This moodboard is an evolving scrapbook and work area for Razing Babel.
Dedication
(tentative)
Do not invoke me unless you can master the shape of my name.
Inspiration
Use opengraph.xyz to extract link preview information and Twitter Publish to generate embeds for Tweets.
Mindscapes - Otherworldly Incantations
Fantastical architecture and landscapes. Condensed mental systems for worldbuilding fantasy spaces. Also
otherworldlyincantations.com
Portuguese cistern (Mazagan), El Jadida, Morocco (1514)
~:David J. Peterson's Web Thing
This website showcases the created languages of David J. Peterson.
Maldivian language
Latin transliteration
Main article: Malé Latin
Towards the mid-1970s, during President Ibrahim Nasir's tenure, the Maldivian government introduced telex machines in the local administration. This was viewed as great progress, but the local Thaana script was deemed to be an obstacle because messages on the telex machines could only be written in the Latin script.
Following this, in 1976 the government approved a new official Latin transliteration, Dhivehi Latin, which was quickly implemented by the administration. Booklets were printed and dispatched to all Atoll and Island Offices, as well as schools and merchant liners. This was seen by many as the effective demise of the Thaana script. Clarence Maloney, an American anthropologist who was in the Maldives at the time of the change, lamented the inconsistencies of the "Dhivehi Latin" which ignored all previous linguistic research on the Maldivian language done by H.C.P. Bell and Wilhelm Geiger. He wondered why the modern Standard Indic transliteration had not been considered. Standard Indic is a consistent script system that is well adapted to writing practically all languages of South Asia.
The government reinstated the Thaana script shortly after President Maumoon took power in 1978. There was widespread relief in certain places, especially rural areas, where the introduction of Latin had been regarded with suspicion. However, the Latin transcription of 1976 continues to be widely used.
Punjabi language # Writing systems
The Punjabi language is written in multiple scripts (a phenomenon known as synchronic digraphia). Each of the major scripts currently in use is typically associated with a particular religious group, although the association is not absolute or exclusive. In India, Punjabi Sikhs use Gurmukhi, a script of the Brahmic family, which has official status in the state of Punjab. In Pakistan, Punjabi Muslims use Shahmukhi, a variant of the Perso-Arabic script and closely related to the Urdu alphabet. The Punjabi Hindus in India had a preference for Devanagari, another Brahmic script also used for Hindi, and in the first decades since independence raised objections to the uniform adoption of Gurmukhi in the state of Punjab, but most have now switched to Gurmukhi and so the use of Devanagari is rare. Often in literature, Pakistani Punjabi (written in Shahmukhi) is referred as Western-Punjabi (or West-Punjabi) and Indian Punjabi (written in Gurmukhi) is referred as Eastern-Punjabi (or East-Punjabi), although the underlying language is the same with a very slight shift in vocabulary towards Islamic and Sikh words respectively.
en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia: Railway signal
Heaven Gaia Spring/Summer 2022
Basque language
In Francoist Spain, Basque language use was affected by the government's repressive policies. In the Basque Country, "Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural." The regime placed legal restrictions on the use of language, which was suppressed from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register new-born babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces, the public use of the language was suppressed, with people fined for speaking Basque. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism. Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of this process, a standardised form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Euskaltzaindia in the late 1960s.
Understanding Railroad Signals - Mike Roqué
(This article by AA Krug was reposted after it suddenly
Railroad signals - Trains
Certain key elements help define a railroad and shape its personality (if a corporation can be thought of in human terms): a crack passenger train, the unique geography or landscape the railroad crosses, and the type of signaling found along the right-of-way. In the January 2003, TRAINS magazine looks at the Santa Fe Railway's unique cantilever and signal bridges, which
铁路信号机 - 维基百科，自由的百科全书
鐵路信号机是設立在鐵路道旁的機械或電子設備，用以傳送路線前方狀態的相關資訊給予列車駕駛，司機或調車員。
Railway signalling - Wikipedia
Railway signalling (BE), also called railroad signaling (AE), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic.
a Guide to Unusual Railroad Signal Styles
This page covers signals that are different from those in the other sections. This includes one of a kind types, unusual, or just different signals that you do not see anywhere else, and you may have to travel cross the country to see. As of early 2017, I have started to include signals that are no longer in existence. Contributions are always welcome if you know of one that qualifies.
