Talk:Decipherment of rongorongo/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Дешифровка ронгоронго Ириной Константиновной Федоровой (признано РАН)

http://www.garshin.ru/linguistics/scripts/rongo/index.html и http://www.garshin.ru/linguistics/scripts/rongo/_htm/fedorova_1.htm

Почему нет ни слова про работы Федоровой? Ладно на английском, но даже на русском! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.224.246.51 (talk) 17:09, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

We do mention her, and there's a thread about her below. — kwami (talk) 00:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Atua Mara riri Ure Vae Iko song 1886

Lorena Bettocchi a Kwami : je t'invite à découvrir le chant Atua-mata-riri correctement orthographié et les possibles significations http://www.rongo-rongo.com/atua-mata-riri-2.html tu peux comparer Thomson, Metraux, Fischer et Bettocchi... et te poser la question suivante : lequel des trois a travaillé et compris le langage de Ure Vae Iko et Kaitaie ? Tu peux également vérifier avec les diccionaires anciens ou sur le glossaire d'étude. Pour ce qui est de la banque de données polynésienne relevée par Monseigneur Tepano Jaussen 1869 et plus, Thomson 1886, K. Routledge 1914 et Bettocchi au sujet des ateliers rongorongo des lépreux 1936 et plus, nous avons encore beaucoup à étudier et à apprendre. Mais je dois te féliciter pour ta contribution sur les publications récentes.

Merci, Lorena! Je le lirai. kwami (talk) 06:52, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Berthin

Moving this off the page until there is discussion (Guy believes this cannot possibly be true):

Berthin and Berthin (2006) broadly agree with Guy, and also see pictographs and rebuses in the calendar, but not a phonetic script. They noticed that the lines of chevrons which Guy analyzed as phonetic (the second green glyph, a double strand of seven chevrons, and the second green glyph from last, a single strand of six) correspond in number to the crescent they modify plus the number of unmarked kokore crescents which follow, at least in Barthel's tracings. In addition, they do not recognize the half-size superscripted crescents as being distinctive, proposing instead that it is the unusual sequence of stacked "accounting sets" of beaded lozenges in the three lines following Barthel's proposed calendar (blue and pink in the image above) which indicate where the intercalary days fall, with each lozenge ("◇") corresponding to a month, and the beads representing intercalary days:

◦◇		An intercalary day before the full moon;
◇◦		An intercalary day after the full moon;
◦◇◦		Two intercalary days.

Similar patterns of beaded lozenges occur on the verso of Mamari. However, no calendrical analysis has been done.

The image caption and biblio would also need to be adjusted, but that can wait.

The problem is that every month requires at least one intercalary day, since a lunar month is 29½ days but the RN old calendar month is 28 days, but a large number of lozenges have no beads. Even if a string of unbeaded lozenges had a different meaning, unbeaded and beaded lozenges are mixed together in the same string of 3 or 4. kwami (talk) 03:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why isn't "rongorongo" a proper noun like all other scripts? Tuf-Kat (talk) 22:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

All other scripts aren't proper nouns. kwami (talk) 18:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Hunh? It's the Latin script, not the latin script. It's Cyrillic, not cyrillic. It's N'Ko, not n'ko. It's Sundanese, not sundanese. It should be Rongorongo. -- Evertype·✆ 08:41, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Proper nouns and adjectives derived from them are capitalized. Common nouns and adjectives are not. Latin is a proper noun. Cyril is a proper noun. Sunda is a proper noun. We don't capitalize kana, or kanji, or rune, or futhark, or hieroglyph, or cuneiform. The literature since at least Routledge in 1915 treats rongorongo as a common noun: the only orthographic discrepancy is in hyphenation. What is it about rongorongo that makes you think it's a proper noun? kwami (talk) 09:12, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

