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Confident Business Woman - Monica

Our world view:

"The story of Chinese characters begins with, of all things, turtle bellies.

The kings of the Shang Dynasty—which ruled from the 16th to the 11th centuries BC—had questions. Questions about what the king should do, like whether to “perform a ritual for Father Ding and offer to him thirty captives from the Qiang nomad tribe as well as five penned sheep,” according to one translation (pdf, p. 5). As with many ancient human-rights abusers, the king turned to his royal soothsayers to decide the lives of these captives.

The soothsayers etched these pressing questions directly onto the shoulder blades of oxen and the under-shells of turtles, which are also known as plastrons. They then poked the inscribed animal parts with hot metal rods until cracks formed. The shapes of the cracks served as omens, telling the king whether offering captives was a good idea or a very bad one. Often, the answers were etched directly onto the bones and shells, right next to the prophetic cracks.

Tens of thousands of these etchings, known as “oracle bones,” have survived all the way to today. They are a resilient source of ancient etymology and the earliest-known Chinese characters. Archaeologists date oracle bones to at least the 13th century BC, around the time of the Trojan War, and the characters can still be made out."
Sunday, April 15, 2018 at 11:38pm UTC
Reasons to use a professional translator are many 😀
Thursday, March 29, 2018 at 11:17pm UTC
Today, we wanted to shed light on a language we started working with: Dzongkha
A super quick 101 on this beautiful language and it's alphabet from Wikipedia
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 11:30am UTC
Today, we wanted to shed light on a language we started working with: Dzongkha
Here's a little/quick 101 on this beautiful language and it's alphabet from Wikipedia
Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 11:30am UTC
A lesson in California English
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 10:44pm UTC
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." - Stephen Hawking
RIP
Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 9:46pm UTC
"Keeping pace with the subcontinent’s linguistic diversity is challenging enough in print, but the relatively small number of digital fonts available for Indic languages reveals a striking disparity. Even the most widely used Indian script, Devanagari, has far fewer typographic options compared to the superabundance of Latin fonts. Some scripts like Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, and Tibetan have even fewer fonts available. But the balance is beginning to shift as a cohort of Indian type designers develop new digital fonts, and the movement is still growing in part because many of these designers release their designs with open source licenses. The code is then readily available for others to experiment and develop their own contributions, improving the quality and variety of typography across India’s many writing systems."
Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 11:56am UTC
Films and TV shows based in fantasy realms often employ a made-up tongue, like Elvish in The Lord of the Rings or Klingon in Star Trek. However, what the Wakandans speak is actually Xhosa, the language of about 8 million South Africans, including the late Nelson Mandela. BBC correspondent Pumza Fihlani breaks it all down in a tutorial that won’t make you fluent but might make you appreciate the lyrical beauty of Xhosa.
Thursday, March 1, 2018 at 3:05pm UTC
"What is silent in the word Scent, the "s" or the "c"?...
Queue is just "q" followed by 4 silent letters...
Why is W called double U, shouldn't it be double V?
...Once you've read the dictionary, every other book you read is just a remix...
Why do noses run and feet smell?
...Apple has "air", Amazon has "Fire", Google has "earth", why doesn't Microsoft have "water"?
...Why don't Jedis turn off their opponents' lightsabers by force-pressing the button?
...The brain named itself..."
And other musings for your Wednesday...
Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 1:11pm UTC

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