> Utter nonsense. John DeFrancis debunked your interpretation of this drawing back in 1989. This is not a letter at all. It was a prop in a parlor game played by Yukaghari girls: one girl would sketch a drawing and the others would take turns trying to guess the story behind it.
> Geoffrey Sampson helped to propagate this myth in his book on writing systems first published in 1985. Sampson published a retraction in 1994.
While I could not find any verification in a cursory search, maybe we should take this with a grian of salt
> DeFrancis’s argument to this effect turns on examination of an example quoted in Sampson (1985: 28‑9) of purported complex semasiography, the ‘Yukaghir love letter’. I had taken this example from a well-known book on writing, Diringer (n.d.: 35), and I retailed Diringer’s explanation of it without trying to check this. DeFrancis has done the discipline a considerable service by investigating the history of the example in detail, and it turns out to be something rather different from what Diringer and I described, and arguably not an example of ‘communication’ at all.
It seems nearly certain that this image is not what it was presented to be.
Good find. I did some more research on John DeFrancis and found his writings on the topic. Pg 32 discusses the "love letter" being part of a semi-ritualized party game. [1]
John DeFrancis was an amazing thoughtful and insightful linguist and was, as you can see from this example, very happy to look into what he considered bizarre claims (which he sometimes discovered were true). I'm a huge fan of his work.
Very impressive indeed; I only clicked the 'Visible Speech' link thanks to reading your comment; the diagram illustrating the lineage / spread of the the 'Yukaghir Love Letter' is worth the click alone.
Thanks so much for pointing this out. I thought the letter's interpretation was beautiful, and I'm tremendously disappointed now, but I'm glad that I know.
So this whole article was, roughly speaking, like attempting to interpret the meaning of a scrap of paper used in a game of Pictionary, given only that piece of paper?
Indeed, it's a very nice story, but appears to be fake. I won't duplicate what other commenters have added in this thread, but one other approach to investigating is to see whether any other images of Yukaghir semasiographic letters can be found online.
Perhaps this wouldn't be foolproof (given that the Yukaghir population is very small, and their materials might not have been published and indexed widely online) but the absence of any other examples certainly seems a little suspect.
John DeFrancis has a section on the Yukaghir love letter in his Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. The provenance of the "letter" is a bit obscure but it comes from a Russian political exile to Siberia around 1892.
"As the young people assembled for the dance, a girl might take a piece of fresh birch bark and start carving with a very sharp knife. The others gathered around and watched the progress of the carving. There was much banter, and guesses were made as to who was being depicted and what was being said. Incorrect guesses were met with derision by the carver, so that eventually all present would arrive at an understanding of the contents."
[...]
"In short, the notorious "love letter" and others like it are nothing more than the semiritualized product of these Yukaghir party games. They must not be thought of as real letters posted to someone who would read them as we do our mail. The Russian observers make clear that the compositions were primarily vehicles whereby young women could publicly express their feelings on the single theme of love and separation in a socially acceptable form before a small circle of friends..."
[...]
"The way in which the meaning of the Yukaghir "letter" was actually transmitted, first to a small circle of intimates at the time of its creation and later to a worldwide audience by a succession of scholars, most closely parallels the way in which the meaning of a highly allegorical medieval painting or of a Bayeaux tapestry originated and was transmitted over time. This analogy suggests that the Yukaghir birchbark carving should be viewed as an example not of writing but of anecdotic art whose message can be understood only to the degree one is in contact with its creator, the situation or culture that produced it, or someone who can interpret it for us."
I strongly recommend DeFrancis, both this book and his book The Chinese Language. He's an excellent writer and his take on the issues of writing in general is fascinating and well thought-out.
I am the boy referenced in this letter, and while my first reaction was that I wished my private correspondence with Betyltah had not been shared with the world, I am admittedly surprised how close the article comes to interpreting what happened between her and me.
Apparently this just got flagged off the front page, which I think is unfortunate. If anything, the fact that the interpretation is wrong makes the discussion all the more interesting, and any discussion about possible complex semasiographic systems, whether real or imaginary, is interesting. The fact that you disagree with something is not a valid reason for flagging genuinely interesting content.
I flagged the article because it is information that is (a) totally untrue and (b) has been spread virally, even after it was debunked/retracted. Not everyone who clicked the article read all the way to the bottom and saw the comments there or clicked through to the comments here; we've now infected more people with incorrect information, allowing this to spread further.
This information has been debunked since before the internet existed in any modern sense, so posting the information enirely without errata has no excuse. If this post had included errata that explained that the interpretation it discusses is likely incorrect, then I would not have flagged it.
18 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 46.4 ms ] thread> Utter nonsense. John DeFrancis debunked your interpretation of this drawing back in 1989. This is not a letter at all. It was a prop in a parlor game played by Yukaghari girls: one girl would sketch a drawing and the others would take turns trying to guess the story behind it.
> Geoffrey Sampson helped to propagate this myth in his book on writing systems first published in 1985. Sampson published a retraction in 1994.
While I could not find any verification in a cursory search, maybe we should take this with a grian of salt
> DeFrancis’s argument to this effect turns on examination of an example quoted in Sampson (1985: 28‑9) of purported complex semasiography, the ‘Yukaghir love letter’. I had taken this example from a well-known book on writing, Diringer (n.d.: 35), and I retailed Diringer’s explanation of it without trying to check this. DeFrancis has done the discipline a considerable service by investigating the history of the example in detail, and it turns out to be something rather different from what Diringer and I described, and arguably not an example of ‘communication’ at all.
It seems nearly certain that this image is not what it was presented to be.
[1] Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems: https://books.google.com/books?id=hypplIDMd0IC&pg=PA24&dq=is...
Perhaps this wouldn't be foolproof (given that the Yukaghir population is very small, and their materials might not have been published and indexed widely online) but the absence of any other examples certainly seems a little suspect.
Search link: https://www.google.com/search?q=Yukaghir+semasiographic&tbm=...
"As the young people assembled for the dance, a girl might take a piece of fresh birch bark and start carving with a very sharp knife. The others gathered around and watched the progress of the carving. There was much banter, and guesses were made as to who was being depicted and what was being said. Incorrect guesses were met with derision by the carver, so that eventually all present would arrive at an understanding of the contents."
[...]
"In short, the notorious "love letter" and others like it are nothing more than the semiritualized product of these Yukaghir party games. They must not be thought of as real letters posted to someone who would read them as we do our mail. The Russian observers make clear that the compositions were primarily vehicles whereby young women could publicly express their feelings on the single theme of love and separation in a socially acceptable form before a small circle of friends..."
[...]
"The way in which the meaning of the Yukaghir "letter" was actually transmitted, first to a small circle of intimates at the time of its creation and later to a worldwide audience by a succession of scholars, most closely parallels the way in which the meaning of a highly allegorical medieval painting or of a Bayeaux tapestry originated and was transmitted over time. This analogy suggests that the Yukaghir birchbark carving should be viewed as an example not of writing but of anecdotic art whose message can be understood only to the degree one is in contact with its creator, the situation or culture that produced it, or someone who can interpret it for us."
I strongly recommend DeFrancis, both this book and his book The Chinese Language. He's an excellent writer and his take on the issues of writing in general is fascinating and well thought-out.
This information has been debunked since before the internet existed in any modern sense, so posting the information enirely without errata has no excuse. If this post had included errata that explained that the interpretation it discusses is likely incorrect, then I would not have flagged it.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/079/173/ed2...