More to the point of what you're missing is that rongorongo isn't a language. At this point it is defined as a system of glyphs, and furthermore the idea that it even represents a language is becoming increasingly weak. It's more analogous to the system(s) of speech called 'glossolalia'. Other examples of systems would be mathematics (geometry, calculus), sociology, politics, music, and the like. Another potential source of confusion is the initial sight of "rongorongo" in article titles and the beginnings of sentences, where one's only prior knowledge might be the standard public misapprehension that it is a script, akin to Greek or Latin's, excepting only that it is famously undeciphered.JohndanR (talk) 02:43, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Bolded intro

Erm, don't leads usually start with the name of article (or some variant) in bold? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Only when convenient. For example, International recognition of Kosovo does not contain this phrase in the lede; previous titles (International recognition of the independence of Kosovo, etc.) did not either. I see now that someone has bolded it later in the text, but generally we don't want to distort an introduction just to be able to echo the title for bolding. kwami (talk) 02:16, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. You mean to correspond to the format it has on 'Today's featured article'? They will force the issue on the main page so that they can provide a link to the article at the very top of the window. But on the article itself, it's a formatting decision. There are several aspects of this article, such as the first mention of a concept sometimes not being linked, that are remnants of when it was part of the rongorongo article (it was split off of that article during FA due to length considerations), and the wording of the intro reflects that. Maybe I'll adopt their wording—or do you have something particularly elegant in mind? kwami (talk) 22:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Suggest move to "Decipheration of rongorongo"

Or perhaps deciphration. They make more sense than this title 91.111.191.110 (talk) 12:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, yeah, it obviously isn't deciphered, yet. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

See Decipherment. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 13:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Decipherments are claims or attempts, regardless of whether they are universally accepted. According to Fischer, he's deciphered RR, and the Science article speaks of his "decipherment" of RR. So you may have competing and mutually exclusive decipherments. Yeah, I know that seems counter-intuitive, if a "decipherment" does not allow us to actually read the thing (though of course Fischer claims it does), but that's how the word is used in the literature. I think it might be a way for writers to refer to decipherment projects without passing judgement on whether they are correct. You also see the phrase "failed decipherment", which can only be meaningful if the word "decipherment" does not predicate success. In that usage, in the opinion of academia there has been no "successful decipherment" of RR, only "failed decipherments" (and a few likely partial decipherments). kwami (talk) 23:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

That does make sense also because in principle, you can never be completely sure that an attempt is correct. You can just determine that it is consistent with other evidence and itself. It could also be correct save for a few points. In principle, there could even be two or more competing proposals that all make equal sense. Which is the "true" decipherment then? Using "decipherment" in the sense of "proposal" sidesteps these complications. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:55, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

With rare exceptions 'decipherment' pertains to languages. This pursuit is losing momentum to the increasingly supported hypothesis that rongorongo is something else, such as tabular astronomical representations, for which the broader term 'interpretation' (e.g. "the seismic signal is best interpreted to be of a nuclear detonation") might be a better. JohndanR (talk) 02:23, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Naive question

In reviewing the article and the comments, I did not see any consideration of the potentially complicating factor that the dialect represented by the Rongorongo inscriptions may be archaic relative to the Rapanui language as it is available today. This could include a situation in which the inscriptions represent a specialized formal or ceremonial version of the language, having archaic features. It would not be usual to have a specialized register or level of a language for passing on traditional knowledge, such as how to calculate the Rapa Nui calendar, from generation to generation. (We do this in the English language today, with formal written English being significantly distinguishable from "street language" in all parts of the world where English is spoken. The difference between Latin and the vernacular in early medieval France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal offers another example.) This could also provide an alternative explanation for why statistical analysis suggests that the doubling patterns of Rapanui do not appear to be represented in the Rongorongo inscriptions. -- Bob (Bob99 (talk) 16:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC))

