Talk:Rongorongo/archive 1

Style
I've rewritten most of the article, but occasionally got signed out before saving my changes, and only my IP address was recorded in the page history, so here's my user name in case anyone has issues with what I've done: kwami 20:52, 2005 July 23 (UTC)

Several spelling mistakes and stylistically doubtful sentences. It's 4 a.m. and I'm dead tired but will be back here again soon.--Targeman 01:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The article seems to have become quite a mess after loads of recent edits. --Drieakko 06:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Dear Kwamikagami

Informations about rongorongo are running very kickly with internet. We are the new generation on invetigators (from 1992 for me : 14 years hard studies on all the data base, and from 2004 conclusions bored by the anglo saxon system...

Before a north american group blocked informations so only Steven Fisher tesis was "kind of law". At the contrary we are given withness documents, historics documents, linguistics informations. Now with internet we can go ahead. Wikipedia in french is going to a correct information for websurfers, but in english and spanish, what a lot of mistakes, blabla... Its hurting the human rights of polynesian people and particulary rapanui people.

So a good cleaning of the pages is necessary. —Polynesian group linguists and Lorena Bettocchi writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 12:15, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Todo el texto de la pagina deberia ser revisado, hay algunas faltas inaceptables - y ademas la bibliografia es muy incompleta. Hay muchas publicaciones importantes sobre la escritura rongorongo (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 02:36, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Que es un rongorongo mama ? Una invencion ? Notas de Katherine Routledge ? Recopiadas por Fisher en su lista de Rapanui Journal ? No existe el rongorongo mama.

Observamos que los links con los sitios internet de los investigadores fueron borrados. Habia un sitio sobre nuestra historia en el diaporama provisorio de Lorena Bettocchi [] fue borrado. Es una nueva manera de borrar  lo que queda al pueblo rapanui. (User talk:timoteakoako)


 * I just read the French article, as suggested above, and it's obvious the authors did not understand what they were writing. For example, it states that among the languages written on the tablets are "Proto-Polynesian" and "Austro-Thai languages". It's a combination of the history of the script and a paean to Bettocchi, but it does not present her views in an intelligible manner, instead referring the reader to her sites. Therefor there seems to be no reason to try and incorporate the French article here.
 * As for the slide show, I can't tell if it's ridiculous or just incomplete. There are a lot of statements that make no sense in themselves—sometimes they aren't even complete sentences; presumably they were meant to be explained orally during a slide-show presentation. However, without that explanation, they are not very coherent, and therefor are not a good introduction to Bettocchi's views. For example, on of the earlier slides appears to claim that rongorongo shares a common origin with Chinese. That would be ridiculous, but perhaps there was some other point that is lost without the oral context. A lot is made of the fact that the Polynesians came from Asia, as if that has anything to do with rongorongo; again, perhaps the oral explanation made more sense. kwami (talk) 23:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Respuesta from Easter Island : sobre vuestra frase I just read the French article, as suggested above, and it's obvious the authors did not understand what they were writing. For example, it states that among the languages written on the tablets are "Proto-Polynesian" and "Austro-Thai languages". Se vee que Ud no intiende bien en frances. Por primero su diaporama es provisorio, y en sengundo ella habla primero de nuestro idioma no todavia de la tablas. Entonces Ud haces una interpretacion subjectiva de la historia de nuestra escritura y escribes en Wikipedia. Ella estudia hace 15 aos. Todo su trabajo es estudio con nosotros polinesios. (User talk:timoteakoako)- Otro argumento : la escritura ZHOU es estructurada como nuestra antigua escritura. Lo que no quiere decir que el rongorongo es chino. Ademas Ud es difensor de una escritura silabica, no es cierto ? Pues es su derecho porque ud es linguista. Pero no tienes derecho a destruir el trabajo de personas que han trabajado con nosotros desde 1992. El primer libro LA PAROLE PERDUE fue publicado despues de la V conferencia de los idiomas MAORI en Tahiti 1998. fue borrado de la bibliografia. Porque entonces ? Su trabajo es linguistico porque los academicos de Polinesia lo reconocen y muy poco especulativo. (User talk:timoteakoako) Le sugerimos borrar todo lo que ensucia la investigadora francesa y que Ud mantiene como pagina clave de su blog. Estamos poniendo varias universidades sobre vuestro comportamiento y avisando la comision indigena de la ONU. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 06:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Rongorongo, New Zealand
I have placed a link at the top of the article as a link to Rongorongo (wife of Turi), an ancestress of the Māori of New Zealand. This is to save having a disambiguation page. If there is a better solution just let me know. Kahuroa 10:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * No, that's good. kwami 11:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

our greatest maori

 * 1) Just wondering if we could have a clarification of what 'maori' means in Rapa Nui?
 * 2) Is there a source that this statement attributed to Hotu Matu'a comes from? Kahuroa 00:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

RESPONSE : MAORI in ARERO RAPA NUI IS PEOPLE MAORI AND ALSO MASTER —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 01:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Maori and Hotu
Dear Kahuroa,

In the first place, maori, in that context, was probably used to designate a very wise man. In the second, these are not attestable by any account. They come from scholarly forms of folklore and it is a quotation of Hotu Matu'a much in the same way Et tu, Brute? is a quotation of Julius Caesar. I'd appreciate if you didn't erase it, though. It's making a point. Hope you can get to Italy.

Sincerely,

Mbrutus 03:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually Et tu Brute is a quote from William Shakespeare, from his play Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 1 - not sure if JC actually said it at all. In the same way there must be a written source (or how else do we know about it?) for this 'quote' from Hotu Matu'a and that needs to be recorded here. I wasn't going to erase 'maori' or the quote, but the meaning of maori needs to be indicated somehow so that the point it makes is clear. Will add 'wise men' and maybe someone will supply a citation for Hotu's remark. Cheers Kahuroa 18:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I know this is far from the main point here... but if you're curious about the Et tu Brute remark, it's well attested in ancient sources, specifically in De Vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars) by Suetonius. See discussion in the Wikipedia article named Lives of the Twelve Caesars.  The original Suetonius quotation can be found in the original Latin at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0061;query=chapter%3D%2382;layout=;loc=jul.%2081.1section  ; click on the link labeled English (ed. Alexander Thomson) for the English version of this passage, and note particularly footnote 3 on that page.  Thanks for the article, and regards to you both.  (From a bypasser, with as yet no Wikipedia name - 17 June 2006.)

"Quote"
Dear Kahuroa,

Here's the full alleged quote as recorded by Father Sebastian Englert,

''Our ko hau rongorongo are lost! Future events will destroy these sacred tablets which we bring with us and those which we will make in our new land. Men of other races will guard a few that remain as priceless objects, and their maori will study them in vain without being able to read them. Our ko hau motu mo rongorongo will be lost forever. Aue! Aue!''

Hope you can use this. Cheers!

Sincerely,

Mbrutus 18:43, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

No, that is not right. That quote is from Englert himself. He never claimed to have recorded it from anyone, and makes it clear that he puts it in Hotu Matu'a's mouth for a rhetorical purpose only, as he writes: "These words that I have placed in the mouth of Hotu Matu'a..."

BTW, there is a truly excellent wikipedia article on the rongorongo, better than this one, there: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongo_rongo

Jacques Guy 2006.11.24

Where to place source
Dear Kahuroa, Where can I place the source now? I know I should know, but could you tell me? Andrew Robinson, Edited by Brian M. Fagan, The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World: Unlocking the Secrets of Past Civilizations Thames & Hudson, London, 2001 pp. 266-268. Sincerely, Mbrutus 21:11, 23 May 2006 (UTC).


 * I have done it for you. You could also add this (Robinson 2001:266-268) at the end of the line or paragraph where you added the info from that book into the article. If the references are scattered all over the place tho, that might be a bit messy. If you do decide to add the (Robinson 2001:266-268), you can then take the page numbers out of the citation in the References section, so it just ends with 2001.

Ma'ori
I found a source with a translation of maori in Rapa Nui. It is actually ma'ori and means 'skilled, old'. Kahuroa 00:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Wood?
I wonder where the aborigens got the wood for the plates from, since the trees on the island were cut out well before the arrival of Europeans?--Shakura 23:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Some are carved oars and other wooden, likely European artifacts. There is some evidence that Rongorongo was developed after the first European contact. Gwen Gale 23:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Or rather the other way round: there is no evidence that it would have been developed before the first European contacts. --Drieakko 11:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Or "wood" have developed :) Gwen Gale 20:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't forget driftwood, also even if the last trees were felled in the 17th century, there would be a legacy of wooden artifacts as they can last a long time, some of these tablets may have been reworked from earlier pieces, or perhaps in the case of the Rei Miru inscribed on a much older object. Also between 1770 and 1862 there were a number of European and American ships that visited wanting water, sex and supplies; so we shouldn't be surprised if some wood reached the island in this timeJonathan Cardy 07:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Sobre las tablillas rongorongo hay errores en la madera : solo varias analizadas fueron talladas en thespesia popoulnea, y se sabe que una es de fraxinus excelsior. las otras : nunca se sabe. Solo se supone algo pero la informacione es falsa en la pagina entonces en sophora toromiro. Mejor no citar entonces (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 02:13, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Solved?
When he successfully deciphered the rongorongo script of Easter Island - the mysterious system of glyphs in which the island's Polynesian inhabitants had recorded their ritual chants and songs - Steven Roger Fischer gained a unique place in the pantheon of glyphbreakers. He is the only person who has ever deciphered not one but two historical scripts. Both of these scripts yield clues of great cultural importance. Fischer's previous decipherment, of a Cretan artifact called the Phaistos Disk, provided the key to the ancient Minoan language and showed it to be closely related to Mycenaean Greek. Contrary to prevailing archaeological opinion, the Minoans were Greeks, and Crete's Phaistos Disk now comprises Europe's oldest documented literature. Fischer's decipherment of rongorongo showed that it was not merely a mnemonic device for recalling memorized texts but was physically read and was the vehicle for creative composition. Rongorongo is thus the only known indigenous script in Oceania before the twentieth century. Filled with accounts of his remarkable journeys and the cultures Fischer encountered, Glyphbreaker is the exciting story of these two decipherments, by the man who must now rank as the greatest glyphbreaker of all time.

A blurb, quoted from here.

Doesn't that mean that this is no longer undecyphered? --203.217.54.49 10:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No, his "decipherements" are largely guesses with no real proof. --Drieakko 11:18, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Such claims are often made in haste and later turn out to be empty. (See, for example, Voynich Manuscript.)  I would remain skeptical.
 * That having been said, appears to elaborate on the decipherment reasonably well, so at the very least, I'd say the book merits a mention.  Fischer's work should probably also be summarised -- a procedure that will presumably give us basis to confirm or reject declaring the script solved in the encyclopedic entry. Digwuren 11:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * About Fischer's claims to have deciphered the Phaistos Disk, those go unproved as well. --Drieakko 11:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Btw, the article about the Phaistos Disk is very well done and works as an example for Rongorongo to be somewhat similarly organized. --Drieakko 14:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

RESPONSE ABOUT PHAISTOS DISK : it is not organized as rongorongo tablets about the structure of glyphs. rongorongo is structured in a superior livel in many sections of lines tablets. A rongorongo glyph is composed by several words, names, verbs, numbers and adverbs, and so one... a rongorongo sign may be a full sentence... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 01:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

A proposito de Steven Fisher : Hay dos incohencias en sus afermaciones : la primera sobre la visita a la isla de Gonzalez de Haedo. Nuestro grupo ha estudiado los manuscritos españoles y  estan muy claros. Gonzalez de Haedo pide en una carta a sus oficiales de tomar posesion de la isla de manera protocolar y para comprobar el acta pedir a los caciques de firmar con sus caracteres de nativos. Steven Fisher crea una nueva historia ocultando que hay acontecimientos linguisticos en los pocos dia de la expedicion con los Miru de Anakena. Y sobre el canto Atua Mata riri de Ure Vae Iko Steven Fisher lo ha interpretado a su manera, y muy mal tal como Tati Salmon en 1886, luego por Alfred Metraux. No hay relacion entre el canto Atua Mata riri y el baston de Maori rongorongo de Santiago. Ademas es igual sobre el canto Timo te ako ako. No hay verdadero estudio en el idioma antiguo. Lamentablemente hay persona que llevan conclusiones sin haber estudiado profundamente y no conforme a nuestra banca de datos actual. (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 02:31, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

cleaned up
Cleaned up the decypherment bit. Mostly restored it to the last version I'd worked on, which meant losing the Italian stuff, since I mostly couldn't understand it. But Guy (above) is right, the Spanish version looks pretty good, and we might want to consider that as an example to follow for improving this article. kwami 23:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Restored the Fischer stuff. As it is now, Fischer proposed that RR is the result of contact diffusion, and also that it's a mnemonic device for genealogies. I doubt he would think it's both, but I don't know his work. Can s.o. check? kwami 05:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

RESPONSE : Steven Fisher tesis is unfortunatly sponsorized by Georgia Lee, Chris Stevenson and alls of Easter Island foundation... They edited themselves : so they attempt to closed all the semantics  rongorongo research censured all others tesis in international conferences. But Polinesian linguists, arqueologists and antropologists (such as Academie Marquisienne et Tahitienne) or Sergio Rapu Rapanui arqueologist are helping researchers who remains in the truth and in the respect of their ancestors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 01:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

manuscripts
What's with these "manuscripts"? Do they even belong in the article? or are they just someone copying rongorongo onto paper in modern times without understanding what they were writing? kwami (talk) 02:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Hubo una description de los manuscritos en el volumen II, el autor fue Thomas Barthel - referencia Heyerdahl, Thor y Edwin N. Ferdon (Eds.) 1961. Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific, Vol. 1: Archaeology of Easter Island. gottVol. II: Miscelanea. Monograph of the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico. y en BARTHEL, THOMAS, The Eigth Land, University Press of Hawaii. Honolulu 1978

Se podia suponer que los manuscritos fueron signos recopiados o creados, pero ya Thomas Barthel habia descubierto algo del metodo de los leprosos - no hubo tiempo de estudiar más. Buscaba lectura sobre el rongorongo como todos, un silabario... Lorena Bettocchi ha descubierto algo : por primero ha desvelado todos los errores del repertorio Jaussen - y hay muchos en cada pagina, y en segundo un taller con ritual comportando las correcciones del repertorio del Obispo (el taller tiene fecha>1936)o sea en semantica y estructura morfologica. su descubrimiento cambio algo de nuestra historia [].Vuestro intento es el siguiente : negacion total del descubrimiento de la investigadora francesa. Pero Kwami la escritura de la Isla de Pascua no es solo nuestra, es patrimonio de la Humanidad, compreso los talleres de los leprosos y los manuscritos. (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 02:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Kwamikagami: "What's with these "manuscripts"? are they just someone copying rongorongo onto paper in modern times without understanding what they were writing?"

Yes. See what I added today (2008/01/05) under "Modern Manuscripts." Further, I believe that they are a result of Métraux and Lavachery's fieldwork on the island in 1934. The locals must have had their curiosity tickled by their investigations and have become interested themselves, viz the attempt at reconstructing the correspondences between the months of their lunisolar year and ours (Fig.100 in Heyerdahl 1955). They failed, no longer having the required astronomical knowledge. In fact, NO-ONE, not even Barthel, realized that the ancient Pascuans must have resorted to an embolismic month every 3 years or so. It is a matter of sheer luck that William Thomson visited the island during a 13-month year and so collected the names of all 13 months.

" Do they even belong in the article?"

Strictly speaking, no. But if you don't have them you are going to be accused of ignoring important data. However... those manuscripts do prove something.

Have a look at the signs on the Jaussen List there. See how awkward, how appallingly ugly there are compared to those on the tablets? Now Jaussen had four tablets in his possession. How come the signs in his list are travesties of those on the tablets? He was no draughtsman, that's all. Why, even Pozdniakov draws them dreadfully. Now, if the authors of those manuscripts had known anything they would have drawn proper signs. Instead you see very good, faithful reproductions of those in Jaussen's List. Which proves two things:
 * they were good draughtsmen (you try your hand at copying that Jaussen List and see!)
 * but they did not know what the real signs looked like.

Conclusion? It was all lost by the time Métraux got there.

JacquesGuy (talk) 15:03, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Jacques Guy
User:JacquesGuy added these comments to his main user space at 21:10, 2007 August 23. I just found them and thought the belonged here. kwami (talk) 21:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have deleted all references to my publications on the subject.


 * Why?


 * Because I do no appreciate being associated with prime nut cases such as Sergei Rjabchikov and Lorena Bettocchi, who, further, have been swamping this article with their self-sung paeans. "Professor" Bettocchi indeed! A one-time school teacher calling herself "Professor"! And Rjabchikov, the kook who deciphered the Phaistos Disk (it's written in Old Slavonic, did you know?). What next? Why not replace it all by Kookus Maximus Barry Fell's decipherment of the rongorongo, uh? Yes, he has deciphered them. Of course: he's deciphered everything. Hey, why not? Come on, all kooks out there, at it!


 * Editors, you have a choice: either you clean up your act or you leave me and rongorongo.org (I am "Anonymous") out this sorry farce.


 * Should I see my name put back again in the midst of those clowns, I will insert a warning in rongorongo.org

Tangata farani Jacques Guy que trabaja sobre el rongorongo, no hay en la espiritualidad de nuestra sagrada escritura espacio para insultar a los que tratan de intender nuestra historia y nuestra  sagrada escritura. Con su mentalidad Ud no va adelantar en la luz. Hay efectos boomerang en su comportamiento. Nosotros estudiamos todas la bancas de datos que fueron publicadas en revistas y en la web en su sitio www.rongorongo.org. Ud puso en internet los cantos de Metoro tal cuales fueron notados por Tepano Jaussen ? Sin estudiarlo profundamente. Pues Ud no intiende el idioma rapanui antiguo y tampoco el taitiano. Ademans en los signos del Item C (Mamari) ud encuentra "quasi certitudes en un calendar lunar y syllabes" ? No es cierto : una palabra en idioma rapanui antiguo : varios significados, o sea varias, muchas probabilidades  y nunca quasi certitudes. No debes y no tienes derecho de interpretar lo que hicieron los ancianos (User talk:timoteakoako) Vease entonces el capitulo de la tabla Mamari en el cual trabajamos juntos y seguimos investigando []. Vease toda nuestra banca de datos actual sobre la semantica de Metoro y como hicimos correcciones. En vuestro sitio  www.rongorongo.org hay tambien los cantos de Metoro pero con faltas y siguien las faltas : Jaussen habia intendido Metoro al 60 % - Entonces hubo faltas desde 1893...Y vamos estructurando correcctiones ahora y adelante porque entre nosotros hay linguistas, arqueologos rapanui, antropologos. Vamos haciendo correcctiones en erratum tambien de nuestros sitios personales o compartidos con la profesora de estado francesa. Sobre el diccionario que Ud puso en linea esta bien. Es el de Englert pero ya el idioma antiguo habia cambiado y las palabras pegadas. Demaciado pegadas. Entonces Ud sigue recopilando y lo lamentable es eso en el rongorongo : los errores estuvieron recopidos con ediciones y reediciones... El mejor estuvo el de Roussel : mas autentico (User talk:timoteakoako). El sito www.ile-de-paques.com de Lorena Bettocchi habla de los manuscritos de nuestro enfermos de la lepra : ellos trabajaron sobre el rongorongo - fue publicado en Tahiti Pacifique Magazine. Eso fue descubierto por Barthel, luego mucho mas analizado por la profesora Lorena Bettocchi. Y Ud. insulta ? Jacques Guy Ud no es serio ? (User talk:timoteakoako) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 07:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Style 2
(cont. from above)

Kwami, mes amis du groupe Timoteakoako m'ont informes des deviances sur la page Wikipedia rongorongo. Je tenterai d'inserer dans cette page de discussion des informations plus justes. Ceci pour maintenir Wikipedia a flot car cette encyclopedie n'est plus pedagogique mais une sorte de blog ou de forum. Nous informons nos etudiants des lycees colleges et université de la chute de l'information sur Wikipedia. Des articles dans les revues scientifiques ont paru a ce sujet. Lorena Bettocchi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 13:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Mes publications en histoire et sur les origines sont sur le web []. Je sais qu'elles derangent mais de grands scientifiques collaborent avec moi à present. Je dois dire que le travail de mes predecesseurs fut enorme. Je leur dois une reverence, sachant au bout de 15 ans, comme il est difficile de constituer la plus importante banque de données sur ce qui fut ecrit, publié sur le rongorongo, sur toutes les erreurs commises à partir de 1893... Le groupe "Timo te akoako" ce qui veut dire "La grande recitation des signes" revoit tout point par point. Cela commence à porter ses fruits. Une difference notable entre mes recherches et celles de mes predecesseurs : je n'essaie pas de dechiffer. Je travaille uniquement sur la structure morphologique du rongorongo dans toutes ses phases, de la plus classique à l'écriture de la periode où les signes avaient disparus, jusqu'aux creations et aux falsifications. C'est-a-dire que je ne brûle pas les étapes. Tout n'est pas sur mes sites internet mais le sera dans 2 ans maximum. La methode de recherche est : I)structure 2) connnaissance globale de tous les signes 3) semantique. L'etape 2 ne sera jamais realisée en raison de l'absence des familles de signes qui se trouvaient sur les tablettes historiquement brûlées. Par contre la structure et la semantique sont possibles dans de nombreuses sections des tablettes et du bâton. L'ecriture rongorongo n'est pas syllabaire, mais comme toutes les proto écritures, memoire de l'humanité  elle commence par le symbole  et la semantique qui s'y attache, pour se structurer ensuite en ideogramme et ensuite en pictogramme aux signifiacations multiples. Le rongorongo "oiseau avec une main" a plusieurs noms, et une vingtaine de significations. L'ecriture de l'Ile de Paques sous forme de banque de données est dans mes mains et sauvegardee dans differents registres de propriete intellectuelle de differents pays. Mais les meilleurs gardiens de mon travail sont les Rapanui qui à present, diplomés des Universites ont doit à la parole. A bientot. Lorena Bettocchi du groupe CEIPP -dont Jacques Guy, Irina Fedorova et une commission qui travaille depuis 8 ans sur les familles de signes, ou du moins ceux qu'il reste sur les 25 ITEMS - et non 26, la tablette du Poike est moderne, non reconnue dans les items par moi et Irina Fedorova- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.161.46.37 (talk) 13:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Lorena. I'll try taking a look at your site again, though right now isn't the best time. I wonder, however, how you can say that the script is proto-writing or that the "oiseau avec une main" has a score of meanings when you haven't been able to decipher it. (Not that anyone has deciphered it, or demonstrated that it's syllabic!) Are you saying that you understand the script but it cannot be deciphered because it isn't full writing and therefore does not represent language, or that it can't be deciphered because too much has been lost? kwami (talk) 08:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

rongorongo.org
I see that the link to rongorongo.org has been restored despite my warning.

