillic block. Some books used to use the letter "ꙩ" when writing the word eye (ꙩко). The letter was (from what I can tell) never used for anything else. Because dual is a thing, clever people then went to write ꙭчи or Ꙫчи to mean two eyes. Both those characters made it into Unicode as there was some use in historic script. However even completely absurd variations made its way into unicode. The "many eyed seraphim" is written as серафими многоꙮчитїи. So if you need to write something with a lot of eyes, you can use ꙮ.

nsajko 6y ago
These four Unicode symbols have a similarly obscure origin: EDIT: automatically removed by HN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Notation_and_recording_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Notation_and_recordi... Relevant thread on the Unicode mailing list, with Subject "Purpose of and rationale behind Go Markers U+2686 to U+2689" is here: https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m03/thread.html https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m03/thread.ht...
- echelon 6y ago
  > EDIT: automatically removed by HN I'm curious about this. Was your post removed for containing certain unicode characters?
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    Just tested it, tried a comment with an emoji and it never appeared. So I'd assume so.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - aendruk 6y ago
    Probably not the whole post, just the uncommon characters. A few days ago HN deleted several characters from my comment immediately upon posting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851415
pvg 6y ago
I googled up the paperwork proposing the inclusion of ꙮ and variants a few years ago and got the impression that a) you're not supposed to include something that only has a single recorded use and b) ꙮ pretty much has a single recorded use.
- snailmailman 6y ago
  Interestingly, the phaistos disk[1] has its own little bit of Unicode and from what I understand the only known “original” use of all of the symbols is the phaistos disk itself. I guess there was enough discussion about the disk and it’s symbols to include it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc
  - pvg 6y ago
    The Phaistos disk sort of makes sense to me since, single use or not, it's (probably) some sort of script. I'm not really any kind of expert in ancient scripts or Unicodery and this was a while back but the gist I got from the docs was something along the lines of 'no one-time/decorative uses' and the eye thing looked like it was exactly that. The submission was from an academic in Slavic studies of some sort, I thought about emailing them to ask but couldn't really come up with a way to phrase what amounts to some version of 'did you mess up Unicode or what?' in a non-dickish way.
    - wisty 6y ago
      I guess you could argue that a single discovered extant usage is not single use, it's quite possible that there will one day be a reconstruction of the script (maybe with some more samples being discovered).
      - pvg 6y ago
        You mean the eye thing? That's from Cyrillic, a baby of a script (as scripts go) that's still in wide use today. The o-as-eyes is a decorative flourish, a little visual pun - it's still just an o. An analogous thing would be a medieval Latin parchment of, let's say, the Lord's Prayer and it opened with a bigass P with vines, a gargoyle dancing to a cat shredding on the lute and a tiny caricature of the scribe's dad. If someone found that, we probably won't end up with ʟᴀᴛɪɴ ᴅᴀᴅ ᴊᴏᴋᴇ ᴘ in Unicode.
vram22 6y ago
> One of my favorite Unicode oddities is in the cyrillic block. Some books used to use the letter "ꙩ" when writing the word eye (ꙩко). Interesting. That "ꙩко" looks phonetically (if that's the right word, I'm not well up on linguistics (if that's the right word again, ha ha)) a bit like the Hindi word "aankh" for "eye". The "n" sound in "aankh" is emphasized less, for lack of a better term. Actually, in Hindi, it is shown as a dot on top of one of the other letters, to show that. Also reminded by this, via George Borrow's novel Lavengro[1] (a story about gypsies), that the gypsy and Hindi words for "nose" are similar, "nak". One theory is that the gypsies (Roma(ni)[2]) migrated from northwestern parts of India to other parts of the world, such as North Africa and Europe. Aankh (pronounced almost like aak) and nak, get it? :) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavengro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavengro [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
- pvg 6y ago
  Most modern Indo-European language words for 'eye' share a common origin, this predates the Romani and their migrations by a long stretch. Here's an eye: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*okw-?ref=etymonline_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/word/*okw-?ref=etymonline_crossre... Nose is similar: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*nas- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*nas-
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  Romani indeed is much closer to Hindi than other Indo European languages, but the words “eye” and “nose” are not really that good indicators. Much better indicators are the grammar, the pronunciation, etc.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > The "n" sound in "aankh" is emphasized less, for lack of a better term. Sometimes an original nasal consonant will reduce to a vowel that remembers the original consonant only by releasing air through the nose. (Where ordinarily the air would come out of the mouth.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel This is a big thing in Portuguese and French. (At this point, the consonants are long since gone and the nasal vowel is correct Portuguese/French. But the change would have originated in people speaking something closer to Latin, which doesn't use nasal vowels, and being "careless" with their pronunciation.) Is this what you're talking about?

