Grawlixes: How these @*#%!$ things became a symbol for cursing

What the #$@!% are these?

Vox: Known as the “grawlix” — a term invented by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker — this string of symbols is almost as old as comics, extending back to the early 1900s. Comics like The Katzenjammer Kids and Lady Bountiful were truly inventing the art form and, in the process, had to figure out a way to show obscenities to kids. Enter #*@!$ like this. The grawlix performs a censorship function while, at the same time, revealing that something naughty is going on.

See also

• Vox: Where the “comic book font” came from
• Blambot’s comic lettering tips
• Untranslatable words — Fourteen detailed illustrations that convey moments and ideas which no single English word can describe.

To be or not to be… original

The Guardian: The game is up: Shakespeare’s language not as original as dictionaries think

In an article for the University of Melbourne, Dr David McInnis, a Shakespeare lecturer at the institution, accuses the Oxford English Dictionary of “bias” over its citation of Shakespeare as the originator of hundreds of words in English.

“His audiences had to understand at least the gist of what he meant, so his words were mostly in circulation already or were logical combinations of pre-existing concepts.”

McInnis: If something happens “without rhyme or reason”, people are said to be quoting Shakespeare’s As You Like It, when Rosalind asks Orlando whether he is as head-over-heels in love as his rhymes suggest, and Orlando replies “Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much”.

The OED traces the phrase back to the 1400s – centuries before Shakespeare. So why do we think it’s Shakespeare’s coinage?

Probably because, as happens so frequently, Shakespeare isn’t the first to think of something, but he presents it in such a clever or memorable way, that it becomes firmly associated with his version.

McInnis also traces the roots of other famous ‘Shakespearean’ phrases like “it’s greek to me”, “a wild goose chase”, “eaten out of house and home”. It’s not all OED ‘bias’ however; the bard did have a knack for coining and popularising turns of phrase, like “to make an ass of oneself”…

To describe behaving stupidly and embarrassing yourself as “making an ass of yourself” seems like a very contemporary expression, but Shakespeare seems to have genuinely invented both the easy-to-quote phrase and a very memorable situation. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom the Weaver is magically turned into an ass. Other characters remark upon Bottom’s transformation, but he thinks they’re just mocking him: “This is to make an ass of me, to fright me, if they could.”

See also: Churchillian drift: How great quotations find their way to famous names

Lessons about language from a Turkish typewriter

What I learned about languages just by looking at a Turkish typewriter, by Marcin Wichary, Design lead & typographer at Medium.

I don’t speak Turkish, and can’t read it either. I have never been to Turkey. I honestly don’t even know that much about Turkey. Why did I ask for a Turkish typewriter, then? Because it has one of the most fascinating keyboard layouts ever.

Some highlights:

1. We’re not beholden to Q·W·E·R·T·Y — The new layout had nothing in common with Q·W·E·R·T·Y. It was ergonomically superior, and measured to be up to twice as fast in typing; Turkey went on to break dozens of world records in typewriting championships before the end of century.
2. Accented characters aren’t always second-class citizens — To me, this keyboard says “we’re proud of our language and we will treat it with respect.”
3. Each language has a crazy secret — …in Turkish, i gets capitalized to… İ, its tittle still there. But I exists also! And its lowercase form is, you guessed it… ı. Dotted i and dotless ı coexist in perfect harmony, and both have separate keys on the keyboard.
4. Some of those other languages need to be accommodated also — Look at the Turkish keyboard. There are three letters, w, x, and q, in a somewhat unusual location: right next to the digits in the top row.
5. Punctuation is the first to go when sacrifices need to be made — Since backspacing was often physically difficult — welcome to the mechanical world — typewriters invented a certain power user shortcut. To type two characters in one space you would hold the spacebar, press as many characters as needed, and then release the spacebar to move to the next position.

See also: 216 positive emotions that have no direct English translation

216 positive emotions that have no direct English translation

Quartz: There are hundreds of positive emotions that have no direct English translation

University of East London psychology lecturer Tim Lomas has corralled some of the most striking non-English words about emotions for Westerners to appreciate. While the words describe phenomena experienced and celebrated by many cultures, no easily-expressible equivalents exist in English.

The paper has two main aims. First, it aims to provide a window onto cultural differences in constructions of well-being, thereby enriching our understanding of well-being. Second, a more ambitious aim is that this lexicon may help expand the emotional vocabulary of English speakers (and indeed speakers of all languages), and consequently enrich their experiences of well-being.