I have consequently deleted all the self-serving advertisements from the two charlatans, Lorena Bettocchi and Sergei Rjabchikov. Put them back and I WILL TAKE RONGORONGO.ORG OFF LINE. Have I made myself clear enough this time?

... and later:

RESPONSE ABOUT PHAISTOS DISK : it is not organized as rongorongo tablets about the structure of glyphs. rongorongo is structured in a superior livel in many sections of lines tablets. A rongorongo glyph is composed by several words, names, verbs, numbers and adverbs, and so one... a rongorongo sign may be a full sentence...

"A rongorongo glyph is composed by several words, names, verbs, numbers and adverbs" eh?

Typical of the arrant bullshit that will worm its way into the wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 00:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Jacques, making threats does nothing to improve the article, and pouting only undermines your own credibility. If you want to take your material offline, be my guest. But do you seriously think any threats you make will change the mind of someone who thinks you're wrong, and insists on adding their POV to the article? Have you looked at the page histories of Palestine or George W. Bush? If this is truly something you care about, then you'll help us improve it. If you feel these people are cranks, it would also help if you provided some reference to demonstrate that to the rest of us. We have no trouble saying that claimants to having deciphered the Phaistos disc are cranks; the problem with Bettocchi is I can't figure out what she's saying. kwami (talk) 00:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

(User talk:Matariki)Is Jacques Guy great master on rongorongo research  ? Es-til aussi peu courtois envers ses collegues ? Nous allons lui demander s'il ne s'agit pas d'une usurpation d'identidé. En attendant cet article est en-dessous de toute ethique. Une personne affiche son mepris des recherches de ses collegues. Ce qui continue a faire baisser la qualité de votre page


 * Yes, Bettocchi is willing to allow Fischer, whom I must admit sounds rather ridiculous, so I don't see why we can't allow Bettocchi, unless Guy can demonstrate that her work is nonsense. We can certainly have a section on Bettocchi and semantic interpretation (not a rewrite of the entire article to reflect Bettocchi). The problem so far has been getting something intelligible. I admit I haven't spent a lot of time on her web site, but I find it very difficult to understand what her point is. Maybe it's just a problem with my French/Spanish. If you or she can write a coherent outline of her hypothesis, methods, and results, in whichever language is easiest, that would go a long way to solving this problem. If Guy then wants to say why it's wrong, we can include that too - just as we can include why Bettocchi thinks Fischer is wrong. kwami (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Respuesta : Kwami tenemos que estudiar entonces el capitulo de la tabla Mamari en el cual trabajamos juntos y seguimos investigando [. Vease  toda nuestra banca de datos actual sobre la semantica de Metoro y como hicimos correcciones. En el sitio de Jacques Guy   [[www.rongorongo.org]] hay tambien los cantos de Metoro pero con faltas en la banca de datos en semantica y siguien las faltas : Jaussen habia intendido Metoro al 60 % - Entonces hubo faltas desde 1893...Y vamos estructurando correcciones ahora y adelante []  -  El sitio de Lorena Bettocchi www.rongo-rongo.com comporta todas las recitaciones de Ure Vae Iko- Constituyen banca de datos sobre el idioma antiguo y sobre la semantica de dos hombres nacidos en 1803 y testigos en el rongorongo. Eso se nombra datos en etnolinguistica- El sito www.ile-de-paques.com de Lorena Bettocchi habla de los manuscritos de nuestro enfermos de la lepra : ellos trabajaron sobre el rongorongo - fue publicado en Tahiti Pacifique Magazine. Eso fue descubierto por Barthel, luego mucho mas analizado por la profesora Lorena Bettocchi. Cuidado : ella no trabaja sola, es a  nuestro servicio. Ella habla siempre de los otros linguistas de manara objectiva : porque ? Porque nuestros estudios siguien con ellos. Afuera lo que es interpretaciones subjectivas (los signos falicos de Fisher) pero bueno al 90 % en Fisher los signos de cada tabla. Afuera los cantos de Metoro en Barthel y Jacques Guy,  pero buena la semantica de Metoro y Ure Vae Iko en Lorena Bettocchi y bueno los Item en todo Jacques Guy - Afuera la historia de nuestro pueblo en etnolinguistica. pero buena nuestra historia cuentada por Lorena Bettocchi porque ella fue de nosotros en Raiatea y en Rapanui. Ella ha vivido con nosotros y es una verdadera filologa :  (talk)  la filologia no es un diploma es un actuar. A lo largo de sus 15 anos de estudio la profesora Lorena Bettocchi lo ha comprobado, y su trabajo en todos temas al servicio del ministerio de la educacion de polinesia frances fue exellente. Ademas ha tenido excelentes maestros en proto polinesiano talk-  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 08:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

oti te vananga inoino i runga tau rongorongo

"artificial script"
Rongorongo is not an "artificial script" in the sense defined in the article artificial script. I can't work out how to change the template but someone should. --86.137.156.17 (talk) 16:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Moonbatsville
2008/01/03 23h AEST

I am appalled at what I read in the history of this article.

One example. I see in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rongorongo&oldid=176891172 dated December 10:

"Jacques Guy and Lorena Bettocchi are working about structure of rongorongo calendar lunar in the Mamari Tablet."

This suggests that I am cooperating with that woman in the study of the lunar calendar of tablet Mamari.

The bloody cheek of it!

First, I consider the subject of the lunar calendar closed. Nothing more can be said about it. I no longer work on it, PERIOD.

Second, I have never cooperated with that woman and I never will. I cooperate with honest scholars, such as Pozdniakov, Horley and Meroz, not moonbats in tinfoil hats.

And that was only the December 10 version. What horrors am I going to discover as I wind it further back?

Jacques B.M. Guy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.68.150.25 (talk) 12:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Moonbatsville continued
It didn't take long.

2008/01/03 23:35 AEST

Version of 16:00, 8 August 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rongorongo&oldid=149993336

"Lorena Bettocchi and Dominique Proust (French CNRS astronom) are presently working on Mamari tablet..." Another one. Who's next?

"...For Professor Lorena Bettocchi no one can read rongorongo tablets. It is contrary to the very semantic Austronesian languages." Ah, rongorongo is contrary to the very semantic Austronesian languages, eh? Whatever that might mean, other than nothing, it remains that for Professor Lorena Bettocchi no one can read rongorongo tablets. So how are Professor Bettocchi and Dr Proust (notice the pecking order) presently working on Mamari tablet, eh? Dipping it in tea-leaves?

I think it was Kwamikagami who asked me just recently to demonstrate that she was a crank. Will that do?

JacquesGuy (talk) 12:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

REPONSE : Lorena et Dominique Proust ne cherchent aucune lecture de la Mamari : ils constituent ensemble la banque de données sur cette tablette. De plus, semantique ne veut pas dire lecture savez-vous, ni prendre le thé. Non le chapitre n'est pas clos avec vos seules recherches : vous etes ridicule avec vos quasi-certitudes et la lune et les testicules. Ce sont vos propres publications. Penchez-vous sur [] et cessez cette attitude negative. D'autre part sur www.rongorongo.org -votre site- il y a tous les signes de toutes les tablettes Items A B C etc. Ce ne sont pas vos propres recherches. Vous profitez donc d'un travail du CEIPP qui n'est pas le vôtre. Avant de prendre la parole subjectivement et d'attaquer des adherents d'une meme association, consultez votre conscience et votre President. Ceipp member from France. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.6.206.206 (talk) 15:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Attn Kwamikagami mainly
Kwamikagami: "If you feel these people are cranks, it would also help if you provided some reference to demonstrate that to the rest of us."

Very well. But there is only one of "these people," you know. If you do an internet trace on those IP addresses you'll find them coming from Wanadoo or Club-Internet, French ISP's. Likewise if you do a trace on those 58.xxx.xxx.xxx and 59.xxx.xxx.xxx and so on, you'll find that they come from AAPT Limited, 180-188 Burnley Street, Richmond VIC 3121. And although I am sometimes 59.101.234.233, sometimes 59.101.239.157, sometimes again 61.68.170.190 (and right now 61.68.187.119) there is still only one of me. So I'll leave you to guess who "these people" is.

But now, let us go to the French wikipedia on the rongorongo, where I have left the original four links (although I edited their captions).

The links are:


 * 1. http://www.rongo-rongo.com/
 * 2. http://www.isla-de-pascua.com/
 * 3. http://www.rongorongo-ile-de-paques.com/
 * 4. http://www.austronesien.com/

Find their owners (ask godaddy.com for instance)

1)
 * Domain Name:rongo-rongo.com
 * Domain registrar_creation:2003-10-09 14:57:01
 * Domain registrar_expiration:2008-10-09 16:57:01
 * Domain registry_creation:2003-10-09 16:57:01
 * Domain registry_expiration:2008-10-09 16:57:01
 * Domain lastupdate:2007-11-02 23:07:46
 * Name Server:ns0.online.net
 * Name Server:ns1.online.net
 * Owner ID: FREE-ORG-47434
 * Owner Name: Lorena BETTOCCHI
 * Owner Street1: 47 rue de l'Yser
 * Owner City: Le Creusot
 * Owner Postal Code: 71200
 * Owner Country: FRANCE
 * Owner Phone: +33.038578
 * Owner Email: daniel@sotty.com
 * Owner lastupdate: 2006-10-27 16:23:46

Take notice of the e-mail: daniel@sotty.com

Also note that the phone number is bogus. All French phone numbers are 10-digits long, with a leading zero which you omit when you dial the country prefix (33 for France). Standard fare.

2)
 * Domain Name:isla-de-pascua.com
 * Domain registrar_creation:2003-10-09 15:19:00
 * Domain registrar_expiration:2008-10-09 17:19:00
 * Domain registry_creation:2003-10-09 17:19:00
 * Domain registry_expiration:2008-10-09 17:19:00
 * Domain lastupdate:2007-11-02 22:33:01
 * Name Server:ns0.online.net
 * Name Server:ns1.online.net
 * Owner ID: FREE-ORG-47438
 * Owner Name: Lorena BETTOCCHI
 * Owner Street1: 47 rue de l'Yser
 * Owner City: Le Creusot
 * Owner Postal Code: 71200
 * Owner Country: FRANCE
 * Owner Phone: +33.038578
 * Owner Email: daniel@sotty.com
 * Owner lastupdate: 2006-10-27 16:23:46

Note the e-mail: same person again. And same bogus phone number.

3)
 * Domain Name:rongorongo-ile-de-paques.com
 * Domain registrar_creation:2006-03-18 08:16:52
 * Domain registrar_expiration:2008-03-18 03:16:52
 * Domain registry_creation:2006-03-18 09:16:52
 * Domain registry_expiration:2008-03-18 08:16:52
 * Domain lastupdate:2007-11-02 23:07:46
 * Name Server:ns0.online.net
 * Name Server:ns1.online.net
 * Owner ID: FREE-ORG-158768
 * Owner Name: Daniel Sotty
 * Owner Organization: SOTTY
 * Owner Street1: Les Touillards
 * Owner Street2: 38 levée du Canal
 * Owner City: ciry le noble
 * Owner Postal Code: 71420
 * Owner Country: FRANCE
 * Owner Phone: +33.385790951
 * Owner Email: daniel@sotty.com
 * Owner lastupdate: 2007-04-11 02:59:49

Same fellow again, this time also owner of the domain name, and with a valid phone number, his real one, which you do find in the White Pages.

4)
 * Domain Name:austronesien.com
 * Domain registrar_creation:2007-03-17 16:05:11
 * Domain registrar_expiration:2008-03-17 16:05:11
 * Domain registry_creation:2007-03-17 16:05:11
 * Domain registry_expiration:2008-03-17 16:05:11
 * Domain lastupdate:2007-11-02 21:14:14
 * Name Server:ns0.online.net
 * Name Server:ns1.online.net
 * Owner ID: FREE-ORG-158768
 * Owner Name: Daniel Sotty
 * Owner Organization: SOTTY
 * Owner Street1: Les Touillards
 * Owner Street2: 38 levée du Canal
 * Owner City: ciry le noble
 * Owner Postal Code: 71420
 * Owner Country: FRANCE
 * Owner Phone: +33.385790951
 * Owner Email: daniel@sotty.com
 * Owner lastupdate: 2007-04-11 02:59:49

Same one again.

Who is this Daniel Sotty? If you look carefully at the home pages of her four sites you'll learn that he is their webmaster. He probably updates and maintains them.

To find out more visit www.sotty.com

It's all about the Sotty family, 5 children, 13 grandchildren. They're into arts, crafts and interior decoration, mostly. You'll find links to goat cheeses, their family photos, Jean-Charles's computer repair shop, local Burgundese artists (Ciry le Noble is in Burgundy), Alexandre's artistic metalworking shop, Annie's works (she's a painter and cartoonist), their dog Pépette and so on and on and on.

But, towards the bottom of the page, under the title "Les sites des amis des Sotty" (The Sites of the Friends of the Sotty Family) there is a short biography (7 lines) of Lorena Bettocchi entitled

"Lorena Bettocchi nous parle des rongorongo" (Lorena Bettocchi tells us about the rongorongo) Clicking on that title takes you to rongo-rongo.com

A few lines further down:

Isla-de-pascua - Los origenes de la antigua escritura de la Isla de Pascua publicado en Archivum, revista historica de la V Region, a fin de 2006. Datos historicos sobre la antigua escritura de la Isla de Pascua, publicado en las actas de la IV Jornada Historica y Maritima, realizada en el Museo Maritimo de Valparaiso el 19 de octubre de 2006.

Clicking on "Isla-de-pascua" takes you to... www.isla-de-pascua.com, the site owned by Lorena Bettocchi.

Just underneath you read:

Île de Pâques - Contexte historique et découverte d'une proto-écriture à l'Ile de Pâques.

(Easter Island - Historical context and discovery of a proto-script on Easter Island)

Clicking on "Île de Pâques" takes you to... have you guessed already? Yes... www.rongorongo-ile-de-paques.com which he, Daniel Sotty, owns.

Now do visit www.isla-de-pascua.com

Its author is Lorena Bettocchi but this fact is occulted by an opening dedication, in Rapa Nui, to one Clemente Hereveri Teao, with his photograph. This gives the impression that he is the author of the page (hey, do many understand the Rapanui language? I think not).

The home page, all in Spanish, contains:

1. Bitter bitching about the English Wikipedia being full of mistakes and Lorena Bettocchi's contributions being rejected by the loathsome Anglo-Saxons.

2. Links to a handful of articles of hers in Spanish.

3. A biography of her.

4. Links to her three other sites (rongo-rongo.com, rongorongo-ile-de-paques.com, austronésien.com)

5. One link (right at the bottom) to Daniel Sotty's forays into amateur archaeology in Burgundy. Rub my back, I'll rub yours, I suppose.

In summary, an incestuous relationship between five sites aimed at giving the impression of a consensus.

On the other hand, I don't mind Rjabchikov so much. At least he started with what seemed good ideas (and I got him published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society on the strength of his two or three good ideas) but, alas, he went batty. Fancy him having deciphered the Phaistos Disk! (and it's in Old Slavonic, too). He also started stuffing the Wikipedia full of his publications. One or two in the bibliography, all right, provided they are not too batty, and they are swamped in serious ones. Notice too how "these people" keep zapping the references to his publications as soon as he put them in the wiki. "This here wiki ain't big enough for the both of us moonbats, pardner."

61.68.187.119 (but not for long) a.k.a.

JacquesGuy (talk) 10:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It was pretty clear to me from the writing that the sites were all written by the same person. I wasn't even thinking of it as trying to create the illusion of consensus, though I suppose that could be the case. But the quality of writing differs greatly between the posters, and the 190x IP address is in Valparaiso. Yes, a lot of the things in this article and on this talk page sounded loopy, but I couldn't be sure it wasn't a language problem. I thought perhaps one of the posters was Rapa Nui and didn't have good command of Spanish, for example. (I mean, how do you misspell Spanish?) And when the Spanish (or French) seemed to be written well, but still sounded loopy, well, my Spanish/French isn't the greatest, and anyway perhaps things were dumbed down for the general public. I find Antoine Meillet perfectly intelligible, but that's professional quality writing, and anyway maybe I've just gotten rusty. But how can you determine the semantics of a tablet if the glyphs are not decipherable? It seems B's take is that it's proto-writing, and therefore it cannot be read because it doesn't represent language. But how do you get a handle on the semantics, with no context? That doesn't seem to be explained anywhere. Is it me, is it badly written, or is it just unintelligible? kwami (talk) 11:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

"But the quality of writing differs greatly between the posters"

Not difficult to achieve. It's like play-acting. You put yourself into the mind of a character you've invented, or someone you've met, and you act, talk, write accordingly. There was old Polish watchman in Coombs Building at A.N.U. when I was a student. He had a hilarious accent and an eccentric grasp of English grammar. All I'd need to do is remember him, ape his speech mannerism, and there!

"and the 190x IP address is in Valparaiso."

Yes, but, look at her bibliography:

BETTOCCHI, Lorena 2007. Datos historicos sobre la Antigua escritura de la Isla de Pascua Actas 4°Jornada historica Museo Mairitimo de Valaparaiso.

Translation:

Historical data on the Ancient writing of Easter Island, [in] Proceedings of the fourth day [historical], Maritime Museum of Valparaiso.

The Spanish is mangled, BTW.

The French wikipedia has it as:

BETTOCCHI, Lorena, 2007. Datos hitoricos sobre la antigua escritura de la Isla de Pascua. Actes de la 4e Jornada historica y maritima. Museo Maritimo Valparaiso.

Still mangled ("hitoricos" and "actes")

And her site in Spanish:

Datos históricos sobre la antigua escritura de la Isla de Pascua, publicado en las actas de la IV Jornada Histórica y Marítima, realizada en el Museo Marítimo de Valparaíso el 19 de octubre de 2006.

So she does get to travel to those parts, seemingly. Note the date of that 2006 symposium: October 19. Now those 190x posts all date from October 6 to December 15 this year. And during that two-month period not one single post from the usual IP addresses. Then on December 20 the 83x posts are back in town, thick and fast, until Xmas Eve.

"But how can you determine the semantics of a tablet if the glyphs are not decipherable?"

You can't. It's all nonsense, that's all. She's got no idea what "semantics" means and is.

"Is it me, is it badly written, or is it just unintelligible?"

It's unintelligible. The individual words mean something (as words are wont to do!) but put together they are completely devoid of meaning.

Example: [la méthode Lorena Bettocchi] démontre tout l'aspect sémantique des langues austronésiennes.

Translation: the Lorena Bettocchi method demonstrates the whole semantic aspect of Austronesian languages.

Can you think of even one, just one, language without a "semantic aspect"? Language is, by nature, a system of signs the function of which is to convey meaning. So there can be no language without a semantic aspect since semantic = having to do with meaning. So you don't need a method to demonstrate that a language, any language, not just Austronesian languages, has a "semantic aspect." If it didn't it wouldn't a language.

Read more about it here http://www.rongo-rongo.com/methode-lorena-bettocchi.html if you understand French. It is grotesque. It amounts to picking whatever strikes your fancy, interpreting it and consolidating your interpretation by cherry-picking whatever fits it.

Mind you, I figured that out not from her explanations, but from what she actually does. The explanations are complete nonsense, and the little that makes sense does not correspond to what she does.

And then you have those grandiloquent bits and pieces scattered all over to make it look impressive, v.g.:


 * © METHODE LORENA BETTOCCHI
 * SEMANTIQUE DU RONGO RONGO
 * LANGUES ARERO RAPA NUI E''O ENATA
 * SAUVEGARDE : SOCIETE DES GENS DE LETTRES

See?

Now THAT is a beauty! "Arero Rapa Nui" is supposed to mean "Rapa Nui Language" in Rapanui, so it is as if we had "Language Langue Française" or "Language Lingua Italiana" or "Language Nihongo". As for the rest I suspect that it is Marquesan, a bit mangled.
 * "Copyright Lorena Bettocchi"
 * "Semantics of the Rongo Rongo"
 * "Language Arero Rapa Nui E''o Enata"

Finally, "Sauvegarde". I don't even know how to translate that. It makes no sense in the context. On its own it mean "backup" as in "make a backup of your files." I suppose that it is short for "sous la sauvegarde de..." i.e. "under the protection of". La Société des Gens de Lettres is a sort of professional writers' union. So the Lorena Bettocchi Method is not only copyright, it's also under the protection of the Writers' Union. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to learn about that.

That is funny, or pathetic, depending on your mood of the moment.

Oh! and she's got yet another domain:


 * Domain Name:isola-di-pascua.com
 * Domain registrar_creation:2003-10-09 15:23:04
 * Domain registrar_expiration:2008-10-09 17:23:04
 * Domain registry_creation:2003-10-09 17:23:04
 * Domain registry_expiration:2008-10-09 17:23:04
 * Domain lastupdate:2007-11-02 22:33:02
 * Name Server:ns0.online.net
 * Name Server:ns1.online.net
 * Owner ID: FREE-ORG-47440
 * Owner Name: Lorena BETTOCCHI
 * Owner Street1: 47 rue de l'Yser
 * Owner City: Le Creusot
 * Owner Postal Code: 71200
 * Owner Country: FRANCE
 * Owner Phone: +33.038578
 * Owner Email: daniel@sotty.com
 * Owner lastupdate: 2006-10-27 16:23:46

It's just one single page in Italian with links to her other sites. Where she drops Giulio Facchetti's name (he is a young, reputable specialist of Etruscan, got his PhD only recently).

