Hey Chinooker — what’s this?
[Editing 02/15 to give it away: these are all 10 of the Chinook-Peipa number symbols, from 1 to 0, in order! Dave Robertson]
It’s extra-hard to figure out because there are a couple of spurious loops 😁
[Editing 02/15 to give it away: these are all 10 of the Chinook-Peipa number symbols, from 1 to 0, in order! Dave Robertson]
It’s extra-hard to figure out because there are a couple of spurious loops 😁
I know what it is but I’ll let someone else post it. A fix for the n–j connection, and similar ones like s–m, will be in the font’s next release.
I avidly await that next release, and my thanks go to its creator! Dave Robertson
Not really sure what that is. It looks like too many consonants. I would guess an abbreviation, but of what I don’t know?
“PTFKRMNShSA” I think, and the PT at the beginning made me start to think it was Pterosaur or something dinosaur related. BC place names such as “Port Renfrew” kind of would have nearly fit, but not quite.
There was lots of Catholic missionary influence in early Chinook writing, but I’m at a loss there.
I see now from the small edit what it actually is, but I won’t reiterate the actual answer.
🤩
— Dave Robertson
Here’s some more information about these digits. They come from the original French Duployan system and were also used for English and other languages. At least, they appear in various manuals; I’m not sure they were ever much used in practice. It’s generally recommended (outside of a puzzle like this, of course) to split them into groups of three if there are more than four digits, analogously to commas or spaces between standard digits; for example, “p·tfk·rmn·shso”.
Thanks for your notes! In fact, I’ve seen French-language textbooks of Duployan shorthand that advised doing what you’re talking about. I also doubt anyone used these digits much, because they can be confused with letters, which would slow you down — the opposite of the goal with stenography! Even Duploye’s own writing uses both Roman numerals and these.
Dave Robertson