
Unicode Dicks - henkdevries
https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html
======
wl
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](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
_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?

~~~
Radim
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.

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

One caveat: As I understand things, Sumerian started out without vowels (or
consonants), much like Chinese, but developed phonetic usage over time (unlike
Chinese :( ). This has resulted in early texts being much harder to read than
later texts.

~~~
yorwba
Chinese did develop phonetic usage. Most characters are phono-semantic
compounds, where part of the character is a character whose meaning is related
(e.g. 驴 [lǘ] (donkey) contains 马 [mǎ] (horse)) and the other part has a
similar pronunciation (e.g. 吗 [ma] (auxiliary word marking questions) also
contains 马).

Unfortunately, those characters are mostly pretty old and the pronunciations
have diverged. So the situation is a bit similar to that of English, where the
orthography is a good guide to Middle English pronunciation, but confusing for
modern people. Linguists love that it enables them to reconstruct ancient
pronunciations, of course.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I'm familiar with the Chinese writing system. :p

It's not similar to English at all. Compare this translator's note from
[https://www.amazon.com/Xunzi-Complete-
Text/dp/0691169314/](https://www.amazon.com/Xunzi-Complete-
Text/dp/0691169314/) :

> The other feature of this translation that warrants comment is the handling
> of rhymed lines. The _Xunzi_ contains numerous rhymed passages... Both
> Watson and Knoblock often overlook them, as do many translations of the
> _Xunzi_ into modern Chinese and Japanese and Korean... I consider the
> presence of these rhymes a feature of the text that is sufficiently
> noteworth to deserve being reflected conspicuously in the translation. Since
> the rhyming sections can easily be overlooked... I have chosen to make them
> conspicuous by translating rhymed passages in Chinese with rhymed sections
> of English...

> The identification of the rhymes in the Chinese text requires detailed
> knowledge of ancient phonology that I lack, and so I have relied on
> published studies of rhymes in the _Xunzi_ by other scholars. Since their
> analyses may have missed some of the rhyming passages, and since there is
> ongoing scholarly debate about how to reconstruct the sounds of ancient
> Chinese in the first place, I do not claim to have identified every instance
> of rhyme in the text...

So:

\- In Old Chinese, before the pronunciation divergence you mention, the form
of a character is not a guide to its pronunciation. (Rather, the pronunciation
of another character is often used as inspiration when inventing a new
character. But the relationship of a new character to its component parts is
not regular or predictable.)

\- By inspection of text, it isn't possible even to tell the difference
between text that rhymes and text that doesn't rhyme, much less to tell what
the words sounded like.

\- A scholar who is competent to _translate_ text written in Old Chinese is
completely incompetent to determine whether Old Chinese text rhymes or doesn't
rhyme. That's an entirely different field of study.

\- Even when a scholar has published a book devoted to identifying rhymes
within a very famous text, it is considered likely that that book will have
just plain overlooked a number of rhymed passages.

These are not symptoms of a writing system that reflects the sounds of the
language. The information conveyed by the writing about the sound of Chinese
is so close to zero that the difference is immaterial.