Isn't that fascinating?

JacquesGuy (talk) 15:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

A last comment. The name of her fifth site, isola-di-pascua.com, that's supposed to be Italian of course. But it's mangled Italian. "Easter" is "Pascua" in Spanish but "Pasqua" in Italian. It should be isola-di-pasqua.com.

Misspelling the name of your domain in your own native language... er...?

And you know what? isola-di-pasqua.com, .info, .net, .biz, .org, .name, etc. are all unregistered and available!

JacquesGuy (talk) 16:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I know the literal meaning of the passages is often nonsense, even with my limited Spanish and French, but I keep wondering if the ideas might be sensible but just badly written. That's not very confidence inspiring, of course. However, although Bettocchi may have been in Valparaiso when those postings were made, it doesn't follow that she made them. I get the impression, from what I've been able to make out (I haven't taken the time to read all of her sites; it's difficult to read much when I'm not sure why I'm not understanding what she's saying), that she's tried to interpret rongorongo based on the Jaussen list and the modern manuscripts which were presumably based on it, much as people tried a 'semantic' interpretation of hieroglyphs before they were deciphered. She might easily be able to convince a few Rapa Nui in Chile that she's given them a key to their past. (I worked with a Rapa Nui woman in the USA, so I'm sure there are plenty in Chile.) That could arouse strong emotions, especially after near genocide and second-class citizenship, and she could have some very dedicated followers. Is the Spanish mangled because it's Bettocchi, and she hasn't mastered the language, because there are still Rapa Nui out there who are not fluent, or because she appeals to the uneducated? Not that having followers in itself makes what she says credible, but I think it's worth looking into if only for fair play. Unfortunately, she hasn't responded to my requests by summarizing her approach in a manner I find comprehensible, and unless that happens, I'm afraid I'll never find the time to really go over her web site. (I went over the slide show, and at least out of context it was ridiculous, which pretty much dampened my enthusiasm.) kwami (talk) 00:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

In his "The Codebreakers" David Kahn has an 18-page chapter entitled "The Pathology of Cryptology." Yes, he mentions the Voynich Manuscript in it and so it concerns also the pathology of decipherment. She's one case with monomania (the Rongorongo). Another case was Barry Fell. With 'polymania.' A highly respected zoologist (specialized in marine biology if memory serves), he took a fancy to deciphering everything and anything that looked even only vaguely like writing. And he succeeded every time. Yes, he did decipher the Rongorongo as you might have guessed. Here: http://equinox-project.com/drfell.htm. I've got most of it on a CD which I got from "The Inyo Animation" but you probably can dig it out, and more, searching the Web. He even deciphered the rongorongo-like frieze on one of Paul Gauguin's paintings!

"She might easily be able to convince a few Rapa Nui in Chile that she's given them a key to their past."

Bull's eye! I think that she is trying to turn it into a political issue too, stirring up. Read the opening dedication on her Spanish site:

To you, Clemente Hereveri Teao, Rapa Nui man, anthropologist, defender of the rights of indigenous people. These pages are dedicated to the Rapa Nui people, especially to the young students, in order to restore the ancestral knowledge of the structure of the rongorongo writing and to study the historical data around the great Maori study, with open spirit and philosophy, as we were taught by one sage: Clemente Hereveri Teao who passed away a few days ago.

Can you smell a UNESCO-sponsored rongorongo university with her in charge?

"That could arouse strong emotions, especially after near genocide and second-class citizenship, and she could have some very dedicated followers."

Exactly.

"Is the Spanish mangled because it's Bettocchi, and she hasn't mastered the language, because there are still Rapa Nui out there who are not fluent, or because she appeals to the uneducated?"

Italian and Spanish are very close. They are mutually intelligible. It might be that she hasn't bothered properly mastering Spanish. I don't know about Italian. She speaks perfect French and has spent most of her working life teaching in French secondary schools. Primary school teachers we used to call "instituteurs" in those days, secondary school "professeurs." That is why she calls herself "Professor." Very convenient.

The isola-di-pascua.com business makes me suspect that her Italian has become rusty with disuse (hey! my French nearly went that way too after just 7 years in Australia). Why? Because the phonetic difference between "pasqua" (correct) and "pascua" (which doesn't exist) is enormous. "Pasqua" is, "pascua" would be. She just cannot have been thinking in Italian when she registered the domain name.

Some posts have heaps of typing mistakes which I attribute to fatigue, sloppiness, and nonexistent proof-reading.

Some mistakes are probably language confusion. Myself, I sometimes mix French and English. I nearly wrote "inexistant" just now, which doesn't exist in English. It's French! And I do the reverse too. I remember many years ago having used "s'extriquer." It doesn't exist in French. I had obviously coined it out of French "inextricable" on the model of English "to extricate" without even realizing it. "Not that having followers in itself makes what she says credible, but I think it's worth looking into if only for fair play."

No idea how to go about it. She fabricates what suits her. Example:

"Lorena Bettocchi du groupe CEIPP -dont Jacques Guy, Irina Fedorova et une commission qui travaille depuis 8 ans sur les familles de signes"

Complete misrepresentation. She's just a member of the CEIPP. Anyone can be for 45€ a year. For that you get a monthly bulletin, sometimes with interesting articles in it, plus, if you are a French resident, the taxman refunds you 30€, so it's only 15€ a year, not a bad deal. She alludes to the "Commission Rongorongo" which has been meeting once a month to cross-correlate Barthel's tracings with his rubbings (which he donated to the CEIPP), looking for discrepancies, and updating the list of signs when necessary (too bloody often!). I have attended every one of their sessions whenever I happened to be in France (could be about 8 or 10 sessions in all) and I don't remember having seen her at any. Those sessions are slow, harrowing work, requiring a lot of concentration and attention, and much quibbling (is this a line or an artefact? a crack in the wood? Under which numerical code do we put this new sign?). As for Fedorova she has become batty. To her, every sign is some plant, taro, yam, sweet potato, sugar cane, whatever, with a small hadnful meaning cut, dig, plant, and so on. So she "translates" the six crescent moons at the beginning of the lunar calendar as: "tuber, tuber, tuber, tuber, tuber, tuber, tuber (i.e. lots of tubers)". She rationalizes it by saying that the ancient Rapanui were obsessed with food, exposed as they were to famine (no evidence of that of course). Where Fischer sees creation chants she sees farming chants. I think I'm going to see navigation chants. "Canoe, canoe, canoe, canoe, canoe, canoe (i.e. lots of canoes)." You see, the ancient Rapa Nui were obsessed with navigation matters, as they lacked the timber to build boats. How do you like my decipherment?

"Unfortunately, she hasn't responded to my requests by summarizing her approach in a manner I find comprehensible."

It's impossible because her approach is incoherent.

In a nutshell: take a tablet, look at it until you see an interesting sign that suggests you something, some meaning (that's the semantic approach). Then look elsewhere, anywhere on the tablet, for some other sign that confirms your "discovery." Continue until you find no more, stopping short of when the whole fabrication falls apart.

Later, you can do it again on the same tablet. Find another interesting sign, look for confirmation and so on, never, and here is the trick, never paying attention to whether it may conflict with, contradict or void your previous discovery.

In the end you've accounted for everything. Never mind that it is incoherent (the properties of Austronesian language semantics make it appear incoherent to Western minds), you've cracked the rongorongo code.

JacquesGuy (talk) 03:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, it's starting to read like a real article! I did remove a couple things you added: links to a page that is now offline, and unsupported statements that Macri etc. are wrong - that seemed to be POV/OR, especially considering that no one knows what is right. (It does say she's never figured out any phonetic values.) kwami (talk) 17:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, all right. Just tell us when it's ready to replace the link I put to the Spanish wiki in the French wiki at http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongo-Rongo

Links: that particular page is back online, with its immediate links. Try it: http://www.rongorongo.org/corpus/codes.html

But I don't intend to put the rest back online soon. Looking back at the histories of the French and the English wiki I don't feel like spending the rest of my life cleaning up after the moonbats. Until the wiki is kept reasonably free of their droppings roro.org stays offline. Wait and see. Oh, before it slips my mind, didn't you remember those two posts (in: Style 2) in French issuing from 190.161.46.37, the first of them signed? I just noticed them. So my guess was spot on. Fascinating. It's like digging an archaeological midden. Back to Macri.

I haven't read the article by Macri in The Writing Systems of the World because I don't have the book. It's a 5-page article. Not enough by far to present any evidence. But I have read Pozdniakov and discussed the matter with him. A few years ago Pozdniakov was announcing a 500-page book where he would give his solution. No book by the due date. I asked him when it would be available. "There was nothing really new in it, so I withdrew it from publication." Q.E.D.: Pozdniakov is not a charlatan. The problem is that his statistical analyses are done by his father, who also writes the software to do the computations (he was a pioneer computer scientist) but his father is no linguist, he is a statistician. Pozdniakov is a linguist, but he knows no statistics. So I'd say they are cooperating at cross-purposes. You need to know both statistics and linguistics to validly apply the first to the second.

As far as I could ascertain Macri has never published anything on the roro apart from that article in The Writing Systems of the World. She's into Maya. Barthel was a follower of Sir Eric Thompson's school and has published a few monographs on Maya writing. I have one. It's just a list of glyphs. His transliteration system is inspired from that used by Mayanists. That's the only link I can see.

That she has not figured out any phonetic values is to be expected. Nor has Pozdniakov who knows and has done an immensely greater deal more than her.

The statistical approach to extracting phonetic values is wrong. The same long text is found with negligible variations on three tablets. So your sample is biased from the start. You'd have to ignore two tablets to restore a semblance of an unbiased sample. Next, the sign frequency distribution of the Santiago Staff is totally unlike the rest of the corpus and that is damning evidence of an unrepresentative sample.

Imagine that all knowledge of writing had disappeared and you had only a few laundry lists to decipher English writing. Now you try to correlate that with the daily morning news taken down phonetically (since we no longer know how to write English). Complete failure garanteed. Just think about the likely relative frequencies of occurrence of "smock, frock, sock" in your laundry lists and in the morning news (remember that you don't know what letters represent nor how they are pronounced, IF they are pronounced). Trying to match the roro signs to the syllables or words in, say, Englert's legends, on the basis of frequencies of occurrence is exactly the same misguided approach, sure to fail.

Not convinced yet? You have read Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" or seen the movie, I imagine. So transport yourself into that world as a Martian ethnologist. You have found some ancient "pre-Fahrenheit" written material (and it doesn't amount to much). You have made contact with the "wise men" (the "maori"!) the living books who have memorized Shakespeare, Poe, ... Bradbury (!). Now you tell me, Dr Tzglplschwvzkgblob, how you propose to decipher those pre-Fahrenheit English inscriptions.

JacquesGuy (talk) 23:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

On Macri again
I read: "The suspected logograms, such as the lunar crescent and the lizard identified by Barthel, don't form compounds."

They do form compounds. Look at the Lunar Calendar for the crescent (40).

And here are some outside the Lunar Calendar: ...
 * 40.3 on Nb5
 * 40c.3a on Qv3
 * 40a.3a on Pv3
 * 40.3 on Gv3
 * 40.3a on Ab3
 * 40a.9 on Ab6
 * 44.40 on Ca7
 * 40.62 on Hv11
 * 40.74f on Gv4
 * 40.95 on Br2
 * 40.211x on Ev3
 * 40.220y on Pr8
 * 360c.40 on Ab7
 * 360.40 on Qv3 and Bv2
 * 300.40 on Er1 and Er4
 * 40.522 on Qr7 and Hr7

Now 41 is also a crescent:


 * 605.41f on Hr7
 * 41.52x on Ab4
 * 41.62 on I7
 * 41.74bf on Hv11
 * 390.41 on Ca6 (twice) Ca7 (3 times) Ca8 (twice)

Enough already?

As for the lizard, which is it? If it is 760, yes, it does form compounds.
 * 760.2 on Sb2
 * 760.4 on Cb6 (twice) and Cb7
 * 2a.760.52x on Pr7
 * 4a.760 on Ca4
 * 62.760 on Br08

So, seven occurrences in compounds. And it occurs 39 times in all. So it occurs in compounds 18% of the times. Not bad for a "logogram that doesn't form compounds".

Another possible lizard is 763. It occurs only once, on Ca11, in a compound: 4.763

Another candidate for "lizard" is 762. It occurs only four times, of which one is a compound: 127.762 on Rb8.

Finally there is 761 (but it looks more like Nessie to me). One single occurrence, on Cb11, immediately following a 762. Not in a compound, that one. (where are the smileys in this !#@ wiki???)

"Many of Macri's proposed combining glyph elements appear to be cognate with petroglyphs found around the island."

There are very few different petroglyphs. That "many" is a contradiction.

Since I don't have Macri's article I can't say for sure, but it all looks like the usual bullshit to me.

JacquesGuy (talk) 03:50, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

And there is 42, which is 40 rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise and has been shown to be an allograph of 40. It occurs exclusively in compounds, all 50 occurrences of it.

JacquesGuy (talk) 03:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know. Bettocchi may have been writing from Chile at one point, but it sure seems that most of the postings are a second author. If it ever becomes an issue, maybe I'll take a closer look, but without any coherent explanation from her/them, I can't get too exited about it.
 * Macri hasn't proposed any phonetic readings because AFAIK she doesn't claim to have found any. She's not trying to work them out with statistics, just commenting that the stats make the system look like a syllabary - the same way you'd guess pre-Fahrenheit English was an alphabet based on the number and distribution of its glyphs. It's just a suggestion on where to start, not a claim to have cracked the code. The article misrepresents her in the last line you quoted, if my memory is correct. It should have said that several of the (few) glyphs that behave as logograms look like petroglyphs, not that many of the combining glyphs do. Or maybe it was just that a few glyphs resemble petroglyphs, without any connection to which behave as logograms. I'll change it, but might get it wrong since I'm working on memory. If you were to show her that her suspected 'logograms' formed compounds, I'm imagine she'd be happy to accept that and move on. (It doesn't affect her argument.) She's working on this informally with several other people; for all I know they've noticed what you point out since her article appeared in D&B. Basically, her point is this (though I may be reading some of my own opinions into it): With the exception of a few that don't behave as others do, most glyphs appear to be deconstructible into a quite limited number of elements--under a hundred--which given Rapa Nui phonotactics suggests a syllabary. Assuming she's decomposing most of them correctly. And assuming it's writing at all, but proto-writing like Yukaghir tends to have a wide range of elements, not the limited number she thinks she's detected. (Either that or it's highly conventionalized proto-writing with a very limited range of subject matter. [Which you hinted at above.]) It would be nice to have these elements published, without which we can't take her too seriously, and of course she could easily be wrong. But it's a reasonable hypothesis. kwami (talk) 06:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. Are you saying that the month names in the Esteban Atan manuscript are misspelled for Rapa Nui? And in "a failed attempt at matching the ancient Rapa Nui names of the months to those of the modern calendar", do you mean matching rongorongo glyphs to the modern names? kwami (talk) 07:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

"With the exception of a few that don't behave as others do, most glyphs appear to be deconstructible into a quite limited number of elements--under a hundred--which given Rapa Nui phonotactics suggests a syllabary"

They are "deconstructible" into a far, far smaller number of elements than that. On the other hand, there is a large number of UNdeconstructible signs. "Atoms" as it were. And they are not "a few" at all. I'd say... two hundred?

And I don't buy this business of "55 syllables, 55 signs, BINGO!" It can be true, yes, e.g. the Japanese syllabary... well, almost. But most often you have several different signs for the same syllable (look at Maya). You may also have one sign standing for two or more different syllables. There's seldom a bijection between sign and syllable (or phoneme).

And it does not mean a thing. Because if you take Chinese, you can break down every character into its constituent strokes and there are only a dozen or so of those. JacquesGuy (talk) 09:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * As I said, she may be wrong. But one of the first things to look for in an unknown script, if you hope to ever decipher it, is whether it's likely to be alphabetic, logographic, etc. She knows the situation in Maya, which had a redundant syllabary (like pre-WWII Japanese - see hentaigana) because they derived from logograms. Syllabaries invented through contact diffusion are much closer to 1-to-1 (Vai, Afaka, Cherokee, etc.). And a naive deconstruction of Chinese would still yield many hundreds of glyph elements. As any hypothesis, it needs to be evaluated by others, and she hasn't published, but it isn't crackpot like Fell, and we're in no position to say she's wrong. kwami (talk) 10:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Englert's bio
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Englert

Someone write an English version please. It's easy German, even I could do it. But there remains the section on Thomson, after which the article will be reasonably complete. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I did it (Sebastian Englert), but I don't know German, so you might want to check the translation. Also, in the German article several of the towns link to disambiguation pages, so their IDs need to be verified. kwami (talk) 22:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, the Russian version had the specific towns. However, that article is a nearly word-for-word translation of the German, except that the end was cut off, making me wonder if they didn't just link to the most likely town for each name. kwami (talk) 23:05, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

There was little to correct. "Forscher" is "researcher" (Forschung = research) and he was a chaplain during WWI, not WWII (yes, one of those typos). Otherwise, very very minor stuff.

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't find his Russian wiki bio, though. Where is it? (I can read Russian)

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * If you look to the left of the article proper, and scroll down, you'll see a list of other language wikipedias which have an article on the same topic. kwami (talk) 05:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Fischer
While copy editing, I grew a bit uncomfortable with your commentary on Fischer. He answers several of your criticisms on his site, and the Atua mata riri verses he cites are just as semantically odd (at least in translation: "X cop'd with Y and begat X") as his alleged decipherments. I should move my comments here for discussion, but am too tired right now. I commented them out in the article (that is, I did not delete them), but since you're one of the parties in an academic debate, it is rather biased to have you criticize F in the article but not the other way around. kwami (talk) 08:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

All right, all right *sigh*

Here we go.

"Fischer remarks that a suffix glyph identified in 1870 as a phallus..."

That identification is from Metoro's chant. Sign 76 occurs 14 times in the texts chanted by Metoro, of which 2 times in isolation, i.e. not a suffix.

Out of those 14 times Metoro read it ure (penis) only once. Yes, ONCE. The two isolated occurrences he read tuu (stand), and huki (pole). The "penis" sign occurs in Jaussen's list, but Metoro gave it as... mauga (mountain)! His readings for the 12 occurrences of 76 affixed to another sign are:
 * 1) te tagata ure huki (Br10)
 * 2) no ona, koia anake (Br10, it follows #1 immediately)
 * 3) kua hagai (Br10)
 * 4) kua moe te goe ra (Bv2)
 * 5) kua rere te tagata (Bv2)
 * 6) ko te tagata kua oho kua hakapura ia (Bv5)
 * 7) ki te tagata hakapura i ruga kia ia (Bv5)
 * 8) kua moe, ku hakarava (Aa2)
 * 9) kua tupu i te tupuga (Er5)
 * 10) koia, hoko henua, hakatupu (Er6)
 * 11) kua tupu tona mea (Er8)
 * 12) atua mata viri (Ev7)

Never mind what that means, there is not one single occurrence of ure "penis" in it, or any other word meaning penis (such as kohio). If 76 means anything that would be haka (factitive prefix) or tupu (grow). The shape of 76 indeed suggests something vertical, tall, hence tupu (grow) huki (pole, to put down vertically) and mauga (mountain). ("there is not one single occurrence of ure "penis" in it" -- but there is, in #1. At first I had listed only the eleven that did not contain ure. Then I put back #1 to discuss the two occurrences of huki. So that should have been corrected to "there is one single occurrence of ure in it, and none of any other word...")

Now, Metoro used the word ure elsewhere in his readings, once only:


 * tupu te ure o te henua (Ca8, at the end of the lunar calendar)

What is the sign he read thus? 280, the "turtle."

He completely ignored 76 in #2 no koia, koia anake "his, him all right" and #6 kua rere te tagata (the man ran)

Now if you go back to #1 tagata ure huki you'll notice this huki which also occurs in his reading of one of the isolated 76, and means "pole" or "to put something vertically." Same idea as tuu "to stand." So what Metoro saw there was a homuculus with a part standing up (huki). And he supplied a penis. Like Fischer wherever he doesn't see one.

So the evidence for 76 = "penis" is exactly nil.

And BTW, kua is a verbal particle which DOES NOT EXIST in Rapanui. He made it up on the model of Tahitian 'ua. The particle with a similar meaning in Rapanui is ku.

Source: myself, 1999. Peut-on se fonder sur le témoignage de Métoro pour déchiffrer les rongo-rongo? Journal de la Société des Océanistes. 108:125-132.

"the Atua mata riri verses he cites are just as semantically odd"

It's the translation that is odd. I could not find one single instance of "copulate" expressed as `ai ki roto ki... in Englert's "Leyendas". There is a word `ai for which Englert gives "copula carnal, coito entre animales" but it does not occur in the legends. There is another word `ai which means "to be (estar, not ser)" or "thus".

As for ki roto ki... it means "into" (i roto i... means "inside", mai roto mai... "from inside" and so on). So I think it really means "be (go) into." As for the construction NOUN-1 ki VERB-1, ka VERB-2 NOUN-2 it means "as soon as NOUN-1 VERB-1, NOUN-2 VERB-2". 'ai ki roto ki... as "copulate" ok, I'll buy that ("to have been into the inside of..." But "as soon as" no. My idea is that it is a "spelling bee." Ure  Vaeiko is said to have been a servant of Nga'ara, the last king, they say, to have been literate, and to hold a rongorongo school. If so, then it is a "B-A BA" litany. As soon as [the sign called] X enters [sign] Y, [sign] Z is born (lit.: comes forth). He overheard it without knowing what it was and remembered it. More or less mangled of course.

