It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends.
corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...
Yeah, better avoid the Princeton Arms
U+8043 聃
Didn't he not touch the bible during his inauguration?
UK seems to be conspicuously absent
"Chinese Ethnicity" 中华民族 rears its ugly head again
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. 🤞
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.
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)
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
資治通鑑?
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。
Screenshot of BabelPad showing a custom Han pinyin input method listing characters with reading tā, including U+323BF
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!
I finally have sufficient confidence in my reconstruction to propose this character for encoding
Fragment of folio 56A of the B version of the Tangut Homophones text held at the British Library, showing twelve partial entries with eight complete or partial head characters. The partial head character on the bottom right is identified and proposed for encoding in the linked document.
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...
Gold paizi found in Chengde, Hebei in 1972, with a vertical inscription in Jurchen small script characters (two clusters of three characters each) beneath a huaya 花押 symbol. Photograph courtesy of Vladimir Belyaev.
First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
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 (🇨🇳🇩🇪🇪🇸🇫🇷🇬🇧🇮🇹🇯🇵🇰🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸).
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
Tangut has some open components which are blocked, similar to 月, but never any closed box components such as 口, either by themselves or surrounding other elements. So when I see lots of characters with box components I think it is not a Tangut-like script.
Hm, I've had this exact same conversation with someone else on bluesky a while back. To me it looks nothing like Tangut. One of the defining features of Tangut script that distinguishes it from kanji and this invented script is that Tangut does not have any box components such as 口囗日目田皿 etc.
The book is very familiar to me, as I used it as a set text for part of an overview of Chinese fiction course that i taught in the mid 1990s.
Andrew West wearing a straw hat and Nicky S. wearing a beret on a sliding down a concrete slide in the form of a tusked elephant. Photograph by Adrian P. Bradshaw on or about 2nd May 1985.
We went to Harbin next. Apparently the Ice Festival only started as an annual event in January 1985, but I can't remember whether there were still any ice sculptures standing when we visited. But anyway, here I am with tóngxué Nicky S. having fun on an elephant slide. 📷 Adrian P. Bradshaw.
Youthful Andrew West sitting against a wall painted with three large explanation marks, wearing a long greyish-white scarf and a straw hat decorated with a red plastic lobster. At Chengde, China, on or about 1st May 1985. Photograph by Adrian P. Bradshaw.
Suave, sophisticated, international man of style and mystery. Me wearing my Lhasa straw hat adorned with a plastic lobster in celebration of the May Day holiday, Chéngdé 承德 China, 1st May 1985. 📷 Adrian P. Bradshaw.