Was at a class this evening, in the course at Stanford University called Writing Systems of the World. Talk about a rich place for inspiration. Many new lexical concepts were exposed.
We explored some idioms, such as the consistent use across diverse cultures in ancient Meso-America of the term “deer snake” to refer to a boa constrictor. We found strong parallels between the letter arrangements in Hebrew and the trigram arrangements in the I Ching
The guest speaker, Mira Amiras, addressed Writing Systems as Sacred Systems, with rich examples from the Jewish and Arabic traditions. Her use of the phrase “going into occultation”, while discussing the Kabbalah, highlighted the study of the Occult as the study of the Hidden.
We were treated to a quick tour of the Decipherment of the Writing System of Ancient Teotihuacan by one of the two researchers who accomplished that, Tim King (who is also the instructor for the course). Equally impressive was his ability to pronounce the words from all of the related languages. He explained the theory of Glottochronology, where a language will only replace core words at a rate of 5-14% per thousand years. Historical linguists use this to place languages in time relative to each other.
