Andrew West 魏安
@babelstone.co.uk
Independent researcher of Tangut, Khitan, and Jurchen. Developer of BabelPad and BabelMap. Maintainer of BabelStone Han font. Responsible for adding over 10,000 characters to the Unicode Standard.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2063-7389
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2063-7389
Yeah, better avoid the Princeton Arms
June 29, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Yeah, better avoid the Princeton Arms
Didn't he not touch the bible during his inauguration?
June 22, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Didn't he not touch the bible during his inauguration?
UK seems to be conspicuously absent
June 17, 2025 at 7:22 PM
UK seems to be conspicuously absent
"Chinese Ethnicity" 中华民族 rears its ugly head again
June 13, 2025 at 11:16 PM
"Chinese Ethnicity" 中华民族 rears its ugly head again
The old SSEES entrance
June 12, 2025 at 5:23 PM
The old SSEES entrance
It would be great if you can find it, but may be like looking for a needle in a haystack without the exact coordinates. 🤞
June 9, 2025 at 11:44 PM
It would be great if you can find it, but may be like looking for a needle in a haystack without the exact coordinates. 🤞
谢谢，看了，已经回信了， 可是我实在没有空参加这个项目，请原谅。
June 9, 2025 at 8:40 PM
谢谢，看了，已经回信了， 可是我实在没有空参加这个项目，请原谅。
I haven't read her paper or seen a rubbing of the inscription, so I can't comment, but by all reports the inscription is in poor condition.
June 8, 2025 at 3:53 PM
I haven't read her paper or seen a rubbing of the inscription, so I can't comment, but by all reports the inscription is in poor condition.
See my critique of her reading of the Arkhara river Jurchen inscription, for which she reads the extraordinarily early date of 1127 on evidence that does not stand up to scrutiny
Jurchen Inscription on the River Arkhara
This post discusses a recently-identified inscription in the Jurchen script on the bank of the River Arkhara in Russia.
babelstone.co.uk
June 7, 2025 at 9:43 AM
See my critique of her reading of the Arkhara river Jurchen inscription, for which she reads the extraordinarily early date of 1127 on evidence that does not stand up to scrutiny
She has a miraculous ability to fluently and confidently read Khitan and Jurchen inscriptions which are obscure to everyone else. She also has a habit of accepting uncritically all sorts of modern fake inscriptions (either gullible or complicit, I don't know which)
June 7, 2025 at 9:31 AM
She has a miraculous ability to fluently and confidently read Khitan and Jurchen inscriptions which are obscure to everyone else. She also has a habit of accepting uncritically all sorts of modern fake inscriptions (either gullible or complicit, I don't know which)
Just be very cautious about anything that Aisin Gioro Ulhicun writes
June 6, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Just be very cautious about anything that Aisin Gioro Ulhicun writes
And Sergoe UI Symbol which ships with Windows, so ⯨⯩⯪⯫ should render OK for people on a recent Windows machine
June 5, 2025 at 10:54 PM
And Sergoe UI Symbol which ships with Windows, so ⯨⯩⯪⯫ should render OK for people on a recent Windows machine
Is the base text 史記? The characters "鞅陽之聚縣丞縣田陌" on the first column appear in sequence in 史記 卷68:
於是以『鞅』為大良造。將兵圍魏安邑，降之。居三年，作為築冀闕宮庭於咸『陽』，秦自雍徙都『之』。而令民父子兄弟同室內息者為禁。而集小（都）鄉邑『聚』為『縣』，置令、『丞』，凡三十一『縣』。為『田』開阡『陌』封疆，而賦稅平。平斗桶權衡丈尺。行之四年，公子虔復犯約，劓之。居五年，秦人富彊，天子致胙於孝公，諸侯畢賀。
於是以『鞅』為大良造。將兵圍魏安邑，降之。居三年，作為築冀闕宮庭於咸『陽』，秦自雍徙都『之』。而令民父子兄弟同室內息者為禁。而集小（都）鄉邑『聚』為『縣』，置令、『丞』，凡三十一『縣』。為『田』開阡『陌』封疆，而賦稅平。平斗桶權衡丈尺。行之四年，公子虔復犯約，劓之。居五年，秦人富彊，天子致胙於孝公，諸侯畢賀。
June 4, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Is the base text 史記? The characters "鞅陽之聚縣丞縣田陌" on the first column appear in sequence in 史記 卷68:
