Group G: Birds

This is one of the most fun groups of all because there are so many birds and all different sizes and shapes. A boy mentioned that at the museum next door as he pondered the meaning of a piece of Horemheb's tomb. "They sure liked birds." A look at fairly any random text will be loaded with birds. Without birds hieroglyphs would hardly be interesting.

What in the world could the birds mean? Can you imagine?

I visualized explaining this to my nephews. I imagined people at the beginning of time. And they rarely did make it to genuine old age. This occurred to me today as I looked over stats on the new pop-up pages site. Another person in Japan is filling a whole page with views tabulated. I wondered, "What are they looking at?" I clicked one and read again and noticed an old drawing of a cat scribbled so impatiently it's hardly a cat at all, just scratches vaguely in the shape of a cat. A very bad drawing. And everyone knows instantly the scribbles mean "cat." It's ridiculous. It's carelessly ridiculously clear. I laughed at it for being so impatient back then. The cat must be drawn in seconds.

Say we're youngsters and we're inventing a written language. We can have a fast scribble that clearly means "cat." We show it to people and everyone says, "cat." And so we set off to categorize the whole world this way. We need something like this for everything.

It doesn't work out. There isn't a picture for everything. 

We want the picture to represent what we say. We're saying the sound ka at pushed together. Now that we're paying attention to what we are saying. Let's have the picture of a cat stand for the sound of ka at pushed together. That way we can use the picture of a cat to write the sound for the words catatonic, cataleptic, cataclysm, categories, catastrophe, cater, catechism, cataracts, catapults, catacombs, catabolic, katydids, katzenjammers, and whatever else has that sound. 

The pictures are no longer only about things, they're about things and sounds. 

A logogram is little picture that stands for a thing. A phonogram is a little picture that stands for a sound. 

An ideogram is a picture that stands for something but not for its sound such as numerals and emoticons and emoji. 

Egyptians used these same signs as determinative ideograms with no phonetic value to indicate the end of some nouns and they carry information about the semantics. They keep the reader focused and tell the reader what area of thought the sounds being represented are about. A lot of words sound exactly alike or similar. Determinatives are not spoken, they're keeping the reader on track. They're pun eliminators basically. There are several ways to get at the same sounds. Determinatives are the same symbols reused to say, "that's what I'm talking about." 

Making this was interesting. It showed what the professor considers important for getting across how the symbol starts meaning one thing then over time is stretched to mean others. Each bird is rife with this kind of eventual phonetic stretching. It amounts to decade upon decade of pun upon pun so that its usage becomes remote from its origin. So that my scribble of a cat could end up meaning simply ka, sort of like giving a hint. 

So many ways to make the same or similar sound even in one category. This was driven yesterday by a puzzle I mentioned written by Patrick Berry. The puzzle is a bear. The ultimate puzzle where the theme is not discerned until the whole thing is completely done. The title is "Kneecaps" and it never helped in solving. I solved all theme entries, and that was not possible until all of the fill was complete. Perfect. Slugging my way through it still could not see his punning. This is precisely what the Egyptians were doing with sounds. Further, it's how unvocalized determinatives are intended to eliminate this sort of conflating. I never did understand what he did until all theme entries were complete. Here are the theme entries that fit the title "kneecaps." 

Edgar Allan Pony

Killer beanie

Contempt of Courtney

The karate kidney

Remember the alimony

From on heinie

Look out bologna. 

You'll understand if you say them. He capped each regular phrase with the sound of "knee" 

He uses words with letters ny, ney, nie, na to get at the sound "knee." That is what Egyptians did way back at the beginning of writing. That is why the professor's markings are important. He's telling his students how these symbols are used in different ways; PHON. LOGO, DET. and the sounds they represent.

If we interpreted "cat" from my picture of a cat using these methods we do to understand Egyptians then without other clues it could very well come out kit, ket, cut, kite, acute, who knows?