Naxi script resource centre

Things have been busy over at Naxi script recently, but hopefully I’ll be able to add lots more juicy goodies in the near future.

This week’s character, ko21, has the privilege of being featured in the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh. The Botanic Garden uses the character to depict high alpine plants (bottom of the photo), although it literally means ‘alpine meadow’.

As a side note, I know that ‘hieroglyphs’ can refer to pictographs in general so its use here shouldn’t rile me quite as much as it does, but something about it still smacks of antiquated bourgeois attitudes to logographic writing.

Anyway, the display is part of their Chinese Hillside 中国坡  area, but unfortunately the Naxi script for this reads ‘Han hillside’, ha33 pa21 bu21, which it really isn’t – although you can see how they got there.

Simple one this week, the colour red: hy21. This can also mean ‘red mouth’ because it is a combination of the characters for mouth and a fire. Fire by itself  - - pronounced mi33, can also be read hy21, a simpler way of writing ‘red’.

The character brings to mind a really neat piece of Naxi weather lore which I stumbled upon the other day and is shared by people the world over:

pronunciation: k’v55 tɕi33 hy21 so21 mɯ33 t’v33

English word for word: dusk / cloud / red / dawn / sky / clear

translation: Red sky at dusk, clear sky in the morning

pronunciation: sp21 tɕi33 hy21 k’v55 mɯ33 dza33

English word for word: dawn / cloud / red / dusk / sky / fearsome

translation: Red sky at dawn, bad weather in the evening

In the UK this sentiment is sometimes expressed more lyrically as ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’.