Comments | teamalala: ... and don't be surprised if we come home with tattoos. :)

corivax in teamalala

... and don't be surprised if we come home with tattoos. :)

Sep 26, 2007 12:51

One of the things that makes it most clear to me that we're Far From Home is the writing we see around the city, the most intelligible of which is the Cyrillic-plus-extra-characters that modern Mongolian is written in.
( click here if you have a geeky interest in writing systems )

Comments 4

maribou September 26 2007, 16:16:43 UTC

very, very cool post.

beowabbit September 26 2007, 19:39:14 UTC

click here if you have a geeky interest in writing systems
Wow, you wrote a whole post just for me! Thank you!

( ... )

corivax September 27 2007, 06:51:59 UTC

Wanna take a stab at any of the others? :) I'm pretty lost here.

vixyish October 13 2007, 04:47:55 UTC

HOLY CRAP this is all so cool.

MEDITATING BUNNY! :D

I got interrupted while reading this back when you first posted it and only just now had time to sit down and read the rest. :/ But something interesting happened. What I was musing on then, mostly, was how learning language is like learning secret code, like Sneakers-style movie cryptography for the eyes. The way Cyrillic is something I can read-- it means something to me-- but the way my eyes slide over the Mongolian images, barely registering them as language. I have no referent, no key, and so I almost have to force myself to actually look at them as more than abstract images. Whereas glancing at Cyrillic is sort of like that scene in Sneakers where Whistler touches the contact on the little black box and the encrypted screen unscrambles itself before your eyes into things you can parse ( ... )