Go look at some English rhyming poetry, and ask yourself how easy it would be,
if you didn't know English, to tell the difference between that and unrhymed
prose.

~~~
PeterisP
As a counterpoint, I'll offer this -

    
    
      Dearest creature in creation,
      Study English pronunciation.
      I will teach you in my verse
      Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
      I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
      Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
      Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
      So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
    
      Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
      Dies and diet, lord and word,
      Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
      (Mind the latter, how it's written.)
      Now I surely will not plague you
      With such words as plaque and ague.
      But be careful how you speak:
      Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
      Cloven, oven, how and low,
      Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
    
      Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
      Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
      Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
      Exiles, similes, and reviles;
      Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
      Solar, mica, war and far;
      One, anemone, Balmoral,
      Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
      Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
      Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
    
      Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
      Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
      Blood and flood are not like food,
      Nor is mould like should and would.
      Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
      Toward, to forward, to reward.
      And your pronunciation's OK
      When you correctly say croquet,
      Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
      Friend and fiend, alive and live.
    
      Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
      And enamour rhyme with hammer.
      River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
      Doll and roll and some and home.
      Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
      Neither does devour with clangour.
      Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
      Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
      Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
      And then singer, ginger, linger,
      Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
      Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
    
      Query does not rhyme with very,
      Nor does fury sound like bury.
      Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
      Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
      Though the differences seem little,
      We say actual but victual.
      Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
      Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
      Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
      Dull, bull, and George ate late.
      Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
      Science, conscience, scientific.
    
      Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
      Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
      We say hallowed, but allowed,
      People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
      Mark the differences, moreover,
      Between mover, cover, clover;
      Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
      Chalice, but police and lice;
      Camel, constable, unstable,
      Principle, disciple, label.
    
      Petal, panel, and canal,
      Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
      Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
      Senator, spectator, mayor.
      Tour, but our and succour, four.
      Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
      Sea, idea, Korea, area,
      Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
      Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
      Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
    
      Compare alien with Italian,
      Dandelion and battalion.
      Sally with ally, yea, ye,
      Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
      Say aver, but ever, fever,
      Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
      Heron, granary, canary.
      Crevice and device and aerie.
    
      Face, but preface, not efface.
      Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
      Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
      Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
      Ear, but earn and wear and tear
      Do not rhyme with here but ere.
      Seven is right, but so is even,
      Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
      Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
      Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
    
      Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
      Is a paling stout and spikey?
      Won't it make you lose your wits,
      Writing groats and saying grits?
      It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
      Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
      Islington and Isle of Wight,
      Housewife, verdict and indict.
    
      Finally, which rhymes with enough —
      Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
      Hiccough has the sound of cup.
      My advice is to give up!!!

~~~
IvyMike
> Query does not rhyme with very

Doesn't it?

~~~
aidenn0
depends on the dialect; some pronounce query with a long E

------
david_draco
There are some examples of usages here:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phallus_(hierogl...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Phallus_\(hieroglyph\))

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".

------
tveita
It hasn't gone by completely unnoticed
[https://twitter.com/unicode/status/722133439726505984](https://twitter.com/unicode/status/722133439726505984)

------
irrational
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

------
Isamu
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.

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

~~~
rpeden
Whenever I read about Roman graffiti, I can't help but think humans have't
changed all that much over time:

[http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...](http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm)

~~~
shagie
There are some there... yea. We haven't changed that much. What did Chie ever
do?

------
smallerize
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardiner%27s_sign_list#D._Parts_of_the_human_body)

Edit: found one
[https://archive.org/details/COLLIERMANLEY1999EgyptianHierogl...](https://archive.org/details/COLLIERMANLEY1999EgyptianHieroglyphsStepByStepGuide/page/n141)
via @FakeUnicode on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/FakeUnicode/status/722139283381821440](https://twitter.com/FakeUnicode/status/722139283381821440)

------
js2
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.

~~~
irrational
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.

~~~
wl
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.

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

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

~~~
TeMPOraL
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.

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

~~~
grandmczeb
> 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.

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

------
yorwba
If Rongorongo ever gets included in Unicode, there'll be a new variant:
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roro_076.svg](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
> bone script

Hey, no puns allowed on HN.

------
gouggoug
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

~~~
iaml
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.

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

~~~
wl
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
How many Egyptologists are discussing hyroglyphics on social media?

~~~
wl
I'm no Egyptologist, but I have discussed middle Egyptian hieroglyphic texts
on Facebook. Admittedly, images, images of text produced by JSesh, and
standard transliterations are more common than Unicode.

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

------
codezero
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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux#/media/File%3ALascaux_01.jpg)

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](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?

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

~~~
travisoneill1
Renders correctly in Firefox

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

------
croon
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.

------
elchief
ASCII dick to the rescue: 8===D

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
Twisell
But what the point if your correspondent can’t see your 𓂸 on the sms app?

~~~
ChristianBundy
My SMS app has no problem with sending or receiving that character. For
reference, I'm using Google Messages version 3.7.052 on a Google Pixel XL.

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

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

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

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

~~~
KaiserPro
its a start....

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

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

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

------
Millennium
This will end well.

------
api
$ echo 𓂺

𓂺

Yup. The singularity is near.

------
Midnightas
That profile picture made the article much more hilarious.