There is another problem. Salmon soon was taking the mickey out of Thomson. Some of his translations are pure, complete fantasy. I think he got sick of translating the gibberish he had taken down at Ure Vaeiko's dictation. There is one line for instance which is pure Tahitian: horoa moni e faahiti. It's there: http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/ei/ei53.htm It means "give [me] money for explaining/revealing [this]" You won't find anything even remotely like that in Salmon's translation of course! Actually, I have a hard time correlating any of that particular song with Salmon's translation. Even the opening. Ka tangi is "Cry" (imperative, ka being the immediate future marker). Salmon's translation "Who is sorrowing?" is already off. Then it goes completely haywire. Same thing for "Apai". 80% fantasy. And I just remembered. "Kahii te riva forani." That's Tahitian too ('f' does not exist in Rapanui). It means "hoist the French flag." The verbal particle ka is the only Rapanui word in it. Even the title is half Tahitian. Poheraa does not exist in Rapanui, but it does in Tahitian. It means "death" or "sickness." Mind you, they had plied Ure Vaeiko with booze (rum?) to help him overcome his reluctance to read the photos of the tablets. Atu-Mata-Riri was the first he read and he may have been reasonably sober. But by the time he reached this one, the last one, he must have been pissed right out of his head.

"[76] is found on the first glyph in each section of text, and that "almost all" sections contain a multiple of three glyphs, with the first glyph of each three bearing this suffix"

"Almost all"? Bullshit. It's 50 out of 81 when you sit down to count them. Andrew Robinson counted them independently and arrived at a similar figure (there is uncertainty about the exact numbers, glyphs are worn down in places, so you have to ignore those sections, hence my figure of 81, when Fischer counts 97).

"With the first glyph of each bearing [76] suffixed..."?

Bullshit again. Three sections start with an isolated 76. Seven with a glyph with for suffix a "crab claw" similar to the head of the 300-399 series of glyphs.

"F claims mau is common to all Polynesian, occurs both before and after nouns"

Before nouns it's a plural marker in those languages that have it. After it's an adjective that means "true, genuine, proper."

Source: myself, 1998. Un prétendu déchiffrement des tablettes de l'île de Pâques. JSO. 106:57-63.

"though there may be extra non-phallic glyphs at the end of a section of text, and some other exceptions to the pattern. That is, the dominant pattern is |ǍBC|, |ǍBCĎEF|, |ǍBCĎEFĞHJ|, etc., where the ˇ diacritic represents the suffix."

Replacing the sign itself with a diacritic clouds the issue. When affixed 76 always follows, and is the same height as the preceding sign, unless this preceding sign has a part overhanging. So it's not ǍBC, it's clearly A, 76, B, C with A glued to 76. Actually there are compound signs of the form 76.X. Ah, here's one on I4: 76.6

In context: 532a-5-76f-200-49f-76.6-490.22-320.71-20.52hx.76-37?-37?-97

Notice the stand-alone 76f, 76 with "feathers". What does Fischer make of that one? A penis in a French tickler?

And another, 76.53h, on I9:

90.76-57-600-700.76-76.53h-177-700.76-57-741-430.76-532-200-76-

And another, 76.69, on I4:

420.76-10?.44-76-55-76.69-49f.76-405.300.76-430-5.77-430.76-55-

And another, 76.73? (73? because it's not sure it's 73), on I7

48-400-222.76-71.71-76.73?-199-69.76-95f-1V.76-69-570.69-720.8.

And another, 755.76.75, sandwiched between 755 and 75, on I6:

76-149-593-199-755.76.75-150-21:90.76-87-755-404.76-76-1V-700.

(Aren't concordances great?)

"He then noticed a similar pattern, though without the punctuation"

He did not notice "a similar pattern" he noticed some sequences the members of which looked like those of some sequences on the Staff.

"and that often the glyphs on other tablets also seem to be patterned into groups of three, though without the phalli or punctuation."

No dick and no punctuation. So how do you tell they form groups of three? Not four, not two, not seventeen, but three?

At any rate, that triad business was bullshit in the first place. I just took a look at the beginning of the Staff. And do I see concluding line 2? Four instances, no less, of 76 isolated, in two sequences of two each:

90.76-700-11-76-76-90.76-147-76-76-71-600-9-9-90.76

And towards the beginning of line 1:

27.76-530-76-67.76-4f?-38

And just four centimeters later:

604.76-6.72.6-95:11-200-690.90-129.76-49f-499

Seven glyphs there after the first "copulator" not two.

And six centimeters later:

205.76-71-76-385.76-71-90.76-87-499

Followed by (after a vertical "separator"):

23.76-146f-1V.69-280.76-160-676-23.76-22h-530-451-430.76-530-298-76-71...

And here are three successive copulations:

45.76-11.76-6.76

So much for triads.

You want to learn more about Fischer's reliability? Go there, I just unlocked it:

http://www.rongorongo.org/theories/englert.html

Not bad, eh?

So I asked Andrew Pawley "how could you let that go through?". (His name is on the editorial board, with Chafe, Darnell, Hymes and others. He is the only Polynesianist of the lot.)

His answer (23 May 1999):

I haven't read Fischer's book. OUP presumably had a reader or readers but did not ask me. They seldom ask me to read any MSS -- I think I'm just a pretty face on their board. You might write to Fischer himself and ask for his explanation of the Englert business.

I didn't bother, would you believe? However, I did ask OUP. Never got an answer, would you believe?

JacquesGuy (talk) 11:49, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

"But he also has from Echancrée "All the birds with all the fish the sun"."

That is near the end of Db2: 606s-73.6-8 Its constituent glyphs are visibly different from 606.76-700-8 There is uncertainty about the second glyph, 73. Barthel has it as 73. It could also be 710. And then you have s a "ribbon" dangling from the "bird's elbow." A common affix. Why ignore it?

And the procedure is incoherent.

Here, consider this: 600.6.76-700-8

It's straight out of a rare manuscript (there is only one copy, and I have it) entitled "A Shakespeare Cypher".

I translate: Naughty (.6) Puck (600) laughed at (76) Oberon (700) [and] Titania (8) [cried]

There are lots of "76" in that manuscript and oral tradition has it that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a comedy. Lots of laughing in comedies. And a wise old man from the island of origin laughed when asked to translate this manuscript. So clearly 76 = "laugh."

(Yes, suddenly it all seems ridiculous when you use familiar names. So does this: Donald copulated with Daisy to produce Donald; Mickey copulated with Daisy to produce Mickey; Gyro Gearloose copulated with Daisy to produce Gyro Gearloose...)

Anyway, somewhere else in that manuscript there is: 600.6s-700.6-8

How do I interpret that in the light of my previous translation?

(I provide "laughed at" and I ignore s)
 * 1) Naughty (.6) Puck (600) [laughed at] naughty Oberon (700.6) and Titania (8) [cried]
 * 1) Very naughty (.6s) Puck (600.6)  and naughty Oberon (700.6) and Titania (8) [...?]
 * 2) Naughty Puck (600.6) kicked (s) naughty Oberon (700.6) and Titania (8) [laughed]

Granted, all three are stupid. But, Kagami on the wall, which is most stupid of all?

BTW, I couldn't find "Fischer's site." You wouldn't mean www.netaxs.com/~trance/rongo.html by any chance?

JacquesGuy (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ha ha! That's the first time anyone's made a pun on my Wikipedia name, which is a pun (a rather bad one) to begin with. I told my sister and she busted up.
 * Yes, "*sigh*". I'm trying to play peer review, which I'm completely unqualified to do. Okay, everything you say sounds completely reasonable: Fischer's stuff does sound odd, and those oral texts really do sound like they've been mistranslated. If there aren't any "A and B begat A"-type oral traditions, then F's much harder to buy. I worry about bias and wish we had peer-reviewed articles to go on, but at least with your input this article's become much more credible than it was. If it's biased, at least it's a reasonable-sounding bias, unlike much of the stuff we've had here in the past. I've cleaned it up several times over the last few years, but was mostly just by deleting apparent nonsense without having much to put in its place. Next round I'll restore your stuff and try to incorporate something from this discussion, unless you want to go ahead and do it.
 * "Fischer's site", yes, that was it. The link at the bottom of the page went directly there, and I didn't notice it was a subpage of someone else's site. kwami (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the first time I saw it, I misread "Kamikagami" then, on second look I wondered "is kwami archaic Japanese for kami?" Didn't make sense, though!

"I'm trying to play peer review" Sorry, peer review is a farce. My article on the Lunar Calendar in the Journal de la Société des Océanistes was peer-reviewed of course. Two lines commending it. The lapidary style of the reviewer had me think he was George Haudricourt. Years later I discovered who it was by pure chance. I mentioned my surprise at such a short review to Jacques Vignes, a member of the CEIPP. "That was me!" he said to me "I was very surprised to be asked, too." Vignes is an industrial draughtsman in the petrochemical industry. His qualification would be that he has the richest library on Easter Island. You'd expect the JSO to have picked a palaeoastronomer, no?

Fischer's OUP book must have been peer-reviewed. But who were the peers if Andrew Pawley was not one of them? Did they bother to read the manuscript? If they did they knew nothing about the subject: Fischer's rantings about Englert are obvious to anyone who knows about Englert. Only an ignoramus or a crook would let that sort of stuff pass.

Now I don't know who peer-reviewed my articles in Anthropos, JSO and JPS, I only know that they must have been. The Rapa Nui Journal is now peer-reviewed too.

Fischer's decipherment was published in the JPS. So it must have been peer-reviewed. How come I didn't get to hear of it? The JPS used to send me articles for review. There was one by Butinov which was so bad it was embarrassing. Fortunately he had submitted it in Russian. So I told the Editor (I think it was Richard Moyle at the time) "It's unbelievably bad. Tell him you don't have anyone who can read Russian and that, anyway, the JPS cannot afford to have it translated and ask him to resubmit, in English." That put an end to it. The I received two manuscripts by Rjabchikov. So when Robert Langdon asked me what I thought about Fischer's decipherment in the JPS I went "WHAT decipherment???" Who peer-reviewed it? Search me. Certainly not someone who knew anything about decipherment.

In the old days publishers would trust their own judgment.

The "soft" sciences are in a sorry state.

"Next round I'll restore your stuff and try to incorporate something from this discussion, unless you want to go ahead and do it."

You do it. I provide the material, you cook it. I'm new at writing for the Wikipedia, it's a pain in the bum (I wish there was some software so that I could work off-line) and I don't want to learn. Better things to do. A search engine and a proper transliteration system for the roro.

If you want a taste of a REAL Polynesian creation chant, have a look at the Kumulipo. There's a bit here: http://www.edithkanakaolefoundation.org/projects/kumulipo/wa-akahi.htm

JacquesGuy (talk) 06:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay. Not tonight, though. As for software, I'm not aware of anything. Sometimes I'll copy the text to work on it off line. Works okay for pure text, but you can't preview tables etc. that way. kwami (talk) 07:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Now that's about it for me. But before I sign off:

"the dominant pattern is |ǍBC|, |ǍBCĎEF|, |ǍBCĎEFĞHJ|, etc., where the ˇ diacritic represents the suffix"

Where does that notation come from? 76 when suffixed is nothing like the affixes f (Federn) or s and o (Schmuckelement) which you could possibly call "diacritics." It is a fully fledged sign juste like 11 in the sequence 200.200.11 (there). Representing it by a diacritic gives a false impression that it is secondary and, yes, that it can therefore be dispensed with. That's begging the question.

This said, that will be all from me for the time being.

Let's first see if the bats return to the belfry.

JacquesGuy (talk) 08:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jacques. You've been a big help. I might get to clean up Fischer today, and will probably remove that notation altogether. Also have a few minor comments from other researchers which don't buy it; let's see if I can find something quotable. There's also the question of whether a couple of the 26 tablets may have been copies or fakes sold to early tourists: cut with a steel knife, poor provenance, etc. kwami (talk) 18:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Myself I think the Stephen-Chauvet fragment is such a fabrication. On the other hand I have, two or three years ago, received photos of a clearly modern tablet, bought from a carver on Easter Island in the 1980s, not too skillfully carved (but far from awfully) the text of which agrees strangely with the observable properties of genuine tablets. A copy of a copy of a copy of a tablet now lost? Impossible to say until the genuine tablets have been deciphered. Which will be when hens grow teeth as we say in French.

As for this "it's not a writing" business, the argument ultimately reduces to: "it's not writing because I can't read it." Well, until 1962, Chinese wasn't writing. Because I couldn't read it. QED. Not bad as omphalocentric reasoning, eh?

JacquesGuy (talk) 21:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Then it might not be as long as you think! Chickens Retain Ability to Grow Teeth kwami (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Every time I go to my dentist I pester him "When will you be able to grow teeth???" I still have 30 of my original set but they show their age. Anyway... what's the source for that story of some tablets having been carved with a steel blade? I haven't come across it. But again, I haven't looked at the roro literature for a while.

JacquesGuy (talk) 01:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

"when Andrew Robinson checked this claim, he found that only 50 out of 81"

No, that figure is mine. Here is Robinson's:

"Close inspection of the Santiago Staff reveals that only 63 ou of the 113 sequences on the staff fully obey the triad structure (and 63 is the maximum figure, giving every Fischer attribution the benefit of the doubt)"

(p.241, top paragraph)

Robinson did his counting eyeballing the drawings (whether out of Barthel or out of Fischer I don't know. I never thought of asking him).

My figure is computed from the files on the diskette I got from the CEIPP many years ago when I discovered their outfit. Those files were input straight from Barthel's transliterations. I wrote a short program to read them and do the computations, having it ignore all the 76-delimited subsequences containing a doubtful number of signs.

I think there is a typo in Robinson: 113 instead of 103, as I see Fischer's figure is 103 now. But I am pretty sure that, when I discovered his first article, he had it at 97. Note that 63 out of 103 is the same percentage as I end up with with my 50 out of 81.

The presence of that possible typo in Robinson is annoying, isn't it?

59.101.166.164 (talk) 02:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Routledge
Would it be worth having a section on Routledge, "Last Witnesses" or something? I know you think RR is at least partially phonetic, but Routledge makes it sound as though it were a mnemonic/proto-writing (long apprenticeship, variable readings of the glyphs, "correct" readings is group recitations, etc. etc., all of which make it sound more complicated than a phonetic script. Is she one of the reasons so many people hold the opinion that it's not full writing, or is she repeating earlier observations? kwami (talk) 00:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * If it's about the nature of the script, then you also need a section on Métraux. Métraux accumulated hints that it was phonetic only to conclude that it was pictographic. I'll dig out the quotes if you are interested. I don't know about Routledge. I would have to read her book again. I am not sure that she knew any Polynesian language at all. Smatterings possibly. She reports very interesting oral traditions, but no-one seems to have paid attention to them. One is that, at the supposed roro yearly reading contest at Anakena the master of ceremonies sat on a throne made of tablets. I shall skip what that means to me, because that's a personal POV, but perhaps it would be worth putting somewhere for those who can interpret it.


 * But isn't this article already becoming a bit on the big side? The number of footnotes makes it awkward to read.


 * As for "long apprenticeship, variable readings of the glyphs," you stop and think about Japanese. Take ue for instance. Now make a list of all its readings, from ageru to noboru via jô and more. Same with shita (not "tongue"!). See now?


 * JacquesGuy (talk) 04:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, Métraux would also be interesting. But you're right, it is getting a bit large. I thought that might help with people who say, hey, you forgot so-and-so, but maybe we could just place a disclaimer saying we're ignoring 'decipherers' who never presented credible evidence.
 * As for Japanese, you also get highly complex systems like that in Akkadian & Pahlavi - all scripts that were designed for one language and then incompletely adapted to a language of very different structure, not something I'd expect in our case. Come to think of it, you also get it in Egyptian, but then there the number of signs obviously suggests a logography. At the least, Routledge suggests a script more complex than Macri's model, which is why I quoted her there. kwami (talk) 08:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * We mention but don't list your 1990 work on the calendar, which should certainly be in the ref section. kwami (talk) 08:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am re-reading Routledge, and one sentence, line 4 of last paragraph of p. 302, makes me uncomfortable: "Unfortunately for this theory [roro are of Polynesian origin], the Melanesian bird figures largely among the signs." This faulty reasoning makes me wary of the rest. If I may trust what she reports I certainly will not trust how she interprets it.

One thing solved: Routledge knew no Polynesian, viz note 1, page 140: "Kanaka" is the name originally given by Europeans to the inhabitants of the South Seas, and is one form of the Polynesian word meaning "man." She doesn't know that it is the Hawaiian word.

The script is discussed pp.243-254. She already gives the name of the tablets as "koháu-rongo-rongo" (p.243).
 * The highest authority on them was the Ariki Ngaara. ... Te Haha [her informant, his name means The Mouth] had begun to learn to write, but found that his hand shook too much, besides, as he explained, Ngaara used "to send him to the chickens."

Ah, here:
 * Every clan had professors in the art who were known as rongo-rongo men ("tangata-rongo-rongo")... In writing, the incision was made with a shark's tooth. Then she explain reverse boustrophedon. The finished ones were wrapped up in reeds and hung up in the houses. According to two independent authorities they could only be touched by the professors or their servant, and were taboo to the uninitiated (that makes sense) which, however, does not quite agree with other statements, nor with that of the missionaries, that they were to be found in "every house." They were looked upon as prizes to be carried off in war, but they were often burnt with the houses in tribal conflict.


 * Every year there was a great gathering of rongo-rongo men at Anakena, according to Te Haha ... the Ariki and his son Kaimokoi sat on seats made of tablets, and each had a tablet in his hand; they wore feather hats, as did all the professors. The rongo-rongo men were arranged in rows, with an alley-way down the centre to the Ariki. Some of them had brought one tablet only; others as many as four. The old ones read in turn, or sometimes two together, from the places where they stood, but their tablets were not inspected .

My emphasis there. To me it means that they were reciting from memory, pretending to read, not even knowing what reading consisted in. My POV is: all knowledge had disappeared with the wiping out of the hanau eepe who were the priestly caste. With the deforestation of the island the "strong medicine" of the priests (building those statues, carving those tablets) lost all its strength and the populace revolted. The Ariki sat on a throne of tablets to signify that they had lost their mana, that he controlled them. The annual roro-reading competition was a show: "See, we know how to read the tablets just as well as the hanau eepe. We don't need them anymore.'' Anyway, back to Routledge.


 * If a young man failed, he was called out and his errors pointed out; but if an old man did not read well, Ngaara would beckon to Te Haha, who would go up to the man and take him out by the ear... the offender's hat was taken away, but the tablet was not inspected.

Again. "The tablets were not inspected."

Routledge recounts Thomson's attempts (p.247).


 * Inquiries were made by the Expedition about this old man [Ure Vaeiko] and it was agreed by the islanders that he had never possessed any tablets nor could make them, but that he had been a servant of Ngaara and had learnt to repeat them. Before leaving the island we went with the old man through the five translations given by Thomson. Of three nothind was known; one which describes the process of creation was recognised as that of a kohau, but looked at a little askance, as there were Tahitian words in it. The last was laughed out of court as being merely a love-song which everyone knew.

She had photos of tablets and presented them for comment.


 * Photographs of tablets, which were produced merely to elicit general information, were to our surprise promptly read, certain words being assigned to each figure; but after a great deal of trouble had been taken, in drawing the signs and writing down the particular matter, it was found that any figure did equally well.

From that she concludes that it did not constitute a writing system. Faulty reasoning. I can't read Sanskrit. That doesn't mean that it is not a writing system. They could not read roro. Spot the fallacy.


 * With regard to other kohau, a list was obtained of the subjects with which they were believed to deal. These amounted to thirteen in all, most of the names being given by several different persons. We have seen that there was a kohau of the "Ika," the murdered men; this was known to only one professor, who taught it to a pupil, and the two divided the island between them, the master taking the west and north coast to Anakena and the pupil the remainder.... Certain kohau were said to be lists of wars; some dealt with ceremonies, and others formed part of ceremonies themselves.

Nowhere is there any mention of astronomical content.

Then she mentions ta'u (spelt tau). And indeed they were annals.


 * Kapiera was able to give a specimen of the lesser tau; it illustrates interestingly the general method of condensation in which, even in the recitation, a few words assume or implicate extended knowledge. It ran thus, "Of Kao the year nine," "Ngakurariha the eldest"; then come five men's names followed by the name of a fish; then a doubtful word; then "that side of the island my place." "I see Ngakuriraha at the koro."

JacquesGuy (talk) 22:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

In the section about Macri:


 * "On the other hand, Routledge (1919) reports testimony that the reciters of rongorongo were specialists, only competent in one type of text. The tangata rongongo (recitation men) could not read kohau ta'u (year tablets) and vice versa: the tangata ta'u (year men) could not read kohau rongorongo (recitation tablets)."

I have just re-read (yes, once more) the chapter titled "The Script" in Routledge. She writes nothing of the kind. Looks like a fabrication or, at best, a misinterpretation of what I quoted above:


 * We have seen that there was a kohau of the "Ika," the murdered men; this was known to only one professor

Perhaps I have missed the relevant sentence. In that case let someone give the page where it can be found.

JacquesGuy (talk) 22:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I may have misread something late at night. I can't find any passage that could be interpreted that way now. Also, given the possibility you brought up that these may be recollections of people reciting by memory after the knowledge of the script had been lost, it isn't good evidence for the nature of the script, so the details aren't as relevant. kwami (talk) 23:36, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Macri
[from Jan 13 email]

Got a photocopy of Macri's article this morning.

She does not mention Pozdniakov, not even in the bibliography.

She does not present any evidence for 70 elements or fewer. Her breakdown of five signs, p.186, is what I did the other day, tongue-in-cheek, with Chinese characters. It's also what I did when I invented the "frogguy" transliteration system for the Voynich manuscript, breaking down characters into their components, e.g. lp, lj, qp, qj, iv, iiv for what are certainly six different, single letters.