Many of these (like zeitgeist, chutzpa, savoir-faire and nirvana) are in common English usage. I’ve excerpted some of the ones I found most interesting…

Feelings: Positive

• Se déhancher (French, v.): to sway or wiggle one’s hips (e.g., while dancing).
• Desbundar (Portuguese, v.): shedding one’s inhibitions in having fun.
• Feierabend (German, n.): festive mood at the end of a working day.
• Mbuki-mvuki (Bantu, v): to shed clothes to dance uninhibited.
• Pretoogjes (Dutch, n.): lit. ‘fun eyes’; the eyes of a chuckling person engaging in benign mischief.
• Ramé (Balinese, n.): something at once chaotic and joyful.
• Samar (سمر) (Arabic, v.): to sit together in conversation at sunset/ in the evening.
• Schnapsidee (German, n.): a daft / ridiculous plan thought up while drunk (generally used pejoratively).
• Sobremesa (Spanish, n.): when the food has finished but the conversation is still flowing.
• Sólarfrí (Icelandic, n.): sun holiday, i.e., when workers are granted unexpected time off to enjoy a particularly sunny/warm day.
• Tertulia (Spanish, n.): a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones.
• Utepils (Norwegian, n.): a beer that is enjoyed outside (particularly on the first hot day of the year).
• Mерак (Serbian, n.): pleasure derived from simple joys.
• Cwtch (Welsh, n.): to hug, a safe welcoming place.
• Trygghet (Swedish, n.): security, safety, confidence, certainty, trust.
• Estrenar (Spanish, v.): to use or wear something for the first time.
• Fjellvant (Norwegian) (adj.): Being accustomed to walk in the mountains.
• Flâneur (French, n.): someone who wanders the streets to experience the city.
• Hugfanginn (Icelandic) (adj.): lit. ‘mind-captured’, to be charmed or fascinated by someone/something.
• Shemomechama (შემომეჭამა) (Georgian, v.): eating past the point of satiety due to sheer enjoyment.
• Tyvsmake (Norwegian, v.): to taste or eat small pieces of the food when you think nobody is watching, especially when cooking.
• Kukelure (Norwegian, v.): to sit and ponder, without engaging in activity.
• Zanshin (残心) (Japanese, n.): a state of relaxed mental alertness (especially in the face of danger or stress).
• Nirvāna (निर्वाण) (Sanskrit, n.): ‘ultimate’ happiness, total liberation from suffering.

Positive lexicography, by themes

Unified Arabic: an effort to simplify Arabic letters for printing and to aid literacy

In 1932 Lebanese architect Nasri Khattar developed a simplified Arabic script for printing and to aid literacy:

Unified Arabic (UA) is basically a set of 30 letterforms, one for each letter of the Arabic alphabet, plus hamza and lam alef, eliminating the variant forms that make reading and writing Arabic difficult for beginners.

Sample pages from the children’s book ‘Shouf Baba Shouf’. The UA forms are placed next to the traditional ones for direct comparison and learning.

The large number of Arabic letter variants made typing Arabic immensely complicated. Khattar realised that matters could be greatly simplified by distilling the hundreds of variant shapes into their most characteristic forms. The letters are designed to be representative of the streamlined spirit of Western civilisation: quick, mechanised and labour saving, similar to Latin type forms and proportions, which Khattar acknowledged as one of his inspirations.

In 1986, Nasri Khattar was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong Unified Arabic project and its implications for the fields of linguistics, literacy, printing, computers, and telecommunications. He was probably the only designer / typographer considered for the prestigious award.

In one sense, new technologies made Unified Arabic obsolete before it could overcome the massive obstacles opposing its adoption. But from another point of view, the issues that led to its development still demand resolution.

Fighting Illiteracy With Typography by Yara Khoury Nammour (via).

See also

• Works That Work is interested in the impact of design and forgotten ideas worth a second look.
• Wired: Why It’s So Hard to Design Arabic Typefaces
  The problem is that Arabic is an incredibly complicated language, and despite its ranking as the fifth most spoken language worldwide, there’s a shortage of typographers with a native understanding of the script. [Peter] Bil’ak says this is because there are few specialized typography courses available in the Middle East.
• ZXX — an experimental typeface designed by Sang Mun to raise awareness of surveillance issues.
• Recovering The Doves Type from the bottom of the Thames
• Bibliotheca: The Bible, in four modern volumes

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A comprehensive overlook of the Nordic languages in their old world language families

Mental Floss: Minna Sundberg, creator of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent, a story set in a lushly imagined post-apocalyptic Nordic world, has drawn the antidote to the boring linguistic tree diagram.

(via Open Culture)

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Untranslatable Words by Marija Tiurina

Selected from a series of illustrations by artist Marija Tiurina of “Untranslatable Words” containing fourteen detailed illustrations that convey moments and ideas which no single English word can describe.

See also: Artist Interview: Catching Up with Marija Tiurina

“There are certain viral “lists” that are fun to illustrate, they create a base for a nice and fun set of images. I just wanted to take a fun theme that people always have interest in when browsing the web, and illustrate my own vision of these untranslatable concepts.”

Dothraki: Creating a living language

Talks at Google: David Peterson – Living Language Dothraki

M’athchomaroon! David Peterson is the linguist behind Dothraki, as used in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” He speaks to Googlers about the process behind inventing languages. Athdavrazar!