This is a very important question. It is addressed in the article in a couple places, though perhaps it could be stressed more. Modern Rapa Nui is significantly different than the old language (admixture with Tahitian), and it is very possible that the tablets are written in an esoteric register which has been completely lost. We even have oral accounts that experts in one category of tablet were unable to read other tablets. Nonetheless, the basic grammatical structure of the language, in so far as it's written explicitly, should be more or less the same. kwami (talk) 22:04, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I just thought, this might be background info that was mostly left on the main rongorongo article when this was split off, and not sufficiently repeated here. I might get a chance later to review this point. kwami (talk) 23:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this needs to be relevant because it may well be concluded earlier, but in my opinion the tablets represent sth of poetry, a literary shape, wich would explain why different tablets tend to feature different syllables more pronouncedly, songs mayb, even looks(..) like rhyme to me. Also that the supposed informed readers early on chant or recant seemingly meaningless and misplaced songs, myths and strokes of texts suggests to me the artistic product of an oral tradition, the description is suggestive of someone who rightly identified two of the tablets for certain hymns or patterns, but misidentified the others, in fact not being able to read them.(but perhaps recognising certain characters to belong to a certain tradition)24.132.170.97 (talk) 00:21, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

FA

Kudos to all who participated in making this a featured article. I just read through this and the level of scholarship present is top notch. This article is truly an example of Wikipedia at its best. Thank you. ThemFromSpace 17:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Maybe the grueling FA process was worth it.kwami (talk) 22:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This is one of the most impressive FAs I've read - if not the most. Congratulations to all those who worked on it. David WC2 (talk) 06:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Stunning article. Very engaging. Well done to all contributors! Orthorhombic (talk) 16:32, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The Ethics of Deciphering Rongorongo in terms of Repatriation

Consideration towards the culture of Easter Island, Polynesia and Indigenous Peoples as a whole is paramount in any attempts at researching these cultures.

Indigenous Peoples look for sincerity as one of the prerequisits in attempting any research. In expressing this sincerity towards the Indigenous Peoples related by their association to these tablets, a few questions can be explored to aid in the expression of that sensitivityd:

Are the Elders lead consultants in the investigation after loaning transfer of knowledge rights to the investigator?

Was a thorough investigation of Polynesian culture and language up to European contact conducted?

Has there been an investigation of the use of sacred ritual carvings and language and the resulting considering of Indigenous approaches to language use and pictoglyph symbolism?

Are the concepts of repatriation of the tablets and other artifacts to Easter Island being considered?

Is the investigator aware of their role to participate in the necessary circle of decolonization, where there is a remnant of those who wish to thrive because of the preservation of their ancient beliefs?

Does the investigator begin his document with at least an attempted apology for the effects of colonization that continue to marginalize Indigenous Peoples?

Has the investigator attempted to retrace the steps of the colonizors to first contact and in doing so begin to understand how the Western world might have evolved had their been a partnership with Indigenous Peoples instead of an attempted Genocide?

This is the essential question in any honorable investigation of these tablets: what universal ecological and spiritual teaching might these tablets offer the world, which is waning and dying for our lacking of these essential teachings? What did we miss?

Perhaps if we can answer these questions thoroughly, without our backs up, the ancestors would offer us the sight to see what these tablets have to offer humanity?

Some suggestions and the successful attempts at deciphereing certain Polynesian chants on the tablets are found on Imaitaki's facebook albums and photos. Thus far he has found the legends of the Canoe of Rata and deciphered, the Tattoo Soothing Chant of Maui and deciphered, the Rainbow Deity, Uenuku-Kopako and deciphered, The Bright Road of Tane and deciphered. He has also contributed to the significance of the Moon Cycle as the Falling of Hina myth. Come and see the significance of the definitive decipherment of these chants and others.

The Eighth Land contains the latin portion of Manuscript E, does anyone know where the Rongorongo inserts can be found?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Imaitaki (talk • contribs) 16:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The Rapa Nui people abandoned these artifacts as they no longer valued them. They weren't stolen. The first one was a gift, and others were purchased; also, some were not purchased because their owners were using them as fishing reels and wouldn't sell. Those have now been lost. If the others had not been taken to museums, all would have been lost, and now all we would have left would be legends. The genocide Europeans and Americans perpetrated on the islanders was a war crime, but the collection of rongorongo tablets was not part of that crime, which is irrelevant to this article: The sad story of the colonial impact on Easter Island belongs at History of Easter Island.

