Re: aliens!

BP Jonsson wrote:
>B Garcia skrev:
>>
>>I honestly would not be surprised if that's true. You
>>could get quite a few phonemes out of a tic-tac-toe grid.
>
>There is a 'cypher', especially popular with boyscouts,
>called _brädgårdschiffret_ 'the lumberyard cypher'in
>Swedish which works by placing the letters of the alphabet
>in three tic-tac-toe grids and then using segments of the
>grid as letters, using diacritic dots to distinguish yhe
>three groups. An illustration with text in Swedish is at
><http://tinyurl.com/3b59af>
><http://www.morlandascoutkar.se-/scoutfakta/chiffer/bradgard.asp>
Interesting.......I was thinking, this idea is pretty old.......I recalled
that chums and I "devised" the tic-tac-toe thing way back in grade school
(mid 1940s)-- I was never a Scout, but others were-- so that must be where
the idea came from. I didn't recall the X-thing, but obviously one needed
something to get 8 more symbols than the 18 provided by 2 TTT grids......
>
>As they point out it is more effective if the order of the
>alphabet is scrambled! The cultural impact of this 'cypher'
>is illustrated by the fact that some Swedes call the #
>symbol _brädgård_ 'lumberyard'.
That's amusing. I guess in Kash we could call it (base hambar) _akambar_
'grid, lattice' or  _hamba-krambar (hambar redup.) ~cakambar 'in a
disorderly heap or pile (usu. of straight or rigid things like logs, lumber,
tools, books)'

BTW, where/how are people finding all these things in the "aliens" site? I
confess, I haven't clicked on any of the links-- but don't see any that seem
specifically related to language(s)........

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