nsajko 6y ago

These four Unicode symbols have a similarly obscure origin: EDIT: automatically removed by HN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Notation_and_recording_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Notation_and_recordi... Relevant thread on the Unicode mailing list, with Subject "Purpose of and rationale behind Go Markers U+2686 to U+2689" is here: https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m03/thread.html https://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m03/thread.ht...

echelon 6y ago
> EDIT: automatically removed by HN I'm curious about this. Was your post removed for containing certain unicode characters?
- the_only_law 6y ago
  Just tested it, tried a comment with an emoji and it never appeared. So I'd assume so.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- aendruk 6y ago
  Probably not the whole post, just the uncommon characters. A few days ago HN deleted several characters from my comment immediately upon posting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851415

pvg 6y ago

I googled up the paperwork proposing the inclusion of ꙮ and variants a few years ago and got the impression that a) you're not supposed to include something that only has a single recorded use and b) ꙮ pretty much has a single recorded use.

snailmailman 6y ago
Interestingly, the phaistos disk[1] has its own little bit of Unicode and from what I understand the only known “original” use of all of the symbols is the phaistos disk itself. I guess there was enough discussion about the disk and it’s symbols to include it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc
- pvg 6y ago
  The Phaistos disk sort of makes sense to me since, single use or not, it's (probably) some sort of script. I'm not really any kind of expert in ancient scripts or Unicodery and this was a while back but the gist I got from the docs was something along the lines of 'no one-time/decorative uses' and the eye thing looked like it was exactly that. The submission was from an academic in Slavic studies of some sort, I thought about emailing them to ask but couldn't really come up with a way to phrase what amounts to some version of 'did you mess up Unicode or what?' in a non-dickish way.
  - wisty 6y ago
    I guess you could argue that a single discovered extant usage is not single use, it's quite possible that there will one day be a reconstruction of the script (maybe with some more samples being discovered).
    - pvg 6y ago
      You mean the eye thing? That's from Cyrillic, a baby of a script (as scripts go) that's still in wide use today. The o-as-eyes is a decorative flourish, a little visual pun - it's still just an o. An analogous thing would be a medieval Latin parchment of, let's say, the Lord's Prayer and it opened with a bigass P with vines, a gargoyle dancing to a cat shredding on the lute and a tiny caricature of the scribe's dad. If someone found that, we probably won't end up with ʟᴀᴛɪɴ ᴅᴀᴅ ᴊᴏᴋᴇ ᴘ in Unicode.

vram22 6y ago

> One of my favorite Unicode oddities is in the cyrillic block. Some books used to use the letter "ꙩ" when writing the word eye (ꙩко). Interesting. That "ꙩко" looks phonetically (if that's the right word, I'm not well up on linguistics (if that's the right word again, ha ha)) a bit like the Hindi word "aankh" for "eye". The "n" sound in "aankh" is emphasized less, for lack of a better term. Actually, in Hindi, it is shown as a dot on top of one of the other letters, to show that. Also reminded by this, via George Borrow's novel Lavengro[1] (a story about gypsies), that the gypsy and Hindi words for "nose" are similar, "nak". One theory is that the gypsies (Roma(ni)[2]) migrated from northwestern parts of India to other parts of the world, such as North Africa and Europe. Aankh (pronounced almost like aak) and nak, get it? :) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavengro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavengro [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

pvg 6y ago
Most modern Indo-European language words for 'eye' share a common origin, this predates the Romani and their migrations by a long stretch. Here's an eye: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*okw-?ref=etymonline_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/word/*okw-?ref=etymonline_crossre... Nose is similar: https://www.etymonline.com/word/*nas- https://www.etymonline.com/word/*nas-
shp0ngle 6y ago
Romani indeed is much closer to Hindi than other Indo European languages, but the words “eye” and “nose” are not really that good indicators. Much better indicators are the grammar, the pronunciation, etc.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> The "n" sound in "aankh" is emphasized less, for lack of a better term. Sometimes an original nasal consonant will reduce to a vowel that remembers the original consonant only by releasing air through the nose. (Where ordinarily the air would come out of the mouth.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel This is a big thing in Portuguese and French. (At this point, the consonants are long since gone and the nasal vowel is correct Portuguese/French. But the change would have originated in people speaking something closer to Latin, which doesn't use nasal vowels, and being "careless" with their pronunciation.) Is this what you're talking about?