4 ms·

Amazing. It’s like their “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” But with no repeated characters! Although since characters are words, I guess that “ro

• canjobear 3y ago
  It's still impressive---imagine writing 1000 words of English without reusing any function words like "the", "it", "of", "is". And just to show off, the Qianziwen holds a bunch of those words for the very last line!
  • throw0101a 3y ago
    > It's still impressive---imagine writing 1000 words of English without reusing any function words like "the", "it", "of", "is". How about: > Gadsby is a [260-page] 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright which includes only four words that contain the letter E, the most common letter in English. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
    • chris_st 3y ago
      Or: > [The novel] "A Void", translated from the original French La Disparition (lit. "The Disappearance"), is a 300-page French lipogrammatic novel, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without using the letter e, following Oulipo constraints. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void
      • lupire 3y ago
        La Disparition / A void isn't just "without using that fifth glyph"; it's about a world without that fifth glyph, and uncanny discomfort from not having it but not knowing why, and trying to find illuminating truth. Also, http://reddit.com/r/AVoid5 http://reddit.com/r/AVoid5 If you don't want to visit that community, you can ask ChatGPT for non-fifth-glyph writing, most of which looks as if it is a copy from that community.
        • egypturnash 3y ago
          also, there is https://dolphin.town/ https://dolphin.town/ which plays a slight variant on this game :) (and sadly will complain about expired certificates when you visit it)
          • lupire 3y ago
            Fantastic contrapoint to https://oulipo.social/ https://oulipo.social/
        • chris_st 3y ago
          I was on an early mastodon instance where the fifth glyph was prohibited. It was really tough for me to do posts, but there was a person who was getting their PhD in linguistics, and if you didn't know that they had to avoid that letter, you'd never guess. Just amazing writing.
  • yorwba 3y ago
    I think it might be possible to do a literal translation into English that also eschews function words – since it's poetry, you can use a freely associating style. E.g. the first rhyming couplet 天地玄黃 宇宙洪荒 was translated somewhat verbosely by Nathan Sturman as "The sky was black and earth yellow; space and time vast, limitless" but why many words when few do trick? "Dark sky, yellow earth; vast space, barren time." To make it rhyme, you could replace "earth" by "lime" (referring to calcium oxide, not the fruit) but that would be very barren indeed.
• ssnistfajen 3y ago
  It can also function as placeholder text just like Lorem ipsum.