She takes the two-sign ligature 300.400 and breaks it down into 385+200+385+600. Never mind that the breakdown itself is wrong, what is important is that she intimates that these are four phonological units. It does not follow at all. Anymore than Chinese "gold" being broken down into "man", "jade" and one extra dot means that it is pronounced "man-jade-dot"!

Pozdniakov's approach is entirely different. He relies on comparing the parallel texts to identify graphemes and their allographs. His article was published in 1996. Macri's in 1996 too (but was it? she gives a date of 1995 in her bibliography). She could not have known about Pozdniakov's article and, I am repeating myself, she does not mention him at all. So her article cannot be "based on work by Konstantin Pozdniakov."

She announces a... an article? a book? entitled "The Easter Island Tablets: A Phonetic Script." That was twelve years ago. Nothing has eventuated.

I found her CV on the Net, 9 pages, right up to date. Nothing else on the roro, even though she lists 3 publications "In Press" and six "Submitted." So all she has published is that article, only half a page of which is original. But not one shred of evidence for her claim (and her breakdown of those signs is demonstrably wrong, but that is beyond the scope of the Wiki article).

And then she writes something doubly dead wrong: "Complete decipherment can only be accomplished through the cooperative efforts...". First, there is no decipherment yet, as her wording suggests there is. Second, complete decipherment is impossible: too many hapax legomena. A partial decipherment (even 20%) would be a bloody miracle!

I don't think she should be mentioned at all. Pozdniakov yes. [JacquesGuy]

Pozdniakov
How many distinct glyph components did Pozdniakov end up with? kwami (talk) 08:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

He doesn't say. But he mentions in his article a book, 586 pages long, in Russian, "The Easter Island writing: results of the structural analysis of the texts", in press. A few years ago (forgot when exactly) I asked him "do you have a copy of that book you'd let me have?" "I don't. It was never published. I decided that there was nothing in it that was really new, so I withdrew it from publication."

That is why I respect Pozdniakov and hold him in high esteem.

JacquesGuy (talk) 09:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[email again]

I think that about does it now.

I haven't read Horley's article (I don't subscribe to the Rapa Nui Journal and neither does Monash University). At any rate, the shortcomings of Barthel's transliteration system make reliable statistical analyses just about impossible. If Sproat got somewhere with his it's only because the Santiago Staff is utterly unlike the rest. You don't have to carry out a statistical analyses to see that it sticks out like a sore thumb. Pozdniakov knows it:


 * en se basant sur le catalogue de T. Barthel il n'existe aucune possibilité d'accomplir une analyse statistique convenable. (p.294, second last paragraph, he explains why, too)

Designing an effective transliteration system is not easy. And then, you have do the transliteration itself. Months and months of work. And for what result? Most of the corpus hasn't been properly photographed! Working from Barthel's tracings just isn't good enough. [Jacques Guy] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwamikagami (talk • contribs) 01:58, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ouh la la, cela à l'air d'être chaud chez les rongorongologues :) Pozdniakov avait fait une petite conférence il y a environ dix ans à propos de ses travaux sur les rongorongo pour les étudiants de langues océaniennes de l'INALCO. Son approche m'avait semblé très (trop) statistique et ne m'avait pas vraiment convaincu mais je dois reconnaitre que je ne connais pas grand chose sur la question. Il a depuis eu un poste au département langues africaines, car il est avant tout un africaniste. Pour le contacter, il suffit à mon avis d'ajouter @inalco à son nom. Bon courage à tous dans la suite de vos recherches Nevers (talk) 16:44, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Nevers. It would be nice if we had his input too. Jacques & I have had enough for now, but if someone starts arguing we're in a conspiracy to silence the Truth again, I'll see about trying to get Pozdniakov involved. kwami (talk) 23:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Pozdniakov has been teaching Wolof at INALCO for quite a few years already. His e-mail is not @inalco. I wouldn't bother him with that. As for a conspiracy of silence, what I hear instead is a conspiracy of one moonbat flapping her jaw relying on the echo to make it sound like many. At any rate, the threat of bringing the so-called conspiracy of silence to the attention of "la comision indigena de la ONU" (message from 89.83.9.249 which belongs to Club Internet - T-Online France) should be enough to relegate its author to the loonie bin where it belongs, with the attention it deserves. And the Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a forum for research-in-progress. Another reason not to bother. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Désolé vieux, mais je crois que Pozdniakov est toujours aux langes'o. Mais autant que vous le contactiez directement entre deux verres de vodka :)Nevers (talk) 01:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Imbelloni?
There's a ref to a José Imbelloni in the bibliography. I did a search, hoping to find a PDF or whatnot of the article in question. Instead, I found this at http://lycansatope.puntoforo.com/viewtopic.php?t=417


 * Entre los trabajos surgidos a partir de entonces se destaca el del argentino Imbelloni, quien pudo establecer una secuencia de sistemas de escritura jeroglífica a la que le dio el nombre de “Sistema gráfico indo-oceánico”, que demuestra a las claras que la escritura de la Isla de Pascua no es algo aislado. En este terreno comparativo se ha llegado, además, a determinar la existencia de un nexo con la escritura brahmi, relacionada con la escritura protoindia de Harappa, que corresponde al siglo III a. C., época del reinado de Asoka el Grande.

For the geographically impaired, Harappa is at the very antipodes of Easter Island. And its undeciphered seals are 3000+ years earlier than the first mention of the roro. And they have nothing in common with Brahmi. Imbelloni's article smells like a fine crock of shit to me. I'll do a little more snooping before I delete it. Or perhaps I'll delete it first and parlay later.

Has anyone got a scan of that article I could have?

JacquesGuy (talk) 07:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Boy, I really wasn't paying attention when I tried cleaning up the bibliography last year. Imbelloni was there since the biblio was started 2006/5/24, by User talk:212.192.128.4, who appears to be Rjabchikov, but who, to be fair, included your evaluation as well.
 * There are Hindu nationalists who want Brahmi to have derived from the Indus script; there are also reasonable doubts as to whether Indus was actually writing.
 * As for leaving Imbelloni in, it was part of a list that was 40% Rjabchikov. I'd rather not bother with it unless someone comes up with a reason we should. kwami (talk) 08:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

disappearance
maybe a comment about tablets being used as reels for fishing lines, etc., with the idea that they were no longer of much value when no one could read them? kwami (talk) 11:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, good idea. The Echancrée of course, and H, with that gash made by a firestick (identified by Catherine Orliac). That's two out of 20 (26 minus the Staff, the two rei miro, the snuffbox, the statuette, and a probable tourist bait or two). Not a bad strike rate when you consider that few would have survived at all if they were used for fishing reels and firemaking. Bit like when you used your morning paper for bumf. Or for rolling cigarettes like they did in New Guinea (the Sydney Morning Herald was renowned for providing a cleaner, more satisfying smoke. Missionaries would sell it for one shilling a page. Donald Laycock, pers. com. ca 1970)  JacquesGuy (talk) 16:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, just need to find the fishing reel stuff again. Think it was Jaussen. kwami (talk) 00:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't be completely sure of the dates, but I think I'm within a year. What year is the population figure of 111 from? If the last tangata rongorongo were killed or kidnapped with the raid of 1862, it's interesting how quickly the tablets themselves were lost. kwami (talk) 01:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

dead link
Hey Jacques. Here, where we illustrate the reading direction, is a dead link. Could we either put the page back online, or load the image to Wikipedia? kwami (talk) 05:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Done, the page is back on-line. Some day I'll have to fix those splatter-like artifacts in the GIF. JacquesGuy (talk) 05:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article?
That was very premature. Sure, the article is immeasurably better. But it could hardly have got worse than in early August last year could it? I had a look at the Voynich Manuscript article, which has become a featured article. The presentation, the layout, are fine, but I am far from impressed with the contents (the link to the 50M pdf, though, is marvellous . If only we'd had such copies twenty years ago!).

To come back to the roro, the 40+ footnotes make the article reader-hostile. Next is the question of what to do with the loonies. The Voynich article does not clearly distinguish between the serious (Currier, Stolfi...) and the nutty (Newbold, Rugg...).

I would not like to see this happen to this article. Admittedly, it could be interesting to deal with, for instance, Dr Carroll's 1890's decipherment. Because it sounds reasonable at first but the more you read, the more skeptical you become. And it can be worthwhile explaining why and how you can soon smell a fine kookie monster in the person of the good Doctor Carroll, and how it takes no particular specialist knowledge nor a bloodhound's nose. Only common sense. But that properly belongs elsewhere, in an article on the pathology of decipherment, not only the Roro, but the Phaistos disk, the Voynich manuscript and others, with a special hat tip to Barry Fell. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * A pathology of decipherment article would be interesting, if we have a consistent way of discussing it, even if it's just a summary of the book. I had a time battling a Mi'kmaq at Micmac hieroglyphs who thought that anyone who dismissed Fell was oppressing the Mi'kmaq. (Of course, Fell evidently didn't think Native Americans could have come up with any of this stuff on their own, but there you are.)
 * Yes, the FA nomination was premature, and I've withdrawn it. It might qualify for GA, or at least better than the B it has now.
 * I'd cleaned up the Russian a bit, but it was restored first by R, then by someone else. The second editor was impressed by R's publications, which he said he couldn't ignore, even though all the Russian scholars we cover here are ignored. Oh well. kwami (talk) 15:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The Russian article does not matter. English is the language, as Latin used to be. All they'll do is garb themselves in robes of preposterousness and crankery. Same with the French article. I see that none of its readers has taken up the challenge of improving it. And yet it would be a simple matter (that's why I had put the link to the English article). And I am in two minds if la Bettocchi flies back into the belfry. Leave it or clean it? I would be tempted to leave it. If the francophones want to live in a barrel of crap, hey, let it be their choice. Which reminds me of a Japanese businessman, met... 42 years ago in Paris. He'd just been to Amsterdam. One thing had struck him there. I remember it verbatim to this date. It struck me because it was so unlike the formal Japanese I had been taught.


 * Hora, Amusuterudamu!
 * Inu no kuso! Ookii yatsu!
 * Inu no kuso! Ookii yatsu!

And he brought his hands together to show me the size of the dog turds he'd seen in the streets of Amsterdam. They were not as big when I was in Paris last year, but numbers made up for size.

Before I log off. I think the bit on "Rapanui spelling conventions" is better right at the very beginning. Spelling conventions don't belong to the roro corpus at all. There are many more things like that before you can think of resubmitting it as FA or GA or what. Those forty footnotes for instance. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, moved the orthography to the Rapanui language article. Reducing the notes, though that doesn't come naturally to me, because I've always loved lots of notes. A couple missing refs have come to light, though. Check I got the right Flenley & Bahn, and who wrote Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie : l’exemple des bois d’œuvre de l’Ile de Pâques. Cahier V - 2003/2004, Thème 6 - Cultes, rites et religions ? We have it as Orliac 2005. And what should we put down as the source of the imported names of the months? kwami (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Footnotes. I like footnotes too, but only when they are at the foot of each page. Here they're all bunched together at the end of the article. A solution would be to place them, indented, at the end of each section or even the paragraph where the reference occurs. Like this:

Blah blah blah blah blah1 blah blah blah....................
 * Note[1]

This way the note is right next to where it belongs. Or close. But I don't know what would be the view of the Powers That Decide Upon FA Or Not FA (Hallowed Be Their Name!).

Never heard of F&B Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie. I hold Bahn in such esteem that I won't bother finding out.

I found the Orliac reference on the Web, together with the article. Forgot to bookmark it.

The imported names of the months? I don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary. I have two or three Tahitian dictionaries, and it is quite obvious that the Rapanui names are derived from Tahitian, themselves derived from American English. Thus "August" is "atete" in Tahitian and in the Heyerdahl manuscript. If it had been borrowed into Rapanui directly from English it would be something like "akete" (or okete, okata, and so on). When you read Eyraud's report, BTW, you see that he spoke Tahitian to the natives, not Rapanui. Evidence? When he said to Torometi: "e pohe oe." That's Tahitian. Rapanui would be "e mate ko koe." And so we don't know if Salmon spoke Rapanui at all, or just made do with Tahitian! JacquesGuy (talk) 00:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't word that well: We had Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie as Orliac 2005, but it was described as the notebook for 2003/2004, and we have another Orliac 2005 publication. I think I just found it. For F&B I did an Amazon search and copied the title of the only book I found with the proper date. If I got either wrong, it would be a hard error for someone to ferret out later on.
 * I don't think the powers that be like having notes in each section, or at least that's how I remember it. kwami (talk) 02:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If you don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary, why do you say that the names in Heyerdahl "are further misspelt"? Do you mean that they differ from the Tahitian, or that Heyerdahl misspelt the Rapanui? kwami (talk) 02:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If you don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary, why do you say that the names in Heyerdahl "are further misspelt"?

They differ, not all, from Tahitian. An extra space here, a missing letter there. Heyerdahl did not misspel anything. Because he didn't spell anything. He just published the photo. Kondratov made a super-duper magnificent botch-up of it in Heyerdahl 1965. It's in volume II. Wait, I'll get it. He didn't realize those were the names of the months in Tahitian! And he set about "translating" them. Let me find the page. It's p.410, right at the top:

i te 19 oti unu, i tikea ai te mahina, e 29 mahana o te maro ka tahi te marama, i te 18 oti rai, i tikea ai te mahina, e 29 mahana i te anakena, ka rua marama i te 17 oti tete, i tikea ai te mahina.

What it means is: on the 19th of June (tiunu), when the moon is seen, 29 days of Maro, it's the first month. on the 18th or July (tiurai), when the moon is seen, 29 days in Anakena, the second month. on the 17th of August (atete), when the moon is seen...

Now Kondratov does not recognize the misspelt names and translates:

On 19 is the end of the warm period, the moon appears, 29 days of the month maro (June), the first month; on 18 is the end of the dry period, the moon appears, 29 days of the month anakena (July), the second month; on 17 is the end of the heat, the moon appears.

What he thinks is "ti" in "17 oti tete" is actually a capital A. So it's "i te 17 o Atete".

As for the list fig. 110, out of the Atan manuscript, the very first month is a fine example:

te nu ari

That's January, tenuare in Tahitian.

And Kondratov writes that they are "the Spanish names considerably distorted" (!)

You sure need a lot of distortion to get te nu ari from enero!

To be fair, there's a footnote by Thor Heyerdahl that says: "The distorted European names in the right column might perhaps be of English rather than Spanish origin"

If they were of English origin, you would have a "k" corresponding to the "g" of "August". You have "t" instead. Proof positive that the origin is English via Tahitian. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I followed the logic of it being via Tahitian, just wasn't sure if the 'misspellings' were in the manuscript of H's reporting of them. I wanted to clean it up so that we weren't making any more claims than necessary. kwami (talk) 03:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

In the manuscripts. Not a shred of a doubt about it. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Were some of the glyphs in Jaussen glossed as months, which the manuscript then tried to identify, or did the manuscript try to connect random glyphs to the calendar? kwami (talk) 05:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Before I answer your question looksee here: http://tripatlas.com/Rongorongo Does "tripatlas" stand for "tripe"? Bullshit will thrive.

Now for the question. No, no months, not a single one, in Jaussen's List. The manuscript tries to connect traditional month names with modern Tahitian ones. No glyphs at all there, not a single one. I analyzed it in detail many years ago in my JSO article on the lunisolar calendar and the evidence for how and when the embolismic month was inserted into the basic 12-month year. Wait a minute... ah, that's the one. You've put it back into the bibliography:

GUY, Jacques B.M. 1992. "À propos des mois de l'ancien calendrier pascuan" ("On the months of the old Easter Island calender"), Journal de la Société des Océanistes 94-1:119-125

JacquesGuy (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm confused. I probably got it wrong in my last edit. I thought this was dealing with rongorongo, whereas your point is that the manuscript botched a comparison of old Rapa Nui with modern Tahitian. Or is it old RN with modern RN, which derives from Tahitian? But that's not connected to whether the usage of rongorongo by the manuscripts is valid. kwami (talk) 07:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with the roro, strictly speaking. Oh, I just rewrote that bit, thinking you'd logged off. BUT... it has something to do. Because if I hadn't had all those data I wouldn't have been able to reconstruct how the lunisolar calendar worked. The author of the manuscript tried to correlate the old Rapanui names of the months with the modern (Tahitian) names. He could only fail, since there can be no exact one-to-one correspondance, year in, year out, between the months of a solar calendar and of a lunisolar one. As for the glyphs in those manuscripts, they're straight copies out of Jaussen's list. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oops, sorry. I didn't see your changes.
 * Okay, so you were just commenting on the contents of the manuscripts, not trying to show that they aren't authentic rongorongo, which is to be understood if they're copies of Jaussen.
 * BTW, I wonder if your Japanese businessman was from Osaka. He sounds it. kwami (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Allow me to add: it doesn't matter whether the names of the months are in old Rapanui, in Tahitian, in Polish, or in Kabardian. What matters here is that the old Rapanui used a lunisolar calendar. We use a solar one. The names of the months are irrelevant. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * So it was only an attempt at a calendrical correspondence then, not a linguistic one. kwami (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"I wonder if your Japanese businessman was from Osaka."

