Unicode Dicks

https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html

by henkdevries • 8 years ago

536 102 8 years ago

smallerize• 8 years ago

It is in the section "Parts of the Human Body" but I can't find a source willing to call it out by name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardiner%27s_sign_list#D._Part...

Edit: found one https://archive.org/details/COLLIERMANLEY1999EgyptianHierogl... via @FakeUnicode on Twitter https://twitter.com/FakeUnicode/status/722139283381821440

trulyrandom• 8 years ago

Now that this is more commonly known, I wonder how long it will take for social media platforms to start filtering it out.

wl6• 8 years ago

That would be unfortunate for people working with or discussing Egyptian texts. It's not like this is an uncommon symbol in hieroglyphic texts.

celeritascelery• 8 years ago

How many Egyptologists are discussing hyroglyphics on social media?

Isamu• 8 years ago

Ah, I wondered when this would be come up, so to speak.

It's just the Egyptian Hieroglyph Unicode block. Apparently the ancient Egyptians were not aware of the comedic value of this symbol to future generations.

reificator2• 8 years ago

Apparently the ancient Egyptians were not aware of the comedic value of this symbol to future generations.

I wouldn't be so sure about that...

draw_down• 8 years ago

Right, I'm sure even people in antiquity thought bodies and poop were funny.

drivingmenuts• 8 years ago

Ancient Egyptians: forever 12 years old

irrational7• 8 years ago

I just checked a middle egyptian dictionary I just happen to have on my computer. There are 330 words that use D52 (the phallus or the phallus with the folded cloth). D52 was used to make the sound "mt". A sampling words that use D52 include: ancestors, bull, to appear, ox, men, impregnate, midday, fame, witness, discuss, artery, watermelon, without, to be thick, friend, husband, donkey, boom (or a ship), gateway, erection, sexual abuse, to plan, urine, etc.

The other one, D53 (phallus with liquid issuing), could be used to make the "bAh" sound. There are 200 words in my dictionary that use this sign. Some words include: boy, to know a woman sexually, Bull of Bulls, sperm, uncircumsized, virgin, to escape, lustful, poison, venom, in the presence of, masturbator, ejaculation, flood, virility, genitals, flaccid penis, to become erect, to sicken, seed, to pour forth, begotten one, male, son, profusion, discharge, sexually excite, homosexual, to commit adultery, repeated copulation, coward, unmanly, sissy, to sleep with, divine seed, to bear witness to the truth, sin, evil, to take a woman's virginity, etc.

Millennium• 8 years ago

This will end well.

idbehold• 8 years ago

Why does 𓂸 render correctly in Chrome's address bar, but not anywhere inside a webpage rendered inside Chrome?

skykooler• 8 years ago

Chrome's address bar uses OS fonts, whereas webpages use Chrome's fonts.

travisoneill1• 8 years ago

Renders correctly in Firefox

dhimes• 8 years ago

I'm missing quite a lot of them in firefox on linux

bspammer• 8 years ago

It's working for me with Chrome on Android

Avamander• 8 years ago

Time to buy `𓂸.tld`

reificator2• 8 years ago

On a more serious note:

And for those of you on Windows with a censored font

Anyone know how to resolve this? I think Mark Twain would deem me capable of chewing steak...

trhway• 8 years ago

interesting PM meeting they had. Or following Carlin - "3 dirty hieroglyphs you cant see".

wl6• 8 years ago

This symbol has a couple of uses in writing ancient Egyptian. The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings. This symbol is used to denote maleness or strength. For example, 𓂓𓏺 is ka for "spirit." 𓂓𓂸 is ka for "bull." (We could also add 𓃒 to 𓂓 for "bull" in addition to or instead of 𓂸)

Phonetically, Egyptian hieroglyphs use what's called the Rebus principle. For example, in English we could write https://i.imgur.com/Rp51iOt.png (hn ate my emoji) for belief. When this symbol is used phonetically, it represents the consonants "mt" because the ancient Egyptian word for phallus used those consonants. If we wanted to write "phallus," we could write 𓂸𓏺 with the stroke afterwards to denote that we mean the symbol, not its phonetic value.

Edit: hn cut out my emoji unicode. Replaced the emoji unicode with an image link.

jbigelow76• 8 years ago

The most common use is probably as a determinative. Ancient Egyptian, much like many Semitic languages, omits the vowels in a word in writing. Determinatives are ideograms that disambiguate between several words with the same consonants but different meanings.

That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vowels if other characters would need to be introduced in their place for disambiguation? What was the point of removing vowels?

jrochkind13• 8 years ago

They didn't remove em, it just never occured to them to have them. There's still an interesting question about why old languages from that region didn't have vowels, if this is true of other ancient written languages from other regions, when vowels were added/why/etc.

Radim• 8 years ago

They didn't "remove vowels" as much as started out without them! We're talking times when writing itself was utter novelty, a curiosity performed by a handful of scribes primarily for accounting purposes, and of no great importance to daily life at all.

By contrast, cuneiform (of Sumer origin -- a traditional rival power to ancient Egypt) did have vowels.