We don't accept blogs as evidence for decipherment. Dozens of crackpots have claimed to have deciphered rongorongo, and they've all been demonstrably wrong. Get published, have reviewers say, "My God, he's got it!", and then we'll include you in this article. That's how an encyclopedia works.

From what I understand, scholars haven't bothered much with those manuscripts since Barthel showed them to be in part copies of known tablets. I think the rest is assumed to be random RR made in imitation of the tablets. I assume you know of Heyerdahl & Ferdon's photos in vol. 2 of Reports of Norwegian Expedition to Easter Island, and are looking for the complete text? AFAIK it's never been published. Fischer (1997) wasn't able to find it. On p. 518 he says, "Since this manuscript was compiled c. 1910 ... unfortunately, no illustration or photograph of these pages is available ... repeated attemts over several years to secure at least a photocopy of these pages have proved futile." kwami (talk) 23:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. I definately am growing in my understanding of the global politics involved in colonialization. I think I'll leave what I have said for others who could use some of your responses?

Any feedback on the following? Glyph possibilities:

1: Phallus or Foot? The glyph commonly called the phallus glyph on the Santiago Staff. Considering the list a compilation of names, each with the so called 'phallus' symbol attached. Now following the migration route (proposed by source needed) that directs us close to Indonesia at Bellona Island. Reading the Bellona Island chants (source needed) the word commonly used with names in prayers is 'wae' meaning foot. Consider the use of the foot as a sign of the persons right to live or 'step foot' on the island. What do you think?

2: Window? or no? The Marami tablet moon calendar has the full moon, we all agree is Motohi, or in Polynesia, Matahiapo. Consider the circular surround as a sign for MATA, window, eye, light etc.

3: The glyph with the Rapa Oar on Reimiro 1, Text J tablet. 4 syllables: TU - to stand (from the two bottom legs standing); HI - from Hianga - to stoop or bend (from the neck bending over); NA or wha - to reveal (from the open palm of the hand at the end of the neck); PO - ball (from the ball on the right side of the neck.) Tuhinapo is the Polynesia deity of Ocean Migrations. Combined with the Rapa oar, the Power Oar. The Authority Neck Ornament of the Island King or Princess, the Reimiro, has written on it the deity of ocean migrations with his power oar, Tuhinapo-Rapa, for safe passage of fishermen, migraters, and the souls of the dead to Ikaroa, the Milky Way afterlife.

Any consideration of the following? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Imaitaki (talk • contribs) 19:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, only Fischer thinks it's a phallus, and Fischer has been adequately debunked.

As for the other possibilities, sure, maybe. But there are thousands of possibilities. The only way to know if they have any validity is to see if they continue to make sense when applied to other texts. You might want to review the decipherment of Mayan to see how that was most recently done. (Two pictures--of a dog and a vulture, I think?--represented animals which had a syllable in common in their two-syllable Mayan names, and were accompanied by texts that were two glyphs long with one of those glyphs in common. So maybe that common glyph represented the common syllable, and the other glyphs the other syllables? And sure enough, when applied to other texts, it worked.) Of course, the Mayan texts tend to be illustrated, and RR is not, so RR is a far more difficult problem. — kwami (talk) 02:09, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Rjabchikov comment

I moved this comment from the article. Diff. RobertG ♬ talk 11:34, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Dear Editors,

It is an incorrect report, as I found these glyph variants in my article:

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1988. Allographic Variations of Easter Island Glyphs. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 97: 313-20.

http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_97_1988/Volume_97,_No._3/Allographic_variations_of_Easter_Island_glyphs,_by_S._Rjabchikov,_p_313-320/p1?action=null

see p. 315 and figure 3 on p. 316

Mr Pozdniakov repeated my discovery only, but he did not show my work!

