Pictorial books from Mexico defy our definition of writing – Ñuu Dzaui pictography

Comments · 525

• NA

  @NativLang · 1 year ago

  What a beautiful way of writing ✍📜❣<br>This one took about 315 hours of work. No breaks, more on the way.<br>My Writing Bee animation leading up to this got less attention ~ check it out if you missed

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• AR

  @ArturdeSousaRocha · 1 year ago

  Software engineers: Proudly invent Unicode.<br>Mixtec scribes: Low-key play 5D ideographic chess with a bottom-up boustrophedon.

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• 1T

  @1TakoyakiStore · 1 year ago

  About 5 minutes in and I knew where this was going. A language designed to be easy to understand what it was trying to say to people in a place where many languages are spoken. In some ways it&apos;s like writing purely in emojis or textless memes, and yet this seems far more robust than that. So fascinating!

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• ZH

  @zh84 · 1 year ago

  I learned about this system from Joyce Marcus&apos; discussion of the Codex Nuttall in &quot;Mesoamerican Writing Systems&quot;. She pointed out that the pictographs were capable of great subtlety. Ambassadors for a noble carry her name glyph on their backs, showing they are her representatives; and while tongue glyphs are familiar in Mesoamerican art to indicate that someone is speaking, the locals receiving Lady 6 Monkey&apos;s ambassadors have tongue glyphs covered in knives - literally &quot;cutting words&quot;, insults.

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• LY

  @lyxthen · 1 year ago

  Thank you! I don&apos;t speak mixtec, but I&apos;m from Oaxaca and know many mixtec people. This kind of video are super important! Indigenous culture is such an important part of our heritage and we can&apos;t afford to lose it.

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• EM

  @emtoprma · 1 year ago

  I grew up in Mexico City, in a family proud of our heritage. So I had some familiarity with pictograms and their names in Náhuatl. So at the start I had different words for the ones shown here. I actually doubted what I’d learn as a child. Maybe the book I had was wrong. Maybe it was Mixteco all along and not Náhuatl. Then it all clicked. Yes, it’s the same writing with the ability of being read in different languages. I love it. Thanks for the great effort of sharing this knowledge.

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• TU

  @TurelBS · 1 year ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MhDRRaqB8w&amp;t=1208">20:08</a> &quot;Solamente otros hablan por nosotros&quot; hits very hard, when all the papers and resources on all these ancient civilizations in MX are ignore in most studies abroad, because the writer doesn&apos;t have an english sounding name.

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• UP

  @uplink-on-yt · 1 year ago

  &quot;I&apos;m busy this week. I&apos;m painting a thank you note.&quot;

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• TI

  @timmccarthy9917 · 1 year ago

  &quot;Scribes play with [tones] and engage in tonal puns.&quot;<br><br>(my flashbacks to Chinese class intensify)

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• AN

  @AncientAmericas · 1 year ago

  The teacher surprises us with a lovely end of the year gift. Excellent video!

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• ME

  @medea27 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Having a &quot;Rosetta Stone&quot; built <i>into</i> the script itself @ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MhDRRaqB8w&amp;t=930">15:30</a> is sheer brilliance... language barriers are so often the progenitor of miscommunication &amp; misunderstanding, so having a common pictorial language would have so many benefits. &nbsp;Not just for the native speakers but also for traders, emissaries, and anyone else who is from farther afield, because they can learn one dialect instead of two or three.... and we naturally tend to feel more relaxed &amp; open to compromise when we can relate through language. &nbsp;Amazing video! 👍

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• HI

  @hiddenhist · 1 year ago

  The description of this script reminds me quite a bit of Nsibidi, used in Nigeria. In that case, we have less manuscripts (unfortunately), but some of them include simple records of court cases. Interesting stuff.

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