No(t/n)

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That's bù 不, plus = a-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, un-, non- prefixes in English.

It can enter into Mandarin contractions, such as 不 ("not") + yòng 用 ("use") = béng ("needn't), and the two Sinoglyphs used to write the constituent morphosyllables can fuse to become béng 甭 ("needn't).

Here's a whole slew of such fusion words and contraction characters:

Included among them are whimsical items such as one composed of bù 不 ("not") above and lǎo 老 ("old") below (= xiān 仙 ["ageless; immortal; transcendent"]), also another fairly well established one with bù 不 ("not") above and 好 ("good") below (= huài 壞 and other words / glyphs meaning "bad; evil; spoiled", etc.) — see if you can spot them. 

See here for many other orthographic variants of xiān 仙 ("immortal; transcendent") of the former and this tweet.

You can very easily spend your whole life tracking down these weird characters into deep, dark holes.  They are infinite in number.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Geoff Wade]



4 Comments

  1. Philip Taylor said,

    October 5, 2023 @ 3:03 am

    What, in what appears to be merely two pages of sinoglyphs, triggers "The following media includes potentially sensitive content", in the content between "books.google.com/books?id=1Q5aA" and "12:16 PM · Sep 30, 2023" ?

  2. DBMG said,

    October 5, 2023 @ 6:27 am

    The algorithm probably thinks it might be bare tattooed skin.

  3. bks said,

    October 5, 2023 @ 6:50 am

    Has "the algorithm … thinks" been discussed in LLOG?

  4. Rodger Cunningham said,

    October 5, 2023 @ 12:29 pm

    It's an algorithm on the banks of denial.

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