I hope that you, independent editors, are honest-minded people...

Yours, Sergei V. Rjabchikov] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.192.128.4 (talk • contribs) 21 December 2010

That is such a frequent allograph that it would not be surprising if more than one researcher noticed it. Did he know of your work? Did Kudrjavtsev not notice the allography, since he found the parallel texts that illustrated them? But you're correct: we currently give credit for that to Pozdniakov, which is not correct. — kwami (talk) 12:30, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The consensus seems to be that Rjabchikov gave so many contradictory and seemingly random "discoveries" (many of them only valid for the specific passage being "translated") that we could expect a couple of them to be accidentally correct, but that he never actually demonstrated anything. — kwami (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

The Finding of Easter Island founders Hotu Matua and his sister Rei Pua

For Hotu Matua: consider glyph 040(2), moon with bulge, is placed on the Mamari Moon Calendar at the placement of moon day Hotu. Further down the on tablet Ca, row 10, appear the same glyph 040(2) and glyph 6 with an emphasis on the right thumb. A plausible decipherment of these two glyphs might be Hotu Matua. Hotu (for 040(2)) based on its position in the moon calendar and Matua from the glyph representing 'right hand', giving matu'u and implying matua. For Rei Pua: consider glyph 7 as it appears beside glyph 67 on the same Mamari tablet Cb, line 12. The Reimiro neck ornament is believed to be represented by glyph 7, therefore, Rei is a plausible usage. Glyph 67 appears as a topknot or a flower in plausible logographic form. What is striking is the appearance of glyph 040.3 three glyphs prior to the 7-67 pair. Glyph 40.3 appears as the plausible Hotu glyph with a plausibly attached abbreviation of glyph 6. The final portion of 40.3 is a line, perhaps representing haka for strength, or the strong (Hotu Matua the strong).

What you need is for other people to do what you've proposed: take your approach, apply it other texts, and say, by god, he's got it! — kwami (talk) 15:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I understand your point. Thank you for the good advice :) For those interested Deciphering Rongorongo google search begins with Wikipedia, but the second hit actually Deciphers several chants verifiably. Take a look see...— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.65.177.217 (talk) 02:43, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Other attempts

At the external links section, I see a link to the Spanish wikipedia for more attemps at decipherment. I do not know spanish very well (3 years), but I think it would be to most readers benefit to learn about the other attempts at decipherment. Astropiloto (talk) 13:08, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

We've gone through some of them. The problem is that there are dozens of crackpot decipherments, and I just got tired of writing about them. How notable are they, anyway? — kwami (talk) 19:55, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Irena Konstantinovna Feodorova

Hello. I have been copy editing Irina Konstantinovna Feodorova. I am new to this subject but its citations do not seem very strong to me. I am wondering where she fits into the research on rongorongo. Should she link to this page or be linked from it? Thankyou for any assistance, Myrtle. Myrtlegroggins (talk) 08:25, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Both. But she did not decipher rongorongo, she only thought she did. — kwami (talk) 08:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I've linked from both, and added some refs. I've also removed statements that she deciphered rongorongo, as no-one else thinks she succeeded.

It's good to have a bio to go with her name in this article. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. — kwami (talk) 09:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

"Tubers and yams and roots. Oh my!" said Myrtle, thinking it wasn't Kansas anymore... Cheers and thanks, Kwami, Myrtle. Myrtlegroggins (talk) 12:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Rongorongo is an interesting field. It's eye-opening what people come up with when there's enough data to be intriguing, but apparently not enough to actually solve the problem. Federova was at least being rigorous. Some of the other stuff out there is just ridiculous. — kwami (talk) 19:57, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, perhaps one day it will happen. Good luck, Myrtle Myrtlegroggins (talk) 11:41, 26 May 2012 (UTC)