I don't remember. I did look after several businessmen from Osaka back then (I was an interpreter with a French import-export company in Paris). I don't remember if he said "koote" instead of "katte" and so on. All I remember is that he was the shachoo of a very small paint-making outfit. He was obviously having a holiday in Europe at his own firm's expense. It was his first trip, too. Very funny, rude, and likeable fellow. Many years later I realized that "ookii yatsu" was the exact equivalent of Australian "big bastards." Just like "I'll put it in a bag for you", "I'll wrap it for you" is the equivalent of "...te agemasu." Oh ye shades of Sheldrake's watchamallit fields! JacquesGuy (talk) 09:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Lorena Bettocchi
Lorena à Kwami  "The surviving texts"  le doute est jeté par ce nouveau redacteur sur plusieurs objets anciens : les 25 Items (de A à Y) sont considérés comme anciens. La tablette du Poike est en écriture cursive, donc probablement de la fin du 19e, début du 20e siècle. Il est vrai, avec peu d'analyses en dentrochronologie, mais par contre les relevés en épigraphie prouvent que l'écriture de 25 Items est bien classique. Je viens d'informer par e.mail le British Museum de cette erreur sur en.wikipedia. La tablette de Londres est en Thespesa popoulnea, très classique et bien jolie... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 21:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying those half-dozen other texts are not genuine, only that people have expressed doubts, and advise caution in relying on them. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Lorena a Kwami et à Rakjb sur le chapitre "New drawings of the rongorongo corpus" une remarque du redacteur est bien fondée. Il s'agit de l'Item I ou bâton de Santiago (Santiago Staff) qui fut relevé comme comportant 14 lignes  (par T. Barthel et S. Fischer). Steven Fischer a mieux cerné la difficulté car il a débuté le tracé par les lignes les plus courtes -En réalité cet objet comporte 15 sections, la 15e termine l'ouvrage de manière originale en raison de la dimension de l'objet. La 15e section est non-boustrophedon   (Conference de Lorena Bettocchi Nov 2007- Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (enregistrée á la  Dibam de Santiago de Chile numero 167 581)- Le bâton de santiago est donc selon mes conclusions et mes connaissances en épigraphie, le seul objet dont on sache où commence l'écriture et où elle finit. Il y aura bientôt  en ligne sur www.ile-de-paques.com le dossier complet de mes conclusions sur l'item I (déposé au CEIPP et à la DIBAM) - DIBAM : Direccion de Bibliotecas Archivos Y Museos Santiago de Chile - Au sujet des publications en Histoire de Lorena Bettocchi, pour l'heure, l'une d'elle fut validée par le Conseil des Recteurs des Universités de Valparaiso (Colloque du Musee Maritime). Les chercheurs qui travaillent sur le rongorongo voudront bien publier des informations contradictoires. Que Jacques G. se mette au travail !
 * Other scholars are comfortable with the idea that the writing directions of some of the other tablet are also known. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Lorena a Kwami et à Sergei : Ma réponse sur le bâton de Maori rongorongo mettra les chercheurs d'accord (il n'y a pas encore d'érudits en la matière, nous sommes tous de modestes apprentis, sauf un) - cette étude est sur www.ile-de-paques.com en ligne depuis une heure []- j'ajoute le lien. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Famille austro-tai, filiation austronésienne, les linguistes ne sont pas toujours d'accord avec ceci []. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 19:26, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Anne Koessler à Lorena : votre banque de données images semble piratée. Quelle est votre opinion sur les nouvelles pages de Kwami ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 23:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * You are correct: The image of reimiro 1 was a montage by Lorena and therefore her copyright. My apologies. I have replaced it with a non-composite image. The copyright of the texts themselves, however, expired a long time ago, and in any case would belong to the tangata rongorongo who wrote them, not to any of us (nor to Barthel or Fischer). kwami (talk) 01:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Anne Koessler à Kwami : Nous sommes heureux que vous soyez lecteur  de la banque de données de Lorena Bettocchi qui fut  discrète dans ses recherches mais a réellement fait avancer de plusieurs marches les informations relatives à Tepano Jaussen -1869-1891- avec la structuration de la banque de données de Metoro ; la documentation qui nous a été présentée est complete et provient, non de la publication de Jaussen après sa mort ou Barthel en 1958,  mais de toutes les archives de SS CC  Picpus. Lorena Bettocchi a revu et corrigé les information relatives à Thomson (1886), car la structuration des récitations de Ure Vae Iko fut vérifiée par nous  -jamais par ce Jacques Guy qui critique tant tous les chercheurs-. Elle a démontré que le chant Atua Mata Riri décrit bien un chant de la création avec de nombreux termes en botannique, mais aussi la description de signes -en sémantique, signifiants et signifiés- sur une face de la tablette de Washington. Il est a noter que les hypothèses de S. Fisher qui a rapproché ce chant avec le bâton de Santiago et ses rythmes sont réellement remises en cause grace au volumineux travail de Lorena Bettocchi qu'elle justifie toujours par une étude lexicale. Elle a repris toutes les notes de Katherine Routledge au British Museum où son livre LA PAROLE PERDUE est classé dans la bibliothèque du Musée qui l'a comptée dans ses chercheurs depuis 1998. Enfin s'agissant des manuscrits des lépreux, Lorena Bettocchi a réellement fourni une analyse supérieure à celle de Thomas Barthel et ceci en linguistique, preuves et publications à l'appui. Pour ce qui est des propos de Jacques Guy et des soit disant contre-sens de Lorena Bettocchi, et il y en a très peu car elle formule très bien et avec un français tout à fait correct, ce professeur de l'Educaiton Nationale revoit et apporte des compléments progressistes à trois publications incomplètes de Jacques Guy : la premiere sur Tepano Jaussen, la seconde sur la tablette Mamari et la troisième sur le bâton de Santiago. S'agissant des non-sens au sujet du début de son diaporama provisoire nous avons contacté Peter Bellwood et l'un des spécialistes du CNRS en langues austronésiennes et austro-tai va lui donner sa réponse dans les prochains jours. Pour ce qui est des publications de S Fisher, Lorena Bettocchi a revu et corrigé le chant ancien Timo te ako-ako; qui accompagnait les rongo-rongo tau de la fin du 19e siècle, les chants de Ure Vae Iko qui n'ont rien à voir avec les copulations cosmogoniques sinon ...Ki Ai'ki i roto,  ka pu : -le savoir des ariki fut tracé dans le bois-. S'agissant de la structure morphologique du rongorongo Lorena Bettocchi nous fournit d'autres significations que celles des copulations ou des testicules à la lune -interprétations masculines au premier degré pourrait-on dire-. Pour ce qui est toujours des relevés de Fisher, elle trouve d'autres précisions  sur la bâton de Santiago. Lorena Bettocchi fournit à la postérité un véritable travail de recherche fort honnête et  les éléments pour progresser. Son étude sur les pierres avec écriture rapanui est exhaustive. Son étude lexicale en astronomie considérable, transmise à l'un de nous plus brillants astro-physiciens du CNRS français. Vous avez selon les allégations de Jacques Guy mis des cadenas la concernant sur votre page internet. Nous avons imprimé tout ce dossier, depuis le debut. Vous avez tort Kwami d'autant que vous vous servirez du travail de Lorena Bettocchi, au fur et à mesure que vous avancerez sur le rongorongo et nous voyons progresser le site de wikipedia, encore maladroit s'agissant des Items. Anne Koessler vous fait une proposition honnête Kwami, celle d'insérer dans la bibliographie les publications de Lorena Bettocchi,  professeur  discret mais progressiste,  cité dans de nouvelles pages de Wikipedia Polynésie. Merci de réflechir à notre proposition car votre page wikipedia sur le rongorongo positionne l'internaute dans des données livresques qui stagnent quelque peu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 10:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If Lorena has made valuable contributions, I would like to see them. She has evidently not made them available online.
 * Why should Peter Bellwood in particular be able to evaluate her interpretation? Has he worked on rongorongo? Anyway, it will be interesting to hear what he has to say.
 * Jacques never said he had verified Ure Vae Iko, just that Métraux's translation is superior to Salmon's. Anyway, that is only relevant for the section on Fischer, and no-one that I am aware of accepts F's decipherment. Lorena is in good company there. (Fischer has such a large section only because he has written the most popular book in English on RR, so we need to both present his claims and explain why other researchers think they're wrong, which takes a lot of space. Also, he's made some valuable contributions in re-transcribing the texts, which complements the work that CEIPP is doing verifying Barthel's work.)
 * When we said that Lorena's on-line material appears to be nonsense, we weren't saying her French was bad! We were saying the concepts appear to be nonsense. For example, she talks about how RR is similar to Dongba and Zhou Chinese. However, those two writing systems are completely different, so RR can't be like both of them. Also, why Zhou Chinese? Modern Chinese isn't significantly different. Both comments suggest that she doesn't know what she's talking about—and if she does know, her wording is so opaque that it's impossible to understand her. There are dozens of things like that in her on-line material.
 * I was planning to write a section on her method, but the more of her stuff I read, the more muddled it seemed to be. Again and again she says she makes a "semantic" analysis. However, she never explains what that is supposed to mean. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously, if you don't explain your terms? Her method appears to be: Look at RR until you find a glyph that you think you can identify. Assume that it really is a picture of this thing, and not just your imagination. Then look at the other glyphs nearby, and try to see them as pictures too. Then make up a story using these pictures.
 * If that's not an accurate summary of her method, then she really needs to do a better job explaining herself.
 * Finally, when I removed some complete gibberish concerning Lorena—and I mean stuff that was completely incoherent—, the author threatened to take me to the United Nations for human rights abuses! That makes whoever it was (Jacques thinks it was Lorena, I suspect it may have been a student of hers) sound schizophrenic.
 * So, despite my several requests for a sensible summary of Lorena's research, I've only been redirected to incoherent websites and accosted by crazy people. None of the dozen people I know who are working on RR have ever mentioned Lorena. Is it any wonder I don't take her seriously? kwami (talk) 01:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Réponse : l'ouvrage de Lorena Bettocchi, édité à la suite du forum des langues maories à Tahiti 1998, LA PAROLE PERDUE a obtenu une excellente évaluaton de linguistes ayant publié des dictionnaires, la consacrant comme philologue. Les publications de 2007 au Chili furent selectionnées par deux collèges d'historiens [], tout aussi sérieux que les linguistes du sud Pacifique, les publications de Tahiti Pacifique Magazine, en dossier culturel ont  porté leurs fruits et sont doublées de dépôts de dossiers aux archives territoriales de Tahiti, au CNRS et aux archives territoriales chiliennes avec détails et preuves. En sa qualité de philologue, elle apporte une dimension humaine à ses recherches. Et vous ne trouvez pas de sémantique dans ses pages ? Sur Ure Vae Iko il y en a cinq tableaux, sur Metoro également... sur la tablette Mamari tout un dossier... sur Routledge ? Ah ! vous avez oublié Routledge... Assurément vous n'avez pas visité toutes les pages. Juste trouvé les images qui vous intéressaient. Kwami Lorena n'essaie pas de décrypter le rongorongo, ni de le traduire. Et pour vous c'est l'objectif numero un. On peut ne pas etre d'accord,  la recherche est ainsi et il convient de le formuler poliment. Mais écrire sur wikipedia ne consacre pas un linguiste, et pour l'heure vous structurez assez maladroitement ces pages avec votre bibliographie personnelle. Les publications de Lorena comportent-t-elles des erreurs ? Mais toutes les publications antérieures également... C'est en repérant les erreurs du répertoire Jaussen qu'elle a compris le travail de restructuration de ce répertoire par les lépreux rapanui en 1936. Qu'avait dit Jacques Guy à ce sujet ? Qu'ils étaient tout juste de -bons dessinateurs- ? Non cela est faux et cela fut prouvé : ils ont travaillé à la structure morphologique de leur ancienne écriture sur les seuls outils qu'il leur restait. Et cela c'est la découverte exceptionnelle de Lorena Bettocchi au Chili en septembre 2005, sur des documents tenus occultes et censurés... Une découverte considérable en ethnolinguistique. Admettons que ceci fut sa seule découverte : elle est importante car elle contribue à la délicate chirurgie consacrée à la mémoire d'un peuple. D'autre part Kwami, quelles sont vos publications personnelles sur les antiques écritures chinoises ? Nous ne sommes pas d'accord avec vous à ce sujet : le rongorongo est très proches des écritures chinoises dès leurs commencements... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 09:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * A couple comments:
 * I thought you were directing me to a linguist's review of her work, but instead, once again, I'm simply directed her own web pages. I don't have time to read and evaluate all that now. I've tried a couple times, but her writing is so short on either substance or evidence that I've given it up as a waste of my time.
 * You both say she's not trying to translate RR. But in her 'method' section, she attempts to do precisely that. And how could you possibly say that the Atua Mata Riri chant matches the Washington tablet, if you can't read the tablet? Or does "semantics" mean you read the pictures without knowing what they say? If that's the case, if RR is like Dongba, then neither Lorena nor anyone else is going to be able to do much with it. And once again, you fail to say what "semantics" means to you - you're not using it in the linguistic sense.
 * Jaussen is important because he's the principal historical source we have of RR. Lorena is not, so to compare her errors to his misses the point.
 * The 20th-century manuscripts are not RR, so I don't see how they're relevant, except as an illustration of how RR continue to be important culturally. If her only contribution has been to show that 20th-century Rapanui have attempted (apparently unsuccessfully) to understand the structure of RR, then she's not really relevant to this article.
 * le rongorongo est très proches des écritures chinoises dès leurs commencements - again, your wording is extremely vague, so vague as to be almost meaningless. What does "très proches" mean? Are you seriously arguing that RR and Chinese share a common origin? That's what Lorena implies on her web pages: The Polynesian people hail originally from Asia, China is in Asia, therefore RR and Chinese are somehow related. She provides no evidence for this claim (well, okay, she never actually says it, but that's true with everything she writes: you have to read between the lines, because she never says anything directly). How can you make such a claim, while saying that her only discovery is modern RN documents that explore RR? Certainly any connection to China would be an extraordinary discovery.
 * If you have any evidence for her claims, or academic reviews of her work, or any of her claims made directly, so I don't have to guess at what she might be trying to say, please provide it. This is quite frustrating. In the interest of fairness, I've spent hours trying to make sense of something that in the end appears to be nonsense; I've asked for clarification, but neither she nor you appear able to provide any. If you can't explain yourselves coherently, then I can't take you seriously. kwami (talk) 11:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Reponse : vous décidez que les manuscrits ne font pas partie du rongorongo rapanui ? Vous avez tort. Petroglyphes, signatures, écritures antiques et modernes font partie du patrimoine immatériel rapanui, du patrimoine de l'humanité selon l'UNESCO. Thomas Barthel l'avait compris et vous non ? The Eight Land ne fait pas partie de vos lectures ? Juste cette précision. Quant à la publication récente de Lorena Bettocchi sur les pierres avec écriture, signalées par ses collègues sans aucune étude préalable dans le Rapanui journal comme INDETERMINATES OR SPURIOUS, et pourtant vendues cher aux Musées, Lorena Bettocchi a fourni une étude exhaustive qui est sur internet dans son site www.ile-de-paques.com, et Tahiti Pacifique Magazine les conclusions. Imprimez donc cela... Cela vous prendra une semaine pour vérifier. Un mot sur sa méthode de travail en sémantique qui est le plus droit chemin que doit prendre chaque chercheur en morphologie : elle ponctue abondamment par le terme POSSIBLE. Je pense Kwami que vous êtes loin de l'expérience de Jacques Guy, Irina Fedorova, Lorena Bettocchi et Steven Fisher. Désolée. Anne Koessler. Quant à Peter Bellwood, il est excellent dans bien des domaines culturels polynésiens y compris la linguistique. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 14:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Simply saying I'm wrong doesn't do anything. You need to show I'm wrong; otherwise I have no reason to take you seriously. If the modern manuscripts were rongorongo, then we should be able to read RR - there would be nothing to decipher, because the manuscripts and their authors would tell us how the script works. Of the dozen people I know of working on RR, none accept the modern manuscripts as authentic. Apparently neither did Barthel, or he would have translated the tablets. Of course, Lorena may prove to be right while Barthel, Fischer, Guy, and the rest are all wrong, but we come back to the lack of evidence for her claims.
 * You're correct, I do not have the experience of those people. However, I do expect that claims on any subject have evidence before they are presented as fact. That's simply part of being an editor. I initially treated Jacques and Lorena with the same suspicion. However, Jacques was able to demonstrate a sound knowledge of the subject, whereas Lorena has not. (Not that she's tried.) kwami (talk) 09:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Anne Koessler à Kwami : au vu des tatonnements que vous démontrez sur le rongorongo depuis plusieurs mois, nous comprenons que vous n'êtes pas encore en mesure de considerer comme suspect, un chercheur par rapport à un autre. Vous n'avez pas assez de sagesse et de connaissances en la matiere. Des discussions en blog ne suffisent pas Kwami. Il faut des tables rondes, des rencontres, des démonstrations documents à l'appui. De plus nous pensons que vous n'avez pas encore étudié Fedorova et les douze volumes des notes de Routledge. Il vous faut voyager en Europe, comme Steven Fisher l'a fait... Vos pages ont progressé depuis un an, mais il manque les précisions de ceux qui font des recherches et ne sont plus de simples lecteurs ou vérificateurs. S'agissant de la vision de Lorena sur Tepano Jaussen, elle a édité qq chose de nouveau sur www.ile-de-paques.com [], que les historiens et linguistes locuteurs de langues polynésiennes comprennent et valident. Lorsque Lorena édite sur une revue ou internet, elle fournit le détail de ses recherches. J'ai pour ma part toute la documentation Jaussen et ses conclusions. Les erreurs en traduction du répertoire Jaussen sont nombreuses en effet. Mais pour elle c'est la total de ses notes qu'il convient de rééditer. Et elle les a en mains. Le manuscrit authentique découvert par Lorena Bettocchi en 2005 -Rongo Metua- postérieur à 1936 est la preuve que les Pascuans ont travaillé, en école initiatique, à la restructuration du répertoire Jaussen. Ce qui est HUMAN RIGHTS Kwami. Et votre douzaine de chercheurs ne considèrent pas les manuscrits comme rongorongo authentiques ? Mais ils n'ont jamais prétendu cela. Selon Lorena ces manuscrits sont ceux du début du renouveau culturel. Les Pascuans ont toujours créé des signes et avaient, au début du XXe siècle, le droit inaliénable de travailler en sémantique sur leur propre écriture. L'opinion de vos linguistes est donc hors éthique eu egard à la définition du patrimoine immatériel de l'UNESCO. Ils refusent l'histoire d'un peuple... Brazzers accounts Mofos password Vous devez, Kwami, prendre conscience que la page de Wikipedia, que vous structurez sur le net, doit avoir pour valeur morale numéro 1, le respect de la culture de l'Ile de Paques, classée au patrimoine de l'Humanité. Il ne s'agit pas d'être l'Henry Potter du rongorongo. D'autre part, en sémantique un signe ou signifiant peut être décrit par un ou plusieurs termes ou verbes, et les significations qui en découlent sont plurielles. Ceci est notre définition en Europe. Et vous, quelle est votre définition ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 13:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Anne Koessler à Lorena : nous pensons néanmoins que les remarques de Kwami peuvent vous faire progresser car la critique est constructive et que les scientifiques qui se penchent sur les écritures archaiques chinoises; sur les origines des langues austronésiennes et la mouvance austro-tai travaillent également sur ce rongorongo tant énigmatique et.... s'ils sont moins péremptoires, plus modestes en effet... ils trouveront peut-être des solutions logiques. En attendant bravo pour votre courage, votre détermination et vos publications. Nous avons beaucoup apprécié vos pages inédites [] sur les notes de Katherine Routledge du British Museum. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 08:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

names and contents
Lorena à Kwami et SergeiR sur le chapitre "names and contents" : il conviendrait d'ajouter la source bibliographique concernant  ces noms attribués aux tablettes, "ika, renga", tablettes de la mort... de Timo, le sorcier etc...  noms attribués par les tabous, la peur, le syncrétisme du début du 20e s. Je n'ai pour ma part, en 2008, après 16 années de recherches et de constitution de la banque de données comportant tous les témoignages,  qu'un seul document authentique et manuscrit qui fournit ces informations : contenu des notes de Catherine Routledge au British Museum, largement recopiées par tous les auteurs qui ont suivi. J'avais étudié cela en 1998 lorsque j'ai publié mon livre LA PAROLE PERDUE (d'après les notes du père S. Englert);  mais à présent plus aucun philologue attaché á la culture polynésienne ne tombe dans le piège. Quelles seraient les sources de Sergei, qui ne sont pas des ouvrages d'ethnologues, archéologues ou missionnaires de l'après Routledge ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

types of wood
I just noticed one of the wood species was the European ash. Was this item A? kwami (talk) 11:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is the Oar. Would be interesting to find the sizes of the oars used on European ships in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Oar is almost exactly one Imperial yard long (914mm). Perhaps exactly, for I don't know how precisely those tablets have been measured. I have its length as 909mm. Very close to one yard.


 * On another topic, rereading the article, I found the order of the sections confusing.
 * Discovery and disappearance belong together for instance, all the more so that the latter followed the former almost immediately. Thomson's observations don't belong with decipherment
 * So we'd have something like:


 * 1) Discovery by Eyraud
 * 2) Rediscovery by Jaussen, and disappearance. But Metoro's readings and Jaussen's list belong in the decipherment section.
 * 3) Thomson -- because he landed on Easter Island after having been to Tahiti where he met Jaussen.
 * Then in the decipherment section we can deal with the readings obtained by Jaussen and explain why they were worthless. Same with what Thomson from Ure Vaeiko. The real decipherment started with Kudrjavtsev. So Jaussen's and Thomson's would be presented as "predecipherment" attempts. A bit like Kircher's "decipherment" of the Egyptian hieroglyphics before Champollion. Could be worth mentioning Carroll, the Sydney physician, and Hevesy. To show that the most arrant stupidities were seriously considered then. That's all off the top of my head, though. It's not half-baked, not even quarter-baked, it's still leavening. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

rewrite
I have tried what I suggested immediately above. It reads much better (I think) but I have not uploaded it, because it makes a mess of the article. A temporary mess, but how long is temporary? It would need a warning banner "Article being rewritten" or something. The process promises to be painful, since there is no way I know of of previewing a wikipedia article off-line. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Add to the top of the section you're working on. kwami (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I have been re-ordering the sections, and rewriting bits of them so that it all hangs together. would have to be right at the top. The sections that have not been re-ordered yet, and partly rewritten, would ensure it's all a horrendous mess. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I found greasemonkey and wikEd and installed them. It helped a little bit. Not as much as I hoped, though. Sections 4 (Name and contents) and 5 (Origin) should be relocated elsewhere. Not quite sure where. Gaping gaps have become more obvious. For instance, there should be something about how Barthel's transliteration system made discussions and publications immensely easier in those days without text-and-graphics editors. I'll rig up an illustration. JacquesGuy (talk) 02:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

"Rapanui is heavily mixed with Tahitian and Marquesan"

Marquesan??? Tahitian, of course. But Marquesan...? Any source? JacquesGuy (talk) 02:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * That's something that was already there and I just left in. kwami (talk) 03:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

All right. Zappity zappity zap zap. The phonological changes undergone by Marquesan are such that Marquesan is mutually unintelligible with Tahitian, Rapanui, Hawaiian, or Maori. E.g. NZ Maori rongo is ro'o in Tahitian and 'ono in Marquesan. If memory serves (I'm quoting from old memories, when I had access to the Menzies Library in Canberra). Marquesan might have 90% cognates or more with Tahitian or Maori, but you won't be able to understand Marquesan if you know Maori. Or Tahitian. Or Rapanui. JacquesGuy (talk) 05:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I think (banging my own drum, hey?) that it flows much better now. In the process I discovered many repetitions which must distract readers. How many times has one to be reminded of the magic number, 26? And references to the works of Englert have gone yukue fumei in the flurry of editings. You cannot discuss the roro without Englert's work, and he should figure prominently here. I have got a good mind to add a section about Carroll, the Sydney medic, and Hevesy, because their nutty ideas did make it once into serious publications. So, readers of "serious publications" (and that includes Nature) beware. There remains much to be done. I am glad to see that Michael Everson has taken an interest in the topic. Roro studies have long suffered from a lack of interest from serious, competent people (unlike the case of the Voynich manuscript) JacquesGuy (talk) 02:06, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it sounds better, though I returned a couple points in Spanish to footnotes.


 * One point, though: I don't know what "The rongorongo glyphs are regular in form" is supposed to mean - standardized shapes across the tablets? all the same size within a tablet? kwami (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Quoting you: One point, though: I don't know what "The rongorongo glyphs are regular in form" is supposed to mean

Search me! I would say "modular." The anthropomorphic glyphs are composed of 5 elements, each very regular. I am sure that you could design a TrueType font that would allow you to input, say, iieii, and come out with glyph 300 ("iieii" is a "Frogguy" -- as in "Voynich Frogguy" -- transliteration system which I have been developing for some five years now). "iieii" would be a TTF composite glyph. You'd only need a front-end parser to assemble the TTF glyph. That's what I mean to take up with Michael Everson, if he is interested. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Added a minimal amount on Carroll and Hevesy from the Spanish article. The refs are incomplete, and the dates don't match. Maybe you can also add why Carroll is worthy of mention at all. kwami (talk) 10:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I will do that. Meantime, in a nutshell: Carroll's explanations of his method, and of the structure of the writing, were fundamentally reasonable, until put to the test: the promised grammar and hieroglyphic dictionary never eventuated. But there is more. He writes:


 * It will also be apparent upon careful inspection of the inscriptions that numbers of the hieroglyphics are compound, and are constructed of distinct portions, these parts being variously combined in the different characters.

How well observed! So you read on and learn that


 * Each of these parts so combined is either a syllable or a complete word, but sometimes a letter -- either a vowel or a consonant -- of a proper name, or a grammatical form (pre- or post-position), or other part of speech.

At this stage it's hard not to think "perhaps he's cracked it!" And you read on:


 * The symbol, or part of each character, gives it value in sound to the syllable or word it is used for, or intended to denote. Thus, an open hand reads ma, an abbreviation for maqui, "the hand;" but in this case it means "free." In a pointing position it means ma, "let us see;" in other positions it has several other meanings.

