Introduction to Symbols

[blastfromthepast]

Here's some useful info I put together.

The language that symbol IDNs speak is sometimes international, sometimes local, and with the best symbols, understood accross many cultures, and accross language barriers.

Symbols often mean different things depending on culture, context, and time period. Their meaning also changes as new groups infuse meaning into old symbols or invent new ones.

The symbols that can be used for IDNs are limited, and are defined by the Unicode Consortium.

• Unicode charts of symbols
http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html
• Currency Symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_symbols
• List of common symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_symbols
• List of symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_symbols

○ Western, European, American ○ The modern use of symbols may be traced to 'charges' used in heraldry, ancient religious signs, alchemists' and mathematicians' marks, printers and engravers marks, runes, and trade marks and devices such as a boot outside a bootmakers' shop used in Europe before the spread of litteracy.

• Dictionary of Western symbols
http://www.symbols.com/section/6/category/18/

○ Japanese. ○ Modern Japanese typography contains a large set of symbols that are more widely used than in the West. Many of them have found their place in the Unicode charts.

• Japanese map symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_map_symbols
• Japanese emblem index
http://www.e-sozai.com/mon/index.html

○ Chinese. ○ Chinese characters are themselves made of basic radicals that are used to convey meaning and phonetic value, that have evolved into a complex writing system. (See http://zhongwen.com/ for details), ultimately traced to signs used for divination. Among the ancient Chinese symbols encoded in Unicode is a large set of Yijing symbols.

• Yijing symbols in Unicode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yijing

[IDNer]

Thanks for your infomations !