Rosetta Disk

[Silenka]

Welcome - The Rosetta Project

This is an amazing resource that serves as a time capsule, informational guide and linguistic fap-fest. Being a linguist myself, the Rosetta Disk simply astounds me. Basically, the point of it is to catalog every single surviving language in the world today, because 50-90% of them may die out in the next century. The information has been encoded and encapsulated on this disk in miniscule print, so tiny that over 13,000 'pages' of language information have been fitted onto the disk. A disk of which is only 3 inches long.

From the website:

"The 13,000 pages in the collection contain documentation on over 1500 languages gathered from archives around the world. For each language we have several categories of data—descriptions of the speech community, maps of their location(s), and information on writing systems and literacy. We also collect grammatical information including descriptions of the sounds of the language, how words and larger linguistic structures like sentences are formed, a basic vocabulary list (known as a “Swadesh List”), and whenever possible, texts. Many of our texts are transcribed oral narratives. Others are translations such as the beginning chapters of the Book of Genesis or the UN Declaration of Human Rights."

The disk's purpose is aimed towards emulating the Rosetta Stone, allowing parallel translations between known and possibly unknown or lost languages. The disk has been prepared to be nigh indestructable, to survive thousands, possibly tens of thousands of years. The only instrument required to read the information is an optical or electron microscope, as it is a physical archive and not a digital one.

A 2.8 inch diameter nickel disk can be etched at densities of 200,000 page images per disk, and the result is immune to water damage, able to withstand high temperatures, and unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. This makes it an ideal backup for a long-term text image archive. Also, since the encoding is a physical image (no 1's or 0's), there is no platform or format dependency, guaranteeing readability despite changes in digital operating systems, applications, and compression algorithms.

Mass production is being considered. But for now, it's somewhat mass-produced: the frontpage of the website holds a digital version of the catalog. (Check the 'back' side of the page).

As a person who is in love with languages, this thing is sex in a sphere.

[BerenTebogo]

Would you fuck my words? And if so, how much would you be willing to pay? Are synonyms extra? If I use onomatopoeia is that like a reach-around?

I'm interested in capitalizing on this verbal sex-sphere you speak of.

[Silenka]

Well, English is kind of a mutt language, it's not very sexy. Spanish however (not Mexican Spanish) is hawt, most Asian languages are very delicious, and I have a special soft spot for Japanese. Give me your Hawaiian and Egyptian, that's good stuff. They're a bit limited in letters but they make up for it with flair. French is very pure but very snobbish. I'm not too interested in Russian but I'll take some good Latin or Gaelic any day. I find dead languages more fascinating than living ones, does that make me a necrolinguaphiliac? A linguanecrophiliac?

And whatever language you present yourself in, make sure it's all transliterated into runic futhark, preferably elder, runes are vixens.