And it still makes sense. But this no longer does:


 * there are in these inscriptions words and phrases from the Toltecan, Queché, Aztecan, Tschimu, Carañ, Quito, Bacatan, Quichua, Muiscan, Collan, and others. Some of these are only borrowed words, but others by their altered case-endings, suffixed genders, and different grammatical structure, give evidence that a mixture of peoples, as voyagers and residents, took place among those who came to Easter Island in the olden times

Now see how eventually he writhed out of it:


 * With regard to publishing my work upon the mode of decipherment of the hieroglyphics into the Quichua and other languages in which the engravers wrote, and translating these into English, it would cost a considerable sum of money; the enquiries made up to the present show that to print explanatory modes of decipherment of the original figures so as to be clear and comprehensible, and their equivalents in sounds distinct and plain to all, it would be necessary to cast special types for the figures and the parts of the figures of these hieroglyphics so as to show the equivalent form for each sound, that is for the syllable or word, for without this they could not be read. To do this would, it is estimated by the typefounders, cost about from fourteen to fifteen hundred pounds [around $300,000 of today]

That is why, until recently, all sorts of nonsense could go unchallenged. The corpus was beyond the reach of just about everybody. So every nut case could go about peddling this or that decipherment. There would be no-one to counter the nonsense. Hevesy is one example. Quite a few of the roro glyphs he claimed are like some Indus Valley ones simply do not exist. He fabricated them. Now who could point that out in his days? There lies the importance of Barthel's Grundlagen and of an efficient transliteration system.

So Carroll is interesting. Hevesy is not, though. What is interesting in his case is how thick-skulled the academic world proved to be.

The refs to Carroll are 1892, JPS Vol. 1 pp.103-106, 233-252 and 1897 Vol. 6 pp.91-93

I looked up Hevesy in Jumeau's "Bibliographie de l'Ile de Pâques" and was rewarded with NINE publications by him, from 1932 to 1938.

My! And Carroll kept publishing on the subject until 1908, mostly with the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia.

And while I'm at it... that 1971 publication by Barthel where he says he reduced the glyph inventory to 120 has got to be Pre-contact Writing in Oceania, in: Sebeok T. Current Trends in Linguistics in Oceania, Mouton, 1971, pp.1165-1186. I wonder what's in it JacquesGuy (talk) 13:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Hevesy
The only article by him which I have read is

1938. The Easter Island and the Indus Valley Scripts. Anthropos 33:808-814.

I probably have a photocopy of it in my mess. The first mention of him is

1932. Lettre à M. Pelliot sur une écriture mystérieuse du bassin de l'Indus. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes-rendus des séances de l'année 1932. Bulletin de juillet-septembre. Séance du 16 septembre 1932, p.310.

One single page, apparently. No idea what's in it.

Next is:

1932. Ecriture de l'île de Pâques. Bulletin de la Société des Américanistes de Belgique, nº9, décembre 1932, pp.120-127.

What would la Société des Américanistes care about Easter Island or the Indus Valley?

All those publications, apart from Anthropos, must be difficult to get hold of.

I have come across an article that seems to mean that the Lavachery-Métraux expedition was mainly prompted by Hevesy's theory. They went to Easter Island to verify it.

Here: http://lhomme.revues.org/document1958.html

I'll have to read Métraux again :-( to see what he says about it. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed. I found this on the Net, there http://www.davidmetraux.com/daniel/docs/alfred/alfred_metraux_mysteries_of_easter_island.pdf :


 * A few years ago the study of the tablets took an unexpected turn. A Hungarian linguist, Guillaume de Hevesy, published a long list of Easter Island hieroglyphs which, it was claimed, presented very striking analogies with the symbols of a newly discovered script found in the ruins of a civilization, five thousand years old, in the Indus valley. If it could be shown that the two scripts were related, new light might be thrown on the obscure past of the whole Pacific area.


 * The problem thus posed was of such significance for an understanding of the early history of man that the French government in association with certain Belgian scientific institutions decided to organize an expedition to Easter Island to try to read its riddle. The leader of the expeditions was a French archaeologist, Charles Watelin, who unfortunately died, in Tierra del Fuego. I was then asked to carry on the research, four years ago (1934-35), in association with the Belgian archaeologist, Dr. Lavachery.

It's also found in the preface of Métraux's "l'île de Pâques" first published by Gallimard in 1941. I quote the 1975 reprint by Editions Famot, of Geneva:


 * Cette hypothèse d'une Ile de Pâques dont la civilisation se rattacherait à celle des vieux peuples de l'Asie parut se confirmer il y a quelques années lorsqu'un Hongrois, M. Guillaume de Hevesy, signala des parallèles remarquable entre les symboles gravés sur les tablettes de l'Ile de Pâques et les éléments d'une écriture qui venait d'être découverte dans la vallée de l'Indus et remontait sans doute à quelque 2500 ans avant notre ère... ... C'est dans l'espoir d'apporter des faits nouveaux, susceptibles d'éclaircir cette énigme vieille de deux siècles, que, sur l'initiative du Dr Paul Rivet, directeur du Musée de l'Homme, une mission scientifique fut organisée avec l'appui des gouvernements français et belge.


 * M. Watelin... comptait voir surgir sous sa pioche les murs de vieilles cités, semblables à celles de Mohenjo-daro. Il avait la certitude que les tranchées qu'il s'apprêtait à ouvrir au pied des volcans allaient lui dévoiler une civilisation inconnue.

But Watelin died of pneumonia before reaching Easter Island and was spared the disappointment.

So there you have the story. Amazing. Again.

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Carroll founded the RASA?
Not according to my copy of Fischer's roro:


 * The physician and "philanthropist" who in 1898 became editor of the journal Science of Man, the official organ of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia...

Ah, wait a minute, here's an interesting tidbit:

http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jan03/article5.html


 * [Georgina King] turned her back on the Royal Society to be welcomed enthusiastically by the grand sounding Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, nowadays seen as forming part of the ‘lunatic fringe’

Holy shit! (pardon my French) So it's true!

http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/biogs/A002220b.htm


 * The Anthropological Society of Australasia was established in 1885. The Society's founder and secretary was Dr. Allan Carroll. In 1901 the Society gained the prefix 'Royal'.

So we'd better replace the ref. to Fischer, who says nothing of the sort, with that link to the University of Melbourne.

That Carroll makes me think of one Lanyon-Orgill, founder, editor, and main contributor, of the Journal of Austronesian Studies. He had applied for a fellowship at A.N.U. when, bad luck, Donald Laycock happened to be the acting head of the linguistics department. Don checked his credentials and... well...

And of someone else, a director of an Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures.

So the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia was a loonie bin set up by a bonesetter. WOW!

The roro are indeed a mighty powerful kook attractor. Time I set up my own institute and society. JacquesGuy (talk) 06:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I thought that might shake things up a bit. The current wiki link supports Carroll as the founder with a link to the Melbourne site, but that doesn't include the name of the journal, for which we still need Fischer. However, I wonder if we still need the name of the journal, considering its pedigree.
 * Your French is pardoned. I, evidently, am a native speaker. I hadn't realized that. kwami (talk) 06:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The name of the journal is found in the biography of Georgina King in the link already given: (http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jan03/article5.html). There is even a photo of one page of it (bottom, right) with this caption: "'The Discovery of the "Missing Link"—the appearance of Woman as a "Sport" in Nature, and the Evolution of Anthropoid Man'. Reproduced from Science of Man and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, vol. 5, no. 11, December 1902 (Sydney: G. Watson, 1898–1913) Pictures Collection."

And you'd be surprised at who got embroiled with Lanyon-Orgill's Journal of Austronesian Studies. Peter Bellwood for one. So Science of Man deserves a mention. With flying colours (hitting the fan?). Helps remind readers that roro studies have been the playground of snake-oil salesmen since the year dot, and none got tarred and feathered. Look at Hevesy!

And did you know that Lanyon-Orgill had translated part of Mamari? Which included the lunar calendar. What a piece of luck!

I wonder what is going to crawl out of this article next? JacquesGuy (talk) 08:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Allan, Allen, or Alan Carroll?
I get all three asking for +Carroll +"Anthropological Society of Australia"

It seems to be "Alan." I found several theses that mention him and in all it's "Alan." He was a paediatrician. You'll find all those references easily:
 * 1) http://alpha3.latrobe.edu.au/thesis/uploads/approved/adt-LTU20061113.110150/public/01front.pdf
 * 2) http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/using/copies/microform/aboriginal/c.html
 * 3) http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs5/roots/roots.pdf
 * 4) http://www.science.org.au/academy/basser/lists/ms026.htm
 * 5) http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P001134b.htm
 * 6) http://alpha3.latrobe.edu.au/thesis/uploads/approved/adt-LTU20061113.110150/public/05chapter6-bib.pdf
 * 7) http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2123/402/1/adt-NU2000.0015whole.pdf

It's "Alan" in all except #4 so I'm correcting to "Alan."

—Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 11:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Illustration of parallel text
Having cast a closer glance at the page, I realize that, maybe, the gif image Roro-HPQ3.gif should be some 40 pixels narrower. As it is, it seems to eat into the right-hand margin. Could an old hand at this game please advise? Miroir du Baron Samedi? (My display is set to 1024x768)

Sorry. Ignore this. I hadn't maximized the window. Bit of advice in such cases would still be welcome.

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * You can set the width of an image, but the problem comes in when others have different browser settings. If the image is too wide, it just triggers a left-right scroll-bar. You can see both at Rings of Saturn. kwami (talk) 07:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Origin
"However, there is no archaeological evidence for a long period of writing, for example among the thousands of petroglyphs on the island"

That does not strike me as much of an argument. How many stone inscriptions do we have? What would an archaeologist of 3000 AD make of them? Most are, yes! kohau ika, lists of soldiers killed in WWI and WWII. But pretty little else carved in stone, petroglyphs as they might call them. Is the fallacy worth pointing out? It's been so deeply ingrained for so long. JacquesGuy (talk) 18:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * But what inscriptions we do have are almost all in the Latin alphabet. On Easter Island there are petroglyphs, but they are not rongorongo. That might not mean anything, if the people carving the petroglyphs were not among the tangata rongorongo, but it's still worth mentioning. Maybe not so decisively, though.


 * If praise songs told how many men one killed and how many chickens one stole, and we have the kohau îka telling who was killed, might the roro also record the chickens? (Not thinking of adding that, it's just a thought.)


 * Also added a link for Everson's draft encoding. kwami (talk) 20:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "But what inscriptions we do have are almost all in the Latin alphabet. On Easter Island there are petroglyphs, but they are not rongorongo."

Our lapidary inscriptions are all in uppercase letters. Our "rongorongo" are mostly lowercase. Then take Latin. The inscriptions on Roman monuments. Now consider their cursive script, the one they used on wax tablets. You'd never relate the two if you didn't know.


 * "might the roro also record the chickens?"

I wrote an article about that in the Bulletin of the CEIPP. I took the "genealogy" of Tablet G and reinterpreted it as a chicken-stealing story. And it worked like a dream, much better than a genealogy! Leading to this reading for glyph 76: aue ("woe!"). Which explained neatly how you could have several in succession, as you do on the Santiago Staff! And taught me one thing: the luminaries at Oxford University Press don't read the CEIPP Bulletin. Otherwise they would have contacted me to write a ten-volume report on chicken-stealing in Ancient Rapanui. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

"the undeciphered hieroglyphs of pre-conquest Easter Island"
There's two... gremlins there.


 * 1) Can one speak of a conquest of Easter Island? I'd say not! Discovery perhaps so...
 * 2) pre-discovery then but what about those who take them as being post-discovery, inspired by the signing of the Spanish annexation treaty? In that light, "pre-conquest" is just as irreceivable as "pre-discovery," too.

And another: "undeciphered hieroglyphs." That is going the antagonize forthwith those who claim that it's not writing, which is a lot of people. Well, in France at least. I have it from Michel Orliac (or perhaps Catherine? or both?) that it's because Claude Hagège once decreted that the roro did not constitute a form of writing and what Hagège says goes. Never mind that the argument boils down to "it's not writing because I can't read, so there." There is a fundamental flaw in reasoning there, which you find again regarding the Voynich manuscript: we can't read it, therefore it's 1) a hoax, 2) glossolalia. (On the other hand Pirahã, which I am sure is a hoax, has escaped that fate — go figure). But back to the undeciphered hieroglyphs. I'd be in favour of dropping "undeciphered" and keeping "hieroglyphs." That leaves open the question of whether there is anything to decipher.

Still remains that pesky "pre-conquest" and I have no idea to offer there. And then also "of which only twenty-six texts remain." "Texts." Same problem. "Examples"? So perhaps: "Rongorongo is the name of the hieroglyphs discovered on Easter Island, of which only twenty-six examples remain..." Hmmm.... I like "discovered on." Even the proponents that they are writings left by visitors from Betelgeuse in 12,212 BC won't have anything to object to that. But Hagège and consorts will object to "hieroglyphs." "Glyphs," then? But "examples" then gives the false impression that there were 26 of them... "preserved on 26 carved wooden objects"? Awkward. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, "pre-conquest" is definitely a problem.
 * Hieroglyphs technically are Egyptian, even if colloquially they're used for things like rongorongo. I don't mind either way, but "glyphs" would be more neutral. I wouldn't want to drop "undeciphered". That suggests that perhaps they have been deciphered. Even if it's proto-writing, it could still theoretically be deciphered, so I don't see the problem.
 * "Texts" is such a neutral term that I don't see a problem. A tape-recording of birdsong is a "text". kwami (talk) 02:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Unicode proposal
I just downloaded it. I remember now. It's several years old. They're part of the CEIPP extended list. I'd sent it to Michael Everson. He wanted something to... hold a stake, a claim as it were in the... what do you call that? Unicode nomenclature? The CEIPP has completed that project now and they have a list of close to 3000 graphs and allographs. That's what I have to take up with Michael. I have a feeling that the list can be drastically reduced by resorting to composite glyphs ("glyph" in the technical, designer's sense here, not "hieroglyph"). But I don't know enough about unicode and glyph definition, and how the software handles composite glyphs. And then the current list is an eyesore. Much to be done. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Knorozov vs Barthel
An interesting story here: http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/ibero/xaman/articulos/9805/9805_hk2.html JacquesGuy (talk) 02:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Footnote about Atua Matariri
I noticed this footnote:


 * In 1886 Ure Vaeiko recited a chant translated as "Land copulated with the fish Ruhi Paralyzer: There issued forth the sun", which Fischer cites as a parallel

Where is that in Fischer? I seem to remember something like that, but very vaguely.

Anyway, that can only refer to this verse of Atua-Matariri: Ure Vaeiko: Heima; Ki ai Kiroto Kairui Kairui-Hakamarui Kapu te Raa. Salmon:   God Heima and goddess Kairui-hakamarui produced stars. Métraux: He Hina [He ima?] ki ai ki roto kia Rui-haka-ma-rui, ka pu te raa. Métraux: Moon (?) by copulating with Darkness (?) produced Sun

To get the meaning given by Fischer we need to read:

Henua, ki 'ai ki roto ki a Ruhi Hakamaruhi, ka pu te raa

Henua is "land", ruhi is the name of a fish, haka is a factitive verbal prefix, maruhi is "paralytic", raa is "sun."

But in this case "ruhi" is a proper noun because it is introduced by "ki a". As a common noun it would be introduced by "ki te" viz:

Henua, ki 'ai ki roto ki te ruhi hakamaruhi, ka pu te raa

As for it being a paralyzer, Englert does not give it as dangerous but as a large, dark fish with tasty flesh (cierto pez, grande, de color oscuro, carne sabrosa). JacquesGuy (talk) 10:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Dating the tablets
"However, this only dates the wood, not the inscriptions, and the scarcity of wood on Easter Island meant that such things must have been often recycled."

Upon re-reading and re-reading again, this does not make much sense to me. There would seem to be a hierarchy of sorts as to what you recycle into what. When you recycle a tablet as a fishing reel, like the Echancrée was, and many others according to Pinart as quoted by Chauvet, it is because the tablet has become valued lower than a fishing reel. Likewise when it becomes used for fire-making like Tablet H according to Catherine Orliac. Against that, there is Tablet A, an oar recycled the other way, as a tablet. But an oar of European origin. Thus there is only evidence for these to have been recycled once. Even the Snuffbox. There is no evidence that it came from a tablet recycled as a fishing reel.

At best, this only allows to speculate about the date when tablet-engraving ceased to be considered worthwhile, and to speculate further whether that was contemporary with the toppling of the statues. Practical wooden objects, however, fishing reels for example, would likely have become recycled into tablets with the growth of the tourist trade. But where is the evidence? And nowadays wood is available. Not much point in recycling decades-old bits of it. (Where do curio carvers get their supplies from, I wonder?)

I'd rather say something to the effect: "However, this only dates the wood, which may have been used for various other purposes before being inscribed on." And let readers sort it out themselves. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

"Submitted to Fischer's algorithm"
This word "algorithm" sticks in my craw. It is a strict term of mathematics and of computing. When used with reference to linguistics, it is computational linguistics. It lends Fischer's recipe an illusory cloak of scientific rigor. It is as much an "algorithm" as Jacques Lacan's "Saussurean algorithm" (http://nosubject.com/Matheme should anyone want to delve into that gibberish). In fact, it is a grotesque parody of what an algorithm is, exactly like his work on the Phaistos disc is a grotesque parody of Michael Ventris's methods in deciphering Linear B (Robinson 2002. "Lost Languages", p.313). Since this comes from the author of "The Man Who Deciphered Linear B"... and since there is a real "Fischer's Algorithm" (http://www-step.stanford.edu/abstraction/Fischer/index.html, http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~sighirea/trex/demos/fischer.html) I see no reason not to call it something else without further ado. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I just changed the 'recycled' one.
 * 'Algorithm' may have been my wording, but if so I was just trying to sort things out and wasn't making any particular claim.
 * Are you talking about Fischer's work on the Phaistos disc? I didn't know he'd made any claims about that. kwami (talk) 01:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Reworded it. kwami (talk) 02:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, didn't you know about it? I don't know if the word "algorithm" is in it, but "grotesque parody" is what Andrew Robinson calls his method. Since I have Faucounau's book, perhaps I should get Fischer's too, when I find it going for $10 or so. A few of its pages are available through Google. That's where I found the original quote about the land bonking the paralyzer fish, which doesn't paralyze but is good eating. It remains possible that Fischer referred to his own procedure as an "algorithm" but I haven't read all his stuff and I wouldn't know where. JacquesGuy (talk) 02:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Published
I put in a (fact) note since it wasn't clear when Barthel published the calendar claim. I assume it was 1958b. There's also a problem in the corpus section, where we say that Barthel was the first to publish the corpus, but then go on to compare his drawing w Phillipi. I assume Phillipi only published a small portion, but we should mention that before getting into Barthel. kwami (talk) 02:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that Philippi only published the Santiago Staff (in its entirety, too). Carroll published part of the Oar in his first JPS article. Delving deeper into all the stuff written on the subject will probably reveal many bits and pieces of the corpus published.

JacquesGuy (talk) 02:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"move corpus out of deciphement"
Much better like this. Makes room for something entitled "Oral traditions" or whatever where Routledge and Englert have their place (I'll unlock his "leyendas" on roro.org). And then that should be just about it (knock on wood). JacquesGuy (talk) 02:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The rubbing of line 12 of the Santiago Staff
The discrepancy between Fischer's rendition on the one hand, and Philippi's and Barthel's on the other, is puzzling. I find it significant that Barthel should have annotated this rubbing in red ink. Makes me think that the rubbing of the lower part of the glyph shows a knot in the wood, and that Barthel, probably having a copy of Philippi's drawing, double-checked. Whence his "Original doch 53 .76!" i.e. "the original is indeed 53 .76!" JacquesGuy (talk) 02:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know about saying that the bottom half resembles Fischer. It's just a couple lines; the distinctive part is the top.

kwami (talk) 03:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should cover the calendrical reading. We spend a lot of time on Fischer, which no one that I know of accepts

Nevertheless he got published by Oxford University Press, never mind they didn't ask Andrew Pawley, the only Polynesianist of their reading committee, you just can't dismiss him like that.JacquesGuy (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * but then skim over the one decipherment that everyone accepts. I would think that people would be more interested in the latter.

The lunar calendar? Not easy to deal with that in a few lines. That would lead us to Viktor Krupa's stupidities too, approved of by Barthel. Pity Knorozov is no longer alive. JacquesGuy (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Barthel (1958b:Appendix)(?)
Yes, appendix. The line drawings are at the end of the book, not paginated. How do you refer to them, then? JacquesGuy (talk) 03:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No, my question was 1958a vs. 1958b, that's all. kwami (talk) 06:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, kaoc'h! (pardon my Breton) it is in Grundlagen of course. So... 1958a. But I don't know which was published first. The S.A. article was in the June or July issue of Scientific American if memory serves. I remember reading it when I was a teenager in Nantes, Frogland. No idea when Grundlagen came out, apart from 1958. Same for (Barthel 1958b:66) in "Etymology". It's 1958a too. And (1958b:173-199) in "the failed Rosetta Stone" is in his Grundlagen, so 1958a. Note, BTW, how Fischer systematically translates "Grundlagen" as "rudiments". Whereby he doesn't know any German, or is pulling the wool over the eyes of those readers who have to rely on a two-bit dictionary. Rudiments mon cul, comme dirait Zazie.

But ''The Islanders had another writing (the so-called "ta’u script") which recorded their annals and other secular matters, but this has disappeared. (Barthel 1958b:66) must be 1958b (Scientific American) because p.66 of the Grundlagen'', as I have it under my nose right now, gives part of the transliteration of H, P, and Q. Perhaps I have an old, old photocopy of the S.A. article somewhere, but where?