A surprising amount of history—writing, speaking, war, splitting the world into objects, naming them, whatever—is pure chance, turned tradition, turned myth and legend. That's the power of beginnings.

rogerbinns• 8 years ago

no knowledge of how languages are formed

I recommend reading this article. The problem he is solving is representing text in ASCII. For example an e with an accent can be replaced with a plain e. But what about languages not using the base Roman alphabet? You get a fascinating tour of Divehi and the final result - the unidecode module - works rather well.

http://interglacial.com/tpj/22/

TheDong• 8 years ago

In the same way their written language couldn't express vowels, the english written language cannot adequately express the full range of tones and pauses we have when speaking.

People have attempted to convey some portions of spoken tone with thing like the "<sarcasm>" tag, and commas/ellipses/etc all convey some level of pauses, but they are not substitutes for the full nuance of spoken english.

Asking "Why did their written language not convey the full range of spoken sounds by default" is like asking "Why doesn't written English contain volume cues to indicate when the speaking tone should be louder".

All written languages that are created to represent a spoken language are inherently lossy.

Retra• 8 years ago

I imagine it's a bit like early music notations which left out the rhythm. The idea being that you'd probably have heard the music already, so the rhythm part would be passed verbally and didn't need to be written. Likewise with vowels...

ardy422• 8 years ago

That's an interesting fact. As someone with no knowledge of how languages are formed it makes me wonder why have a written language that purposefully omits vowels if other characters would need to be introduced in their place for disambiguation? What was the point of removing vowels?

My understanding is the Semitic languages don't use vowels the same way that Indo-European languages do, and they can be typically inferred from context.

Also, they didn't "remove" vowels, but rather Indo-Europeans added them. Specifically when the Greeks adopted the Phonetician alphabet, they took a bunch of the letters that stood for consonants they didn't use and re-purposed them to represent the vowels that they needed to intelligibly write their language.

nickm12• 8 years ago

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but one thing I have read is that ancient writing was in some ways used as an aid to memory, rather than a means of communication. Imagine you have your cultural sagas and songs that are memorized and passed down from generation to generation. When writing arises, you use it as a way to make it easier to recite. You might not really care much about the "missing" vowels and you save parchment. Once you start down this path, you might go quite far before it occurs to someone to add vowels.

anonymfus• 8 years ago

It's interesting that "𓂓𓂸" displays correctly oh the same Windows Phone where separate penis character is censored.

kijin• 8 years ago

Maybe it's marked as a kind of modifier that only appears in combination with another letter, since that seems to have been its primary (though not the only) use case according to wl.

cozzyd• 8 years ago

The google-noto-sans-egyptian-hieroglyphs-fonts package provides the required fonts to enjoy this page on Fedora/CentOS 7.

jordigh• 8 years ago

I had to install fonts-ancient-scripts in Debian.

TeMPOraL• 8 years ago

Thank you. I assume the author lives in the Apple land, and doesn't realize it's not just Windows that doesn't ship with fonts for all possible emojis and alternate characters by default.

yorwba3• 8 years ago

If Rongorongo ever gets included in Unicode, there'll be a new variant: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roro_076.svg

There's probably a similar glyph in ancient Chinese oracle bone script, which might one day end up in Unicode as well.

blueprint• 8 years ago

bone script

Hey, no puns allowed on HN.

Twisell2• 8 years ago

Unicode seems also censored on Android, but I successfully sent 𓂸 over iMessage ^^

nfriedly• 8 years ago

It renders correctly on my Pixel 2, in both Chrome and Firefox. Up-to-date stock firmware.

ChristianBundy2• 8 years ago

Yeah, "censored in Android" is like saying "censored in Linux".

lostlogin• 8 years ago

𓂸 End to end encryption

𓂸 Multiplatform

𓂸 Unicode standards compliant

david_draco• 8 years ago

There are some examples of usages here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phallus_(hierogl...

They can mean urinate, semen; man; husband.

Combined with other symbols, one can form the meanings: copulate, ass/donkey and coward. The last may be the egyptian equivalent of "dickhead".

ciex• 8 years ago

There really is no good reason in the spirit of unicode not to have actual emojis for more bodyparts, including genitals.

tveita• 8 years ago

It hasn't gone by completely unnoticed https://twitter.com/unicode/status/722133439726505984

teacpde• 8 years ago

U+130B8 translates to d80cdcb8 in utf-16 hex. On mac, switch to Unicode Hex Input, hold down Option key and type d80cdcb8

api• 8 years ago

$ echo 𓂺

𓂺

Yup. The singularity is near.

js2• 8 years ago

I was hoping an HN reader would be able to comment on what the purpose of the middle (𓂹) symbol is. Anyone?