於是以『鞅』為大良造。將兵圍魏安邑，降之。居三年，作為築冀闕宮庭於咸『陽』，秦自雍徙都『之』。而令民父子兄弟同室內息者為禁。而集小（都）鄉邑『聚』為『縣』，置令、『丞』，凡三十一『縣』。為『田』開阡『陌』封疆，而賦稅平。平斗桶權衡丈尺。行之四年，公子虔復犯約，劓之。居五年，秦人富彊，天子致胙於孝公，諸侯畢賀。
於是以『鞅』為大良造。將兵圍魏安邑，降之。居三年，作為築冀闕宮庭於咸『陽』，秦自雍徙都『之』。而令民父子兄弟同室內息者為禁。而集小（都）鄉邑『聚』為『縣』，置令、『丞』，凡三十一『縣』。為『田』開阡『陌』封疆，而賦稅平。平斗桶權衡丈尺。行之四年，公子虔復犯約，劓之。居五年，秦人富彊，天子致胙於孝公，諸侯畢賀。
Yes. Although it is possible to create your own input method or modify an existing input method, for example my BabelPad text editor easily allows for custom input methods:
June 2, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Yes. Although it is possible to create your own input method or modify an existing input method, for example my BabelPad text editor easily allows for custom input methods:
As far as I am aware, nothing happens automatically, and those responsible for particular input methods will need to manually update them if they want to support the new characters — but very few CJK input methods ever update for new versions of Unicode!
June 2, 2025 at 11:53 AM
As far as I am aware, nothing happens automatically, and those responsible for particular input methods will need to manually update them if they want to support the new characters — but very few CJK input methods ever update for new versions of Unicode!
I finally have sufficient confidence in my reconstruction to propose this character for encoding
My reconstruction and identification of a partially-preserved Tangut character in a unique fragment of the Homophones text held at the British Library www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
May 28, 2025 at 12:21 AM
I finally have sufficient confidence in my reconstruction to propose this character for encoding
This was of course unacceptable to ISO member bodies, especially those not in the privileged set of ten, so Germany 🇩🇪 and Ireland 🇮🇪 proposed to encode 676 characters for all ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes (AA–ZZ), representing flags for all actual and potential ISO-recognized countries and territories.
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
May 23, 2025 at 11:31 AM
This was of course unacceptable to ISO member bodies, especially those not in the privileged set of ten, so Germany 🇩🇪 and Ireland 🇮🇪 proposed to encode 676 characters for all ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes (AA–ZZ), representing flags for all actual and potential ISO-recognized countries and territories.
Back in 2009 when emoji encoding was being thrashed out acrimoniously by the Unicode Technical Committee and ISO member bodies, the UTC did not want to encode a full set of national flag emoji, but only wanted to encode emoji for the ten national flags used in Japanese vendor sets (🇨🇳🇩🇪🇪🇸🇫🇷🇬🇧🇮🇹🇯🇵🇰🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸).
May 23, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Back in 2009 when emoji encoding was being thrashed out acrimoniously by the Unicode Technical Committee and ISO member bodies, the UTC did not want to encode a full set of national flag emoji, but only wanted to encode emoji for the ten national flags used in Japanese vendor sets (🇨🇳🇩🇪🇪🇸🇫🇷🇬🇧🇮🇹🇯🇵🇰🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸).
It's about as likely as Unicode adding a Confederate flag emoji (which I assume we are only days or weeks away from Trump demanding)
May 23, 2025 at 10:21 AM
It's about as likely as Unicode adding a Confederate flag emoji (which I assume we are only days or weeks away from Trump demanding)
Previous discussion on the same question of the Tangutishness of the Japanese invented script
@babelstone.bsky.social you've probably come across this before - Fat how Tangut-ish is this script I wonder? www.reddit.com/r/linguistic...
May 10, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Previous discussion on the same question of the Tangutishness of the Japanese invented script