Our symbols

We've been looking at adinkra symbols from Ghana in Africa, and how they represent important values.

For instance, sankofa, which is a symbol of a bird reaching behind, means "go back and get it", and stands for learning from the past:

  

We thought about what values are important to us, and what helps us to learn:

We each chose a value or activity that was important to us and worked on a symbol that would metaphorically represent it; then we made the symbol more abstract and simple.

Here's a slideshow of our symbols:

Writing our names in Urdu

Thank you to Maryam's mum who came in and showed us all how to write our names in Urdu script:

Armand - آرمنڈ
Beatriz - بیٹرکس
Ellis - ایلیس
Evangelos - ایوانجیلاس
Felix - فیلکس
Hannah - حینا
Ines - اینس
Jinmin - جینمن
Keech - کیچ
Killian - کیلین
Maria - ماریا
Maryam - مریم
Miguel - میگعل
Nicola - نیکولا
Noa - نوا
Orla - اورلا
Rhea - رئیا
Tibo - ٹیبو

 Julia  - جئلیا

 Mateo - میٹیو

 Edward- ایڈورڈ

 Loris - لوریس

 Pablo - پابلو

 Meili - معیلی

 Teresa - ٹریسا

Marcus - مارکس

 Bea - بعا

Matteo - میٹیو

 Abigail - ابیگیل

 Yeshu - یاشو

 Kirill - کیریل

Cristina - کرسٹینا

 Louis - لویس

 Shriya - شریا

 Libby - لیبی

 Manu - مانو

 Noah - نوحا

The Weird Russian Alphabet

The Weird Russian Alphabet

!!!BEWARE!!!

Don't read if you have weak nerves!

Because the Russian alphabet will totally rack them!
For a start,  let's look at all Russian letters and how you pronounce them:

а      б      в      г      д      е       ё      ж      з      и      к      л      м      н       о

a      b      v      g     d     ye     yo    zh      z      i       k      l      m      n       o

п      р      с      т      у      ф      х      ц      ч     ш     щ      ъ      ы      ь      э

p      r       s      t       u      f       h              ch   sh    sh’                              e

ю   я

yu  ya

If the letter has no pronunciation under it, it means that this sound is really hard to pronounce and you probably can't do it.
If a letter has a ' after it, that means that the sound is soft.

Now for the strange things. If letter я stands at the beginning of the word or after a vowel like in як, we pronounce it like yak, but if it's in a middle of the word like in поляна, we pronounce it pol'ana. Same with е, ё, and ю. Tricky isn't it?

Here are some names written using Russian letters:

Kirill                   Кирилл

Louis                   Люи

Matteo                 Маттэо

Edward                Эдвард

Cristina                Кристина

Julia                     Джулиа/Джулия


It's all for today, see you again!

Writing our names in Hindi script

Rhea's mum has been kind enough to come in and show us how to write our names using the Hindi alphabet.

There are a lot of letters! Here are the vowels:

and here are the consonants:

We've been learning to write our names in Hindi script:

KEECH                       कीच

JINMIN                       जिंनमिंन

ARMAND                    आर्मो

NICOLA                      निकला

TIBO                            टीबो

BEATRIZ                    बीअत्रिज़

MARYAM                   मरयम

RHEA                          रिया

ORLA                          औरला

NOA                            नोआ

INES                           इन्स

HANNAH                    हन्नाह

KILLIAN                      किलियन

MIGUEL                      मिगेल

MARIA                        मरिया

EVANGELOS             एवेंजेलोस

ELLIS                         एलिस

FELIX                          फीलिक्स

Julia	जूलिया
Mateo	मटेओ
Edward	एडवर्ड
Loris	लोरहिस
Pablo	पैबलो
MeiLi	मैली
Teresa	टेरेसा
Marcus	मार्कस
Bea	बी
Matteo	मटेओ
Abigail	अबीगैल
Yeshu	यशु
Kirill	किरृल
Cristina	क्रिस्टीना
Louis	लूयी
Shriya	श्रिया
Libby	लिब्बी
Manu	मैनू
Noah	नोआ

 

K

The letter K back when the Egyptians were learning about the alphabet.
They used think if we have a thing we can make it into something called a letter. The K used to look like this the Proto-Sinaitic.

For the Egyptians this was "kaf", the palm of a hand:

It became K.

It's quite odd. I know that, but that's what it looked like back in time. The letter K has evolved into something similar to our letter K.

This was the Phoenician K:

It's odd as well, its like its on its head jumping. 

And then finally the Greeks have changed it into this K. 

the letter o and its story

       o

THIS IS THE LETTER O WHICH WE USE TODAY.

This was the letter o which they used in the ancient Egyptian! It meant an eye, and they said it "en".

 

This was the letter o which the Proto -Sinaitic used to write in the first alphabet:

This was the letter o which the Phoenicians used to write!

This was the letter o which the Greeks used to write!

This was the letter o which the Etruscans used to write!

This is now the letter O that we use:

M' s story

Long ago, in the Egyptian hieroglyph  the letter M meant "water".
It looks like this: .

EVOLUTION!

Centuries later it evolved.

Proto-sinaitic wrote it differently.
Like this: .

EVOLUTION!

Phoenician...
it started to look like a proper M!


EVOLUTION

Paleo-hebrew was a little more abstract than the Phoenicians more like
a hand-script: 

The before last evolution, Aramaic.

This has gone off track the letter M doesn't look like one now: 

Last evolution-Greek/Italic

this looks like modern Europeans now. But there is a difference:

Seeing one thing as another thing

What if you peeled a tangerine...

and looked at the shape:

What would you see?

We tried this and we saw all sorts of things:

It's amazing all the things that we saw the shape as: a crab, a ghost, a moose, an elephant. What can you see?

Here we see one thing as another thing. We might say it is that thing. This is called metaphor, especially when it's in writing. But we all experience metaphor in other places lots. Like when we have a toy. We play with this:

and even though it's made of wood and needs pushing we call it a train. Like with signs, one thing stands for another. The toy represents the train so well that we simply call it a train.

Symbol Stones

We've finished our symbol stones and they look beautiful!

Alphabet evolution by Miguel and Pablo

In ancient Egypt this symbol: was represented by water and was called “mayim”.

After some time during the Proto-Sinaitic period the symbol changed to which was called “mem”.
The Phoenicians changed it by putting a curved line at the end.


Paleo-Hebrews didn’t change it much they just made it curved.

Aramaic people made it go a bit weird, they changed the curved lines for a line.
The Greeks did the same as the Phoenicians but they made it straight and they turned it around.

The Romans made the last stick go to the bottom, and that made our actual M.

How S Evolved

This is how the Egyptians wrote S:
It was a picture of a tooth; they pronounced this "sun".

The Proto-Sinaitic writing was like this:

Then the Phoenicians wrote it like this:

The Greeks wrote it like this:

And now we write it like this…

These are all the computer Ss that we write:

SSSSS

E by Noah &Tibo

The ancient Egyptian populations(Hieroglyph) E all started

  by this strange symbol representing a man: 

Then it evolved into a simpler man by the Proto-Sinaitic :

When the merchants arrived. These cool symbols travelled up to Phoenician.

It looked more like an E but it is the wrong way round:

Then it had increased its height:

After a long travel it went to Greek:

After the Greeks, the Romans made modern European writing.    

There are now lots of ways to write like fonts

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