The revolution will be translated
In February, in the midst of solidarity protests against the RCMP's invasion of Wet'suwet'en territory, I created a Google Doc: "How to explain what's happening to the Wet'suwet'en people in Chinese." The long history of grassroots translation work shows that it is one of our strongest tools to build solidarity against white supremacy.
briarpatchmagazine.com
the Grotto (@randommandelbot, July 11, 2022)
Ao no Exorcist (Blue Exorcist) Movie: Directed by Atsushi Takahashi, Art Directed by Shinji Kimura (Tekkonkinkreet). Created by A-1 Pictures.
Tocharian languages
The Tocharian (sometimes Tokharian) languages (/təˈkɛəriən/ or /təˈkɑːriən/), also known as Arśi-Kuči, Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. They are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in oasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (now part of Xinjiang in northwest China East Turkestan [SQL]) and the Lop Desert. The discovery of this language family in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east-west division of the Indo-European language family on the centum-satem isogloss, and prompted reinvigorated study of the family.
en.wikipedia.org
From the screenplay for Sorry to Bother You (2018)
八旗 - 维基百科，自由的百科全书
八旗（满语：ᠵᠠᡴᡡᠨ
ᡤᡡᠰᠠ，穆麟德轉寫：jakūn gūsa）是清朝特有的集军事、生产和行政管理于一体的社会组织，旗下之人称作"旗人"或"八旗子弟"。
zh.wikipedia.org
Mongol Warfare
The Mongols conquered vast swathes of Asia in the 13th and 14th century CE thanks to their fast light cavalry and excellent bowmen, but another significant contribution to their success was the adoption...
Greek Fire
Greek Fire was an incendiary weapon first used in Byzantine warfare in 678 CE. The napalm of ancient warfare, the highly flammable liquid was made of secret ingredients and used both in catapulted incendiary...
Vexilloid - Wikipedia
A vexilloid is any flag-like (vexillary) object used by countries, organisations, or individuals as a form of representation other than flags.
Thinking about Him pic.twitter.com/lWPuqtqkvB— Danny Gay-da-Lore-ian (@weredawgz) December 5, 2021
Ignoring Genocide (HRW Report - Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, March 1999)
During the early weeks of slaughter international leaders did not use the word "genocide," as if avoiding the term could eliminate the obligation to confront the crime.
Chinese honorifics - Wikipedia
Chinese honorifics (Chinese: 敬語; pinyin: Jìngyǔ) and honorific language are words, word constructs, and expressions in the Chinese language that convey self-deprecation, social respect, politeness, or deference.
en.wikipedia.org
Qunari Horns by Valhallan (part 2)
Scratch Paper
Warning
This section may contain spoilers.
- æther as inverse of gleaming: portable juice instead of needing to be plugged in to access qi
- biocyberpunk cores and kernels
- the taste of a language
- creating a tongue with an apothecary minerals?
- bitter and sweet and sharp
- sigils, paper, on the tongue, like a brand or a tattoo on the tongue, the heat and pain as it takes
- language helps us make better tools
- bunch of villages separated by geographical features like mountains, forests, rivers each with their own dialect
- empire comes in adding communication infrastructure but with it tries to homogenize language for "ease" but really as a political nation building project, cf. speak mandarin campaign
- languages poached/bounty hunted in effort to reach goal
- basically like going postal meets mother tongues, focus on infrastructure and how it affects things like in good hunting
- chinese typewriter/unicode
- telegram tech - learn
- cross continental train that can carry mail
- tongueslayer / tonguekeeper / tonguehacker
Tropes to include
- cursing in another language
- another language during sex
- speaking only one language with others and speaking the other only when out group isn't there
Tropes to include
- cursing in another language
- another language during sex
- speaking only one language with others and speaking the other only when out group isn't there
wheelchair-using mermaid?
dom as bodyguard? who speaks a language that is being targeted? witnesses when iboshi's family's tongue is slain, does he leave? or continue to stay loyal? he must always have the agency and liberty to leave
"throne" with amardeep bringing up the rear of the palanquin and foiling an attack with the flag he's bearing that turns out to also be a sword
diesel-fire piston-compression-ignition-similar concept for language-compress into extremely dense song information that can be hidden in non-language areas of brain-potentially copy into a fire piston vial with carrier fuel or fluid like æthergen-but potentially fragile?
quietly observing my diaphragm like "hmm this meatbag compresses air into energy too"— S. Qiouyi Lu 🏜️🎑🐇 陸秋逸 Lù Qiūyì (@sqiouyilu) March 24, 2022
just use hanzi. integrate it, make iboshi impose simplification to remove semantics and cultural connection. sure, it improves literacy. but it makes ahosabai's use of traditional/unsimplified more subversive. iboshi's language policy a combo of colonial english and imperial and colonial chinese
songcatcher
aethergen as inorganic pava gleaming synthetic
- what if chinese were the written language of the internet and technology?
