Allusionist 183. Timucua

October 9, 2023 The Allusionist

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts.

In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the people who were writing it down.

Allusionist 153. In Character

April 15, 2022 The Allusionist

Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world. But when technologies arrived like telegraphy and computing, designed with the Roman alphabet in mind, if Chinese wanted to be able to participate then it had to choose between adapting, or paying a heavy price. And sometimes both were inevitable. Jing Tsu, author of Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern, recounts how Chinese contended with obstacles like alphabetisation, Romanisation and standardisation.

Allusionist 118. Survival: Bequest

July 3, 2020 The Allusionist

When the Europeans arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as guns, stoats and Christianity, they brought ideas of cisgender monogamous heterosexuality that were imposed upon the Māori people as if there had never been anything else. But one word, takatāpui, proved otherwise.

Allusionist 13: Mixed Emojions

June 17, 2015 The Allusionist

Emoji allow communication without words. Could emoji be the universal language of the 21st century? Matt Gray and Tom Scott, founders of the emoji-only messaging platform emoj.li, talk through the pitfalls; and History Today's Dr Kate Wiles finds the 5...

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

Emoji allow communication without words. Could emoji be the universal language of the 21st century? Matt Gray and Tom Scott, founders of the emoji-only messaging platform emoj.li, talk through the pitfalls; and History Today's Dr Kate Wiles finds the 500- and 5,000-year-old precedents for emoji.

CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains one category B swear word, plus references to penises growing on trees.

ADDITIONAL READING:

There is a transcript of this episode here.
Keep up to date with all matters emojional at Emojipedia.
Learn more about cuneiform and poor old St Audrey.
Read the Luttrell Psalter. Or Emoji Dick, if you must. (Try before you buy.)
It should have been a portent of Things To Come that at age six, my favourite of the Just So Stories was the one about the alphabet being invented. It's Rudyard Kipling's own spin on cuneiform, pretty much.
Why the interrobang never really took off. It's the "That's so fetch!" of punctuation.
Your summer beach read: Unicode.
The more medieval marginalia you find, the better they get. Here are some choice cuts, and there are many more at Got Medieval; read Kate Wiles herself on the topic; read an explanation as to why so many involve knights fighting snails; or if you can't be bothered to read, just watch the video I made for you:

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
kloof

CREDITS:

Dr Kate Wiles is contributing editor at History Today and appears on their podcast.
Matt Gray and Tom Scott brought the emoji-only messenger Emoj.li to life and now they're putting it to death.
All the music in this episode is by Martin Austwick. Hear and/or download more at thesoundoftheladies.bandcamp.com.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks very much to the Soho Theatre in London for letting me record there.
Find me at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

Emoji allow communication without words. Could emoji be the universal language of the 21st century? Matt Gray and Tom Scott, founders of the emoji-only messaging platform emoj.li, talk through the pitfalls; and History Today's Dr Kate Wiles finds the 500- and 5,000-year-old precedents for emoji.

ADDITIONAL READING:

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:kloof

CREDITS:

- HZ

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
kloof