Unknown language #20
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From Rebecca Turner in Seattle:
Rebecca writes:
Attached is a sticker I found on a lamp post outside of a gay bar in my neighborhood, written in an unidentified script or scripts. In the same location some months ago I saw a similar picture with a message written in sitelen pona (one of the toki pona scripts), so I suspect it may be a conlangscript of some sort.
My nerdiest friends have collectively failed to identify the writing system involved. Particularly vexing are the characters that look like thetas and epsilons in the top half of the sticker (the script used in the bottom half looks a bit more angular and may be a different writing system entirely?). Near guesses include Shavian and Quikscript.
Some of my acquaintances, as stumped as I am, pointed towards Language Log as a potential source of clarification. If you are also interested, I'd appreciate a post so we can figure out the script (and ideally the message) used here.
Go to it, Language Loggers!
Selected readings
- "Unknown language #19"
- "Sapir-Whorf redux" (5/15/25) — speaking to the aims of the designers and adherents of sitelen pona and toki pona
- "Linguistic relativity: snow and horses" (4/15/25)
- "Create a language, go to jail" (12/15/11)
- "Yay Newfriend again" (4/22/24)
Gregory Kusnick said,
July 4, 2025 @ 3:21 pm
I have no idea what it is, but there are enough similarities between the upper and lower halves that I'd feel comfortable saying they're the same script written by different hands
Christian Horn said,
July 4, 2025 @ 3:42 pm
No idea what it is, but I wonder somehow if it's rotated by 180degree.
Daphne Preston-Kendal said,
July 4, 2025 @ 4:16 pm
Cherokee, no?
Jacob said,
July 4, 2025 @ 5:58 pm
Some of the characters look like Lojban's Zbalermorna.
It's definitely not (unless it's a variant I guess), but I thought I'd just put that out there.
David Morris said,
July 4, 2025 @ 6:16 pm
Daphne's suggestion of Cherokee deserves further investigation by someone who knows more about it than I do (viz, anything at all). From Wikipedia, the borrowed from roman letters H and J, Ꮎ (the theta-like symbol in the middle of the first full row) and Ꮜ (the bucket-like symbol at the end of the second full row) are all Cherokee characters.
(Describing the characters in case the copy-and-paste Cherokee characters don't render.)
Jay Sekora said,
July 4, 2025 @ 6:48 pm
Jay Kinda looks like Canadian Aboriginal syllabics to me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics). I don't know anything about any of the languages involved, but if it was put there by the same person who put the Toki Pona script, it might be an attempt to render Lojban or Klingon in syllabics anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