By which I mean that if an emoji is based on a technological item, it would not be understood in  cultures unacquainted with that item. Also, strange though it may seem, there are probably cultures who do not understand the concept of a picture, or of associating a picture with an action or even, thing.

There are some cultures who do not share the same perceptions of colour  as us, and a blue thing might be confused with a red the_same_thing. (Colour blind people, or a print in monochrome)

The bit I clipped comes out of a section on writing - and printing - the Chinese and Japanese languages. Very interesting in itself.

I have just watched episode 2.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m … -on-a-page

I feel that I have learned much from it. About papyrus, about paper, about book production in Bruges.

It is due to go unavailable at 2:30 am Friday morning, British Summer Time. I note for the archive that today is Thursday.

If you can access it from where you are, and can find time to watch it while it is still available,I highly recommend viewing it.

William

I have just completed watching the third episode.

Thank you, Jack, for drawing my attention to this.

I have learned much.

A couple of things stand out.

The people painting characters using water. That is interesting.

I once, many years ago, saw a pavement artist produce a large picture.

It was in Stratford-upon-Avon.

This was in an area where the public had access but there was a notice on a wall something like "This route is not dedicated to the public."

I don't know the details but it was then a new development.

It seemed that where there were two roads of shops at right angles to each other, with perhaps back yards behind them, two of the shops had been converted to walk through routes, one on each road, and they both led to a large open paved area around which there were lots of small shops. I don't know if the walk ways into the area were open to the sky but perhaps not, perhaps just the ground floor of a not very wide shop having its front window and door removed and the back wall opened so as to provide a tunnel.

Perhaps I can find out from Google street view.

The large central area was open to the sky and covered with what were just basic plain paving slabs.

So it was not public pavement.

I don't know by what authority (if any) the pavement artist was there.

Another thing in the programme was that for Chinese chracters there are books that give the order (and the directions?) of the strokes.

It would be interesting to know the order of the strokes and their direction when people write Latin letters.

For example, is a letter o written clockwise or counterclockwise? Does it vary from person to person? Does each person always write a letter o in the same direction? Is a capital O written in the same direction as a lowercase o?

What about a lowercase letter d? Which order of strokes, which directions?

William

I know that this is only very slightly related to the original topic of this thread, mais ...

Episode 2 had a part about book production in Bruges.

I wondered if there might be a walk around Bruges, similar to the one round Mainz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjLxGh17rA Mainz

There is! Indeed there are two.

Here is a link to the more recent one. I have not watched more than the first minute yet, though it is from the same POPtravel series as the one round Mainz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPpOG_I7g_M Bruges

And to the older one, not yet watched either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liQQ6NHZsXQ&t=0s Bruges earlier upload

There is also a more recent one of Mainz. I have watched about ten minutes of this new walk around Mainz. I got just beyond the Gutenberg Museum. This time there are leaves on the trees. Having watched the original one of Mainz more than once I recognised the statue of Saint Boniface by the cathedral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj6iM14C1yw Mainz second video

Anyway, I am hoping now to have a virtual guided walk around Bruges by watching this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPpOG_I7g_M Bruges

William

Um ... possibly.

William

!81812345679

https://www.lexico.com/definition/recognization

Well, you never know! Highly unlikely if only ever used in one published work, but…

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/swamidas … ent-260650

Now that us interesting, because the first one predates Chapter 57 of my second novel.

12 September 2019 and 12 October 2020.

So maybe two separate coinings.

However, if I remember correctly I may possibly have used 'parsniponious' elsewhere previously.

I wrote the chapter as a way of getting the word into a publication, though its use does produce a way for the main story to progress.

I had had the idea for a long time.

It arose when a small group of us, when I was working, looking at a report about pension scheme rules and one part had about that pension managers had discretionary power to give some enhancement to someone in some circumstances, but some managers were parsimonious in the matter.

I asked "What does parsimonious mean?" and a colleague replied "Tight".

Somehow, in my mind, it got munged in with parsnips.

At some time later, years?, I had this idea of a painting The Parsnip Eaters as a pastiche after

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0005v1962

with men in suits sat around a table making decisions about people's pensions and eating parsnips while they do it.

William

It’s obviously the famous short film “A Pen, A Red Ball, and Three Green Apples”!

Oh, I get the answer.

Think of a word that sounds like ink-red-apples. Saying "ink-red-apples" quickly several times might help.

I had been trying to work out how it could be Pinocchio, from Pen-oh-apples or wondering if there might be an an animated German film "dry apples".

William

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015y6t

Scroll down to the "Clip" and you can see what happened.

Thanks to you both for the explanations and the links.