I've fixed those ref's, but keep checking, there might be more silly sillinesses lurking. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

the thousands of petroglyphs
Thousands? I'd rather hedge my bets. "the many petroglyphs" rather? Oh, and there should be a ref to Georgia Lee. She's the one who knows about those petroglyphs. 59.101.164.106 (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Added a section. I've taken some info from Lee's website, but assume that these basic points were covered in her book. kwami (talk) 02:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

similar to the petroglyphs
We do need a link to Georgia Lee there. She is the expert on Rapanui petroglyphs. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * We used to have
 * LEE, Georgia. 1992. The Rock Art of Easter Island. Symbols of Power, Prayers to the Gods. Los Angeles: The Institute of Archaeology Publications (UCLA).
 * I took it out along with dozens of other refs that weren't mentioned in the article. Would this be her most relevant work? kwami (talk) 19:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I know practically nothing of those petroglyphs. Only seen photos. I've asked her. JacquesGuy (talk) 04:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I took out 'thousands', then put it back in when I linked to the blurb on them in the Easter Island article, which has the numbers. We should, however, be able to find a quote on few of the rongorongo resembling petroglyphs (I've seen something, but can't remember where), as well as the statement "a small portion of the population ever being literate" (Thompson again?) kwami (talk) 05:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The word "literate" does not occur in Thomson's report. If anywhere that might be in Routledge, but I don't have her book digitized so I cannot do a search. Does it matter? Is anyone going to quibble about that? Put it another way. We have 10,000 people originally. Of these we have now a sample of 111. None is literate. Estimate the proportion of literate people in the population from which this sample was drawn. You don't have to go into any complex statistical computations to find the answer: bloody few, if any at all. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, "privilege of the ruling families and priests" then. kwami (talk) 10:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't dare propose a there. It's probably somewhere in Routledge, who got it in turn from her informants. Remember that they branded Ure Vaeiko's last reading as a love song that everyone knew. A love song with the French flag (te riva forani properly: te reva farani) and a call for money (horoa moni e fahiti = horo'a moni e fa'ahiti)? A busker's patriotic song, then. Sure. The truth is: they were taking the mickey out of Routledge, just like Metoro was trying to do with Jaussen. The real mystery is: how come no-one has ever brought that to attention? Fischer is content with saying that it is Tahitian, without any evidence nor partial translation -- probably on the sole strength that "f" does not exist in Rapanui. As for Salmon, who must have known Tahitian, who cannot have missed "te reva farani" nor "horo'a moni," his translation has nothing to do with Vaeiko's song. The best match I can find for the "French flag" bit is "under the feathers of your clan" and all I can see best corresponding to the call for money is "O, where is the messenger of love between us?"!

The only thing just about certain is that, if any were literate, they were very few (see statistical argument above). And there is no evidence that they were priests or aristocracy. King Nga'ara is said to have been the last literate one, and to have run a school? Sure. And Hotu Matu'a is also said to have brought I forgot which plant, which palynology has shown to have been there 30,000 years ago. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Ana o Keke inscription
"and a komari appears at the upper right of the central figure."

No, that's no komari glyph. That is glyph 27, which looks like a curvilinear V. The komari glyph is glyph 51, which looks very much like Japanese scissors (hasami). It is found repeated on the rei-miro with the long inscription, aka object L, which ends: 470-51t-2.678a-51-79:51-700-51-20.10-51-11-51-11-51-48-51

It occurs there twice more, but fused to the top of a difficult-to-identify glyph, perhaps 700, perhaps 48, or something else again. This fused form is glyph 115 in Barthel's list.

The "feather" or "palm frond" to the left of the "canoe" under the central figure is glyph 3. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

"an otherwise unattested compound 211:42"

In fact, a close variant is attested on Br1 as 211s:42, about 200mm from the beginning of the line (http://www.rongorongo.org/b/br0102.html second line down, the ruler is in millimetres). The differences are:

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * 211 is "glued" to 42, instead of hovering above it.
 * a "ribbon" (Schmuckelement) is dangling from its right elbow
 * both "ears" are missing


 * Changed it. Is the 'canoe' an identifiable roroglyph? kwami (talk) 05:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a tough one. I showed in 1982 that 211s:42 was an allograph of 40-211s, which occurs earlier in Br1. Glyph 40 is found in the lunar calendar as a logogram for "night" (meaning a count of one night rather than "darkness" I would say). There is no reason why a logogram can't be polysemic, and why it wouldn't mean "canoe" in other contexts. It does look like a canoe, too. And again, perhaps the very canoe-like aspect of the petroglyph is but artistic license, representing the crescent-moon glyph as a canoe. Or the moon could have been said to be "Hina's canoe."

Look! It didn't take long. I just asked +Hina +canoe and this is what I got:

"In Tahiti, Hina-the-canoe-pilot sailed with her brother on a voyage of discovery. She visited the moon and decided to stay there and set her canoe adrift."

'"Hina-gathering-vegetable food". She assumes the form of Lea, the Goddess of canoe builders.'

"Hina-ke-ka (Hina the bailer), who floats up in the form of a gourd and is taken into Wakea's canoe, is here equated with Waka." (waka is the common Polynesian word for "canoe")

Of course that is all speculation, and we won't know for sure until we have deciphered line 1 of the recto of Tablet B. Don't hold your breath, please, you might do yourself a terminal injury. JacquesGuy (talk) 06:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Fun with phalluses
I noticed this detail (in boldface) for the first time: "Unfortunately, [Butinov's] proof for this claim consisted again, as in 1956, of the "genealogy" that Butinov believed is inscribed on the verso of the "Small Santiago Tablet" (RR 8v). In actual fact, this text appears instead to be a procreation chant whose X1YZ structure radically differs from what Butinov has segmented for this text."

In actual fact, this text rather appears to be a procreation chant whose X1YX structure (not X1YZ) radically differs from what Fischer has identified as procreation chants (X1YZ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 12:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

eyes? ears?
I added a comment under 'Form' about the projections on the sides of the head, which are so characteristic of rongorongo. I thought they were eyes, appearing as they do on turtles etc., but in the cave petroglyph they look more like ears. Please clean it up/delete if I'm off base. kwami (talk) 11:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * They certainly look like ears to me in that petroglyph. But, in the "turtle" glyph, they can only be eyes... IF that glyph does represent a turtle.


 * Ah... and... you'd probably better put the source of the Ana o Keke petroglyph somewhere. When I see something that challenges received ideas ("no roros in petroglyphs") I like to know where I can find it. Same thing for the excerpt of the Small Santiago with that faint line which Fischer claims to be the one to have recorded, but which appears in Barthel too.

JacquesGuy (talk) 12:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * They certainly look like eyes on the turtle petroglyph at the bottom of the page here. Assuming there's an artistic tradition common to the two.
 * The source of the petroglyph is credited on the image file. kwami (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Those faint lines
"The connecting line appears to have been traced with obsidian but then not deepened with a shark tooth."


 * Careful there. We don't know that they were first traced, then deepened. Let alone with what. Tradition, if it is to be believed, has it that the glyphs were drawn with obsidian OR shark teeth. Not with obsidian THEN shark teeth. As for myself, when I look at those photographic enlargements, I can't help think that they were burnt into the wood. Now that should be dead easy to verify, but has it ever been done? Not to my knowledge. Too many things taken for granted in this sorry saga of vandalism by neglect. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to follow up on this. kwami (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

There is little point. Routledge (p.244):


 * In writing, the incision was made with a shark's tooth: the beginners worked on the outer sheaths of banana-stems, and later were promoted to use the wood known as "toro-miro."

Englert (1970:77):


 * [the students'] copying exercises were not on wood, but on banana leaves with a stylus of bone or wood. Later the students wrote on wooden tablets with sharp-pointed gravers made of obsidian or shark teeth.

The discrepancy leads me to think it was post-hoc rationalization on the informants' part. What would you have answered in the same circumstances, when asked what the incising was done with? Well, Dederen, one of the early members of the CEIPP, made a copy, on wood, of a tablet (Keiti I think it was) and found that the most convenient engraving tool was... a ballpoint pen! That's the closest to a bone with a blunt tip that I can think of. And again, the Balinese use a sharp knife point to write on palm leaves (lontar), then they rub soot in as "ink." Was anything rubbed into the roroglyphs once incised? No-one appears to have ever bothered finding out. Speculation galore, zilch observation. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

images
I've started adding thumbnails of the tablets to the list, the way we do for the moons. They're from Chauvet and Thomson. Still have Small Santiago to go, but it's traced over. kwami (talk) 07:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Kwami votre page internet commence à etre interessante et nous observons sur l'historique que vous y travaillez énormément - au point de vue des images vous avez pris celles du diaporama provisoire de Lorena Bettocchi et celles du livre de Steven Fisher. La banque de données de ces deux chercheurs est la plus précise et je vois que vous avez tenu compte des remarques de Lorena sur les tablettes authentiques (remarques paragraphe Bettocchi). Vous progressez. Continuez sur cette lancée. Vous devez egalement signifier les sites de Lorena Bettocchi qui vient de faire une publication sur Tahiti Pacifique Magazine en fevrier 2007 sur les Pierres de l'Ile de Pâques avec écriture. Son étude est sur www.ile-de-paques.com et sa methode de travail demontre son sérieux. Anne Koessler depuis Paris. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 09:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Mind : French CNRS is observing you and Jacques Guy from december 2007. Kwami You aren't observing copyrights and censuring any kind of ours others observations. But you are progressing in epigraphics informations (Barthel items). Good. Our opinion : you are editing from your own books and Jacques Guy's opinions. Each part must be actualized. And sometimes, you are using internet pages, sometimes you are censuring valuable pages. Kwami, are you a freeman ? Anne Koessler writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.83.9.249 (talk) 08:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Anne, I'd welcome any useful information. But the anonymous edits we've been getting - whether they're from you or Lorena or someone else - have been at times incoherent and at times demonstrably wrong, so I haven't given them much credence. I asked Lorena (or someone who seemed to be Lorena) for an explanation of her views, and was directed to an on-line slide slow. When I pointed out some of its numerous errors, the response I got was that the slide show was not reliable, so I shouldn't condemn Lorena because of it. But if it's not reliable, why does she use it to illustrate her views? I later found the description of her method on her website. It displays the same confused thinking as the slide show, and is similar to dozens of people who have claimed to have deciphered RR. The people we've included, such as Knorozov and Barthel, have made real contributions. Fischer is included because his book is so popular, but with the criticisms of others in the field who reject his conclusions. There are dozens of other people, like Barry Fell and Sergei, who claim to have deciphered RR but whose ideas aren't worth mentioning. Lorena says Sergei is nonsense, Sergei says Lorena is nonsense, and I don't see any reason to mention either of them. If you can provide a sensible description of her method, great, but what she herself has written does not strike me as notable. kwami (talk) 02:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

calendar
Moved the calendar to Rapa Nui language. —kwami (talk) 08:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Not a good move. The calendar has to do with paleaoastronomy and decipherment. Practically nothing to do with the language, except for a few names of nights which constitute weak (very weak) evidence that the language of the roro is Rapa Nui. Night Hiro for instance, represented by a feather(?) garland doubled up, while "hiro" is homophonous with a verb that means "to twist fibres into a rope." But on its own this piece of evidence amounts to nothing at all. It is only when added to other similar evidence (Tane for instance, represented by a frigate bird, tavake, same first syllable) that it could amount to something. The interest of the calendar lies elsewhere. It demonstrates, for instance, that the roro are not a pictographic system. If it were, the moon crescents after the full moon would face the other way. It further suggests that sign 3 is a marker for gods, and an allograph of 59f the "feather cape." And so on. Nothing of that is relevant to an article on the Rapa Nui language.  JacquesGuy (talk) 00:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, without something to tie it into the RR article, it seemed out of place. The language article, however, has a section on pre-Tahitian RN material, much of which is vocabulary. That seemed as good a place as any. Or maybe we should create a separate article on the RN calendar? (There are other articles like this, such as Lithuanian calendar.) kwami (talk) 02:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The "calendar" is the only text which everyone agrees upon being that. So it belongs first and foremost in "decipherment." The next candidate is the genealogy. But there is no consensus there. If you remove the calendar, then you have to remove the genealogy. And everything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 07:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The proposed genealogy is rongorongo, Thomson's calendar is not, and we don't provide any way of connecting it to rongorongo. The link is there for anyone who wants to follow up on it. kwami (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

---They are often called hieroglyphs---

... but have no connection to the sacred writing of Egypt

Pousse-au-crime! JacquesGuy (talk) 15:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, maybe that should go. kwami (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

biography stub
I thought Thomas Barthel deserved some recognition, so I created an article stub. You might want to verify it. kwami (talk) 04:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked for a biography of him in German and so far found nothing. I could not even find the title of his thesis.JacquesGuy (talk) 14:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I found this and added what I understood of it to the article. kwami (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. I was amazed at the dearth of information about him. Eez curse of Hotu Matu'a re-re-redux! JacquesGuy (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

unknown tablet
Jacques, do you recognize this tablet?


 * (deleted)

Thanks! kwami (talk) 10:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I don't remember seeing it. Perhaps it's one of those which Fischer calls "epigones." But his book has no pictures of them, only short descriptions quite insufficient to identify this one. For instance, it could be this (p.514):

"Musée de l'Homme D.66.1792/1793.493"

The artefact appears only to exist in the Photographic Collection of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris (D.66.1792/1793.493; wood and size unknown). The tablet displays ten lines (five and five) of c. 106 glyphs, one line on either side being boustrophedonic. It, too, has been incised in the "mixed script" style of the 1920s. The provenance and present location of the artifact are unknown.

That's what pisses me off with Fischer. You'd think he would have provided a photo of it. But no. And what are you supposed to make of "one line on either side being boustrophedonic"? What can that possibly mean? What is the sight of one line being boustrophedonic... ah.. a koan. And what is that "mixed script style of the 1920s"? JacquesGuy (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I assume the "mixed script" is nouveau ta'u or mama, which people decorated tourist items with, like the "îka" tablets made in the shape of a fish.
 * I can clap with one hand (the only utility of which is to annoy people), so let's see if I can write one line boustrophedonically. Actually, maybe what he meant was each side has four line going in one direction, and one in the other.
 * The resolution on that tablet is pretty low, but the glyphs sure look good. If it's a fake, someone did a nice job. kwami (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I can hardly distinguish anything. Sure, signs are visible and they look all right, but upon closer inspection, if it was possible, they might look not so hot anymore. There is an interesting photo of two tablets in Francis Mazière's "Fantastique île de Pâques." The top one is a worm-eaten tablet and the signs on it are horrible. They look like straight copies of the Jaussen List, itself a pretty gruesome exercise in inept draughtsmanship. The bottom tablet looks authentic... until you have a closer look. Where did you find the photo of that one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 16:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Some tourism site. I wrote to ask where they got it from, if they even remember. kwami (talk) 08:17, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Routledge, Englert now?
Isn't it time to have a section on Routledge and one on Englert soon? Englert's Leyendas and his La Tierra de Hotu Matu'a with its dictionary are about the only useful sources for the language. The word lists gathered by early visitors don't amount to much, apart from showing that the language was straight Polynesian. Routledge is another matter. Her informants' stories are to be taken with a good dose of skepticism. She obviously (to me) knew no Rapanui and no Tahitian and was in no position to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I still can't get over that "love song." The only thing I can say in favour is that her informants cannot have made it all up from scratch. Does she say who translated for her, and if it was into English, or into Spanish? I don't remember, and reading those pages again is such a chore. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Englert should probably go in the Rapanui language article. Routledge is more difficult. Maybe we can take that section from the Spanish article, and touch it up a bit. kwami (talk) 08:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, very basic, and maybe not very accurate, but it's something. Move it, gut it, or expand it as you will. I'll leave Englert to you, since I'm not at all familiar with his work. kwami (talk) 08:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

All right, I'll do it. But keep in mind that apart from his dictionary there is little about the language in Englert's works. And his grammar of Rapanui is abominable. He was obviously fluent, but he had no idea how to explain it. I wonder, BTW, what Veronica Du Feu's grammar is like. But at US$325 I sure am not keen to find out! Back to Englert. Even his bilingual "Leyendas" have more to do with legends, beliefs, and the description of day-to-day life in the old days than with the language itself. I used them to try to teach myself the language, but others will read them for the ethnological data. Technological data even: there is a description of how the houses were built. And another text about how the moai's were erected. And speaking of moai's and how to move multi-ton monolith monsters:

http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/Page1.htm

Amazing, I found Du Feu's grammar at Alibris. The prices go from AU$244.81 (from a bookshop in India) to... hold onto your hat... AU$717.89 from Goldenstone Books in California! JacquesGuy (talk) 09:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Those videos are pretty cool.
 * I guess I don't understand the importance of Englert, other than the language and ethnological descriptions, so let's just stick him in wherever he fits. There wasn't much in the Spanish article.
 * Is your proposal that the upward and downward fish in Ca6-8 indicate waxing and waning phases well accepted? It seems we could go into more detail there, even if some of the speculations are too tentative to include. (Or maybe just continue to redirect to your site.)
 * BTW, the 'citation needed' tags in the notes are mostly date discrepancies. Maybe you could check them against Fischer, since I don't have access to his bibliography? (There are notes in the wiki encoding for what's off.) kwami (talk) 11:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, were there no glyphs missing from Barthel's Ca at the transitions from lines 7-8 and 8-9? kwami (talk) 11:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

"Is your proposal that the upward and downward fish in Ca6-8 indicate waxing and waning phases well accepted?"

I don't know.

"It seems we could go into more detail there, even if some of the speculations are too tentative to include. (Or maybe just continue to redirect to your site.)"

I don't say much at all there. Remember: it's by "Anonymous," not by "Jacques Guy."

"BTW, the 'citation needed' tags in the notes are mostly date discrepancies. Maybe you could check them against Fischer, since I don't have access to his bibliography? (There are notes in the wiki encoding for what's off.)"

I'll try an ferret it out.

"Oh, were there no glyphs missing from Barthel's Ca at the transitions from lines 7-8 and 8-9?"

Probably not. There is no "hole" in the text. Whereas I could tell there was something missing after 390.41-375-41 ending Ca6. I decided to sweep it under the carpet in my JSO article. And no-one noticed. The article in French written years later for the CEIPP Bulletin is much better. Read it if you can get hold of it. There is a story behind my JSO article. To cut it short: I had sent them a draft of the article for an opinion (I was continuously improving on it). They published it almost by return mail! So what you can read is a draft, warts and all. The CEIPP article is closer to what it should have been. JacquesGuy (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Doubt I'll have access to the Bulletin anytime soon, but I'll keep my eye out.


 * I certainly have it somewhere in my mess. It's only 3 of 4 pages long. It should be on my hard disk too... unless it's one of the files I lost last year. M...iel. I wonder if I should try and get it published again, in English this time? It's different enough from the JSO article JacquesGuy (talk) 11:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * We should add the names of the intercalary nights (hotu and hiro?) to Rapa Nui calendar, but I don't want to get it wrong.

kwami (talk) 09:19, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The embolismic month Kotuti is as certain as can be. Not so at all with Hotu and Hiro. I really have to dig out that CEIPP article.JacquesGuy (talk) 11:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

"There is no "hole" in the text."
 * Except that we wouldn't notice at the end of line 8, since it's a new sequence. I would suspect that if one line runs off the edge, others might too, at least on that side. But Fischer would presumably show it for 8 if he does for 6 & 7.


 * You can hold in the same suspicion every beginning and end of every line of the corpus!


 * Anyway, I put in a bit about the sequences found in the 'calendar'. Please correct if I goofed. kwami (talk) 09:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Santiago Staff again
"the only [text] with punctuation."

We don't know that! The vertical line exists in Ancient Egyptian too, and it's not a punctuation mark at all. It means that the hieroglyph it accompanies is to be taken as what it represents, i.e. is to be interpreted as an icon, not a symbol. For instance, to take a familiar, modern example, a picture of a woman in a skirt is to be understood as "woman" (icon) not as "women's toilet" (symbol). And a cup as "cup" (icon) not "cafeteria" (symbol). We know nothing of what that roro vertical line represented. JacquesGuy (talk) 13:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Dating the tablets: glyph 067
The picture of glyph 067 displays as: Image:Rongorongo 067.svg

in my browser (latest version of Firefox: 2.0.0.12).

Does Firefox not like scalable vector graphics, or is the file defective? JacquesGuy (talk) 21:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I just haven't gotten around to finishing that graphic, but having a placeholder in the article keeps me from forgetting it. kwami (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"This is Barthel 1959a in Fischer 1997" (in footnote)
But the quote is in English, whereas "Neues zur Osterinselschrift" (Barthel 1959a) is in German. Wouldn't it be better to reference the page in Fischer 1997 where that translation appears? (It's right at the bottom of p.526) JacquesGuy (talk) 00:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Sections
Sorry, still haven't gotten to that citation.

I've added articles for most of the tablets now. Mostly material taken from Fischer's summaries; eventually I'd like to add the texts.

Also added a short section on Harrison's 'name' lists. kwami (talk) 10:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Use
Just realized we don't have a section on how the script was used. That requires teasing apart the traditions, of course, so we'd have to say it's all rather uncertain, but I thought the New Scientist article had a decent summary:


 * ''At formal gatherings, the tablets were flourished, and the inscriptions were ritually sung to activate their spiritual power. Depending on their content, inscriptions could elicit supernatural powers to kill a murderer, enhance female fertility, invoke rain, or increase crop productivity or the size of a catch.


 * ''Islanders say that in pre-missionary days many tablets were destroyed in wars or deliberately burnt to remove the spiritual power of rival clans. Other tablets were buried with the honoured dead.

Is this in the ballpark, considering that we don't really know? kwami (talk) 11:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Wot? Moonbats yukue fumei?
Let's see, though. If they haven't conchié this article on March 1st I'll restore roro.org and see. As for New Scientist, I don't lend it much more credibility than to whatsitsname again? New Dawn. Or the Weekly World News. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 04:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

@ Coolgamer
Good. The stupid arsehole called Coolgamer thinks he knows English better. roro.org will not be restored on March 1st.

(Addendum) I don't see any point in contributing to something that any poor moron, like Coolgamer, can drop his shit in as he happens by. Farewell and go screw your sorry selves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.68.183.165 (talk) 14:00, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Uh, you're keeping your site off-line because someone changed no-one to nobody a week ago?? Oh well. Thanks for all the work you've done developing this article. A few touch-ups and it should be ready for FA nomination. kwami (talk) 20:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)