Googling the symbol hasn't provided any leads.

wl6• 8 years ago

Sign D52A is a monogram combining sign D52 (transliteration: mt, phallus) and sign S29 (transliteration: s, folded cloth). It is read smt or smt(r). Possible translations, depending on context include the verbs to hear, to examine, to bear witness to, or to inquire.

irrational7• 8 years ago

The folded cloth was used by itself or in combination with many other signs, for example:

𓋴 U+132F4 folded cloth

𓄸 U+13138 folded cloth and intestines

𓋵 U+132F5 folded cloth and horned viper

𓋶 U+132F6 folded cloth and sickle

𓌭 U+1332D folded cloth and knife sharpener

𓌯 U+1332F folded cloth and butcher's knife sharpener

There are other signs that they also combined like this, for example,

𓌌 U+1330C cobra with mace

Both the cobra and the mace are also standalone signs, just as all the signs above are standalone signs in addition to being combined with the folded cloth. Why did the egyptians combine signs like this? I'm not sure. I've never read an explanation for it.

wl6• 8 years ago

It's pretty common for signs to be rearranged or omitted for aesthetic reasons. There was a strong preference for signs to be grouped in boxes. For example, if we were find 𓅨𓂋 wr, it would almost always be written with 𓂋 underneath 𓅨. With the 𓋴 combinations, we're combining with symbols that are mostly horizontal with a vertical symbol. Sure, you could stack them, flip them to be parallel, or put them after each other like I did with 𓅨𓂋 wr. However, some scribes probably thought combining them in crosses looked better than any of the alternatives.

Midnightas• 8 years ago

That profile picture made the article much more hilarious.

KaiserPro2• 8 years ago

is there a range of unicode vaginas, you know, for, erm, balance?

wl6• 8 years ago

No, but continuing on with Egyptian body part hieroglyphs, there is Gardner sign D27, Unicode U+13091.

KaiserPro2• 8 years ago

its a start....

irrational7• 8 years ago

Vaginas? No. (Did you maybe mean Vulva?) But, there are breasts.

asianthrowaway• 8 years ago

({})

monochromatic• 8 years ago

And for those of you on Windows with a censored font (what a thing!) this is what they look like.

I've never heard about censored fonts, but I am on Windows and these indeed do not work. How do I fix that?

rjsw• 8 years ago

Maybe install an extra font, this [1] one works for me.

[1] http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/Nilus.zip

gouggoug• 8 years ago

On my mac os Mojave, those glyph do not show up (aka, they show up as square boxes).

Anybody else experiencing this on mac os mojave or is it something wrong on my end?

edit: they don't show up in chrome and won't work in slack, they do work in iMessage.

edit2: safari happily displays them

ibrault• 8 years ago

They work in GroupMe

iaml• 8 years ago

That's chrome text rendering for you. IIRC chrome was the only browser on windows that wouldn't display emoji properly even when system could.

irrational7• 8 years ago

I'm disappointed the article doesn't also point out that there are also egyptian hieroglyphic characters for breasts.

irrational7• 8 years ago

Other semi-risque hieroglpyphics:

𓂑 U+13091 small breast

𓂒 U+13092 large breast

𓁒 U+13052 giving birth

𓁔 U+13054 breastfeeding

𓁤 U+13064 the god min

𓄡 U+13121 animals belly showing teats and tail

𓐍 U+1340D possibly the placenta, though could be a sieve

elchief• 8 years ago

ASCII dick to the rescue: 8===D

spork12• 8 years ago

I'm more of a (.)(.) guy

kazinator• 8 years ago

That's nothing; EBCDIC has it in its very name.

croon• 8 years ago

That URL was apropos of the post funny on another level for those of us who speak Swedish, as "kuk" means the rude kind of dick, that isn't a rooster.

grandmczeb2• 8 years ago

Honest question: Why isn't there a penis emoji? As far as I can tell, the exclusion criteria given by the UTC doesn't forbid it and it seems to meet all the standards for inclusion. Is it just prudishness on the part of the UTC?

rococode• 8 years ago

For anyone else who's curious what their standards are, the guidelines seem to be here: http://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#selection_factors

I guess they could say it falls under "Already representable" since we have eggplant emojis lmao. I would have guessed that they want to avoid emojis that are generally used in crude/offensive contexts, but there's a middle finger emoji so...

grandmczeb2• 8 years ago

I guess they could say it falls under "Already representable" since we have eggplant emojis lmao.

By that logic there's no need for the smiley emoji since we already have :).

I expect that the given reason would be that vendors would be unlikely to implement it. That's at least plausible, but if the UTC has ever given an actual reason I'd like to hear it.

benzofuran• 8 years ago

It's a shame that whomever has bagged 𓂸.com just redirects to google.

czbond• 8 years ago

I'm drunk as shit, and this is f*cking funny. Happy Halloween! 48617070792048616c6c6f7765656e <--- Hex

singingfish• 8 years ago

seems this is a reasonable combination of characters to represent a specific kind of activity 𓂺

codezero• 8 years ago

It was actually pretty uncommon for ancient humans to draw the human form, let alone dicks. I think one of the earlier images with a dick in it was of birdman. More current anthro or art history buffs hopefully will put me in my place. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux#/media/File%3ALascau...

Edit I mention this becaus the author speculates humans have been drawing dicks for ages. Society had been much more interested in the female form. See the Venus figurines: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines

This all makes a bit of sense if you acknowledge the patriarchy: how much of your interest and indeed porn is dick focused after you’re 12?

Unicode Dicks

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