Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts

Saturday, 5 September 2020

Mongolian and other minority scripts

An example of several scripts being used side by side.

#savemongolianlanguage #mongolian #manchu #tibetan 


Once upon a time a calligrapher or perhaps a team of calligraphers got together and designed this sign for a buddhist temple in which you can see 4 different scripts Tibetan Mongolian Manchu and Chinese Hanzi arranged in a layout that allows all of them "equal" footing. 

Apparently the Sinicized Manchu Qing rulers had more respect for minority languages than certain modern Han and other bureaucrats in Inner Mongolia and Beijing  who are trying to back pedal on previous policies and lessen hours of Mongolian language instruction in schools in which the Mongolian language and script is suppose to be the PRIMARY Medium of education.

Personally as a student and user of a variety of scripts, Roman, Hanzi, and others, I have often wished we have had multi lingual instruction introduced at an earlier level of schooling.

But Australia only has one majority language of instruction you might object?

Yes but we support community and correspondence and other classes for minority languages many of which can be studied at HSC level allowing students credits towards university entry.
Okay not Mongolian the community is too small ... and sadly the Hokkien and Hakka speaking communities do not get the same recognition as Cantonese or Putonghua but 

DIVERSITY IS GOOD 

DIVERSITY INSPIRES GOOD DESIGN 

so if you see anyone posting on social media but Chinese or any other language  is the majority language support bilingualism. Multilingualism Too! 

I'll finish with another example of Han - Mongol cultural interchange leading to diversity and design.

Mongolian can be written with a pen or brush. Here we see a Han calligraphy technique applied to Mongol script. But typography is important too. With modern use of Unicode Mongolian and Chinese can be applied to a variety of usages street signs calligraphy BILINGUAL TEXT BOOKS 


so I type and encourage you to do so too 

#SAVEMONGOLIANLANGUAGE 


 

Sunday, 18 June 2017

A Swarm of Dragons Three CHU !!!

A Swarm of Dragons Three  CHU !!!

The Middle Kingdom is known as China in Western Europe firstly due to the Western State of Qin being as one end of the long overland Silk Road trade route and secondly due to there being various dynasties and smaller states in Northern China called Tsin Qin Chin or Jin and IndoEuropean speakers hearing several sounds they couldnt distinguish as a  "CH".

However "CHINA" was nearly CHU.

Unless you are deeply read on Chinese History you may not known of Chu as a state that for several centuries was a major power among the Sinitic speaking and Sinicized cultures occupying the area that is now China.

Compare the two maps.





The much smaller HAN state was NOT the origin of the name of the HAN dynasty.

Qin conquered Han and Chu and the other states shown but the general who founded the HAN dynasty was ironically from the CHU state but took his earlier title of HAN WANG given by the rulers of Qin and used that for his dynasty name.

Look again at how much terrority CHU controlled at its peak!

WHAT IF CHU had defeated Qin or if the revolts again the "Western" Han's unifications had succeeded and there was a CHU dynasty replacing the HAN with the centres of power being along the Yangtze and not or no longer Luoyang or Changan/Xian and never Beijing?

More on CHU and CHU culture in my next post. 

How Chinese culture might have changed if the South dominated the North?

How would that have effected other nearby cultures in SE Asia?

Whats special about CHU culture! 

NEXT TIME