- speak mandarin meets colonial english
- what if english and latin replaced hanzi
- create new chinese character like 舌+蛇=舌它 as the magic for making a fake language or something
- like sigil but making multi character
- language stored in gleaming which is called something else, repository of all different speakers that can be "downloaded"
- käntu with fantasy spectrograms
- language AI ideas
- open source language and repository
- ahosabai scrambling language
- unable to make a copy of the whole thing, sort of like a corrupted save or cipher
- like mri scans but with the gleaming
- semantics math for käntu while ahosabai takes more my perspective
- lang copying as dream extraction where time can be compressed or expanded
- käntu like math.gif
- spectrogram as missing link to store voice
iboshi takes her family's language but leaves hers
anima research ether
käntu and ahosabai going into imperial palace? do they confront iboshi? DO THEY GO ON A ZEPPELIN???
languages are associated with kin, but they aren't 1:1, and kin all have various languages and degrees of fluency; avoid essentializing
ahosabai experiencing sub drop?
masculinity as a discrete entity to be respected - even if someone doesn't understand it
sign language during oral sex while mouth is… occupied
music as compression of feeling and metalingüística (stet autocorrect) information, the instant of an entire memory and cascade triggers coming from one song for example, music and art as vectors for language
writing about shared air in the pandemic feels like the ultimate body horror but somehow, it just feels right to lean in to the squick
genetics are not understood in aurei. everything is based on a social understanding of kin, including things like evolution
kin not species or races
- sign languages need to exist and be represented in the repository
- wax cylinder
- language not as tool or pragmatic or capitalist but as a basic utility
- collars as end points
- need someone to speak to
kissing with tongue, ahosabai and käntu making up their own mutually intelligible language or code to deceive tongueslayers by pretending there's a real language there
D/s between ahosabai and käntu, ahosabai feels tension but comes to the point where an individual is still an individual and while käntu is affiliated with empire, he is not only empire, and as an individual there is still that level of relationship, so the submission might not always have to have Bigger Implications
sign languages
city of industry strip with train through
Storing imprints
refraction as worldbuilding process
linguistics is a humanity pretending to be a science
sound as physical sensation / immersion in loud sounds-like being inside a gong / voice and vibration-sexual, sensual, carnal, spiritual
D/s and empire - power on micro and macro levels - understanding the nature of power and exchanging it - underscores iboshi's cruelty about how her power must be negotiated but the masses' can be taken - ahosabai seeing power can be entrusted to someone
iboshi: oh, now you care? now you have a code, ethics-only when it becomes personal?
amardeep: *silently clenches hands and jaw*
instead of language hacking, shifting language to a different part of the brain for safekeeping? like turning it into music so it's not recognized as language to be destroyed
🤔 something to consider as galaxy brain expands into constructing the scifantasy linguistic archive, esp considering that language requires a lot of context and personal experience that could otherwise be a key that can be separated from something that then appears scrambled…— S. Qiouyi Lu 🏜️🎑🐇 陸秋逸 Lù Qiūyì (@sqiouyilu) March 22, 2022
people have to continue to dream in order for there to be a future at all
- so your language tastes like bitterness and shame
- tongueslaying by poisoning the taste of a language
not erase a language but scramble or corrupt it so it can't be used and can't be relearned
retrofuture? the gleaming in here is called the ether, and when they're plugged in it's the ethernet, very advanced internet with retro tech
ahosabai as having super masculine inner energy while otherwise being femme and käntu being masculine but with big feminine aura
lang hacker can't read or is strongly dyslexic?? language as spoken
- the ruler commanding for language annihilation whose own family speaks a targeted language / LKY / brutally pragmatic / named Iboshi?
- language hacker creating false versions of dialects to be destroyed while real ones are stored safely and restored
käntu as shy/meek but when in dom mode can be deliciously brutal
Ahosabai as railroad worker? open with ahosabai speaking like three or more languages on a daily basis and noticing the entrance of palatinos into the region, esp infrastructure - include a sign language, very useful for loud work sites
retrofuture aesthetic? like they're cavalry riding horses but they're mecha horses
speaking not just languages like tongues but love languages
breathplay but instead of choking it's domming you into deep breathing through e v e r y sensation
or highly industrialized but with a lot of things like magic shops, TCM, etc
losing language like TOKiMONSTA? then regaining it?
meaning is created, not found-positivity and hope in existential nihilism
language copy encoded in song, safely in another part of the brain-study aphasia
ahosabai with same aversion as me to singing or hearing singing despite music love-scene with käntu singing to ahosabai and THE INTIMACY!!!!!!!!
