Talk:Blissymbols

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Untitled comments

I don't see how this can realistically be put under the category "Jewish languages" -- it makes no sense, this is not in the same class as Hebrew or Yiddish, it's an auxiliary language for everyone. What's going on? -- The Anome 01:09, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

any idea what the excerpt is blissymols means??

According to Image:Blissymbols-spaceshipone.jpg, it refers to "the landing of Space Ship One". — Chameleon 09:04, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've added Blissymbolics to the [ideogram] page. Langmaker claims there are 4000 items in the vocabulary, not 900. I've read about an extraordinary user of Bliss that was fluent in 800 symbols (this was regarding a Bliss to English translation system) in 1994 - 1996. Point being that there are various interpretations as to the size of the lexicon. Still, 900 seems short. There is a Bliss font that was submitted, the request available in PDF form, that may at least extend this number. Additionally, new symbols can be created from the existing ideograms, making the hard-count as loose as a hard-count of the lexicon of any other language. Downchuck 06:36, 10 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Items in a vocabulary is a different thing from the number of characters. Evertype 08:57, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Why is the translation for "I want to go to the cinema" listed if it later says it's incorrect? Isn't it possible to edit this image? Maybe I am not understanding something? DoYouKnow

I've had a go at defining how Bliss-words differ from Bliss-characters using the 2004 "Fundamental Rules of Blissymbolics" (link in the reference section). In it, the 900 characters claim is restated, although as User:Evertype says above, "vocabulary is a different thing from the number of characters", because characters can be combined to create multi-character "Bliss-words". The phrase "I want to go to the cinema" appears to be correct as far as I can tell; I have amended the explanatory notes to agree with the phraseology specified in the Fundamental Rules. I'm no linguist and have only once come across a child who used the system, so please feel free amend my edits if they are in error. Alansplodge (talk) 18:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ideographic writing

It may be the case that "John DeFrancis and J. Marshall Unger have argued that genuine ideographic writing systems, with the same capacities as natural languages, do not exist", but that does not mean (1) that they are right and (2) that they looked at Blissymbols. So the suggestion that "this implies a limitation on the claims made about Blissymbolics as a communicative system, whatever their practical uses may be" simply doesn't say anything useful. What does it mean? Bliss *is* a communicative system. Evertype 11:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed "but it is likely that they have not examined Blissymbols, hence the claim that Blissymbols may in fact be the exception that proves the rule." Certainly DeFrancis and Unger are aware of Blissymbolics. Unger, for instance, specifically deals with them over several pages in the first chapter of his book Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning.

I'm not happy about this edit. In the first place, it's anonymous. In the second place, you haven't shown that DeFrancis was aware of Blissymbols. In the third place, you haven't said what Unger may have said about Blissymbolics in that book. And finally, as an expert on writing systems who does know Blissymbols, I am confident that it is, in fact, an ideographic writing system. I'm revising the section for clarity. Let's discuss this here before further editing. Evertype 09:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Language codes

Bliss has an ISO 639-2 language code now. Eventually the same code will be adopted in ISO 639-3. -- Evertype·✆ 09:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article tile

Why is the article title in the singular? This is incorrect. The only terms current for this is Blissymbols or Blissymbolics. Note the language code, for instance, whose referent is Blissymbols. The main article should be Blissymbols and Blissymbol should be a re-direct. -- Evertype·✆ 09:06, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the article and fixed all the re-directs. -- Evertype·✆ 09:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Number of speakers

This used to say "unknown" but was changed to n/a. Bliss is like Sign Language... though "users" is a more common term, for some disabled people Bliss is their only expressive language. Accordingly, I think either "unknown" or an estimate (which I might get from BCI) should be put here. -- Evertype·✆ 09:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dictionary

I remember several years ago, there were some nice resources on the internet, but now I can't load even http://www.blissymbolics.org/. I was looking for a dictionary, and the "dictionary" at http://www.blissymbolics.us/ isn't worth the name, with less than 90 entries. That's a pity! Is anyone aware of a better dictionary? (FWIW, my search yielded one interesting link: http://www.symbolforwindows.eu/en/SfW/symboleditor.) — Sebastian 04:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The dictionary at http://www.blissymbolics.us/ is quite large, with nearly 2000 entries. The problem is that one needs to spend some hours at gathering the entries from the 70 shown groups. And the entries are in format JPEG. Anyway, that's better than nothing! --Xabadiar (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also found a dictionary at http://www.blissonline.se/, may be useful.--Xabadiar (talk) 19:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The BCI Authorized Vocabulary (BCI-AV) is at http://www.symbolnet.org/bliss/blissymbol_resources.html -- Martin m n novy (talk) 11:07, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(but easier to use is this online searchable lexicon: e.g. for the word "please" ) -- Martin m n novy (talk) 11:13, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relevent to your interests.

Discusion at Talk:Augmentative_and_alternative_communication#Blissymbols_as_language is relevent to this page and I think should be linked from here... Failedwizard (talk) 17:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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