Another unknown language
We need your help again to identify another unknown language. It appears on a knife (you can click on the pictures to enlarge them). Thank you for your efforts!
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We need your help again to identify another unknown language. It appears on a knife (you can click on the pictures to enlarge them). Thank you for your efforts!
March 17th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Thanks to a website for razors collectors, we found out that the mysterious language is probably just the brand of the razor, “Wade & Butcher”, written in English but with a great effort so that the characters should somehow look Chinese.
April 13th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
It doesn’t look like Wade & Butcher to me and why would someone go to great length to engrave something on the blade that is already imprinted on the knife by the manufacturer?
I’m not sure how to interpret the characters yet. They don’t have the shape and flow of most Asian scripts, and it’s not consistent with scripts from the Mediterranean area. Even the slight Runish shapes aren’t consistent, and there’s an odd mix of straights and curves that looks more home-grown than anything.
My guess, for now (until there’s more time to study it), is that it’s an embellished or encoded rendition of the owner’s name.
April 13th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Another possibility, if it’s not the owner’s name (or the name of an organization to which s/he belonged) is that it’s an incantation encoded or stylized in a ritualistic manner.
April 22nd, 2010 at 1:05 pm
its Wade and Butcher written in tricky
May 13th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
its difficult to say anything about it. anyway how old the knife is & from where it was collected?
May 18th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
the language is Martian and it says “Take me to your leader or I will cut your throat”.
May 18th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
the language is Olde Englishe and it says “Sweeney Todd,s Pie Shoppe”
May 25th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
i beleive it is pagan
May 26th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
pagan or somthing designed to look like pagan
August 29th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
If the origin of the knife is southern China/northern Burma/northern Thailand then there are several possibilities. The Lisu, Lolo, and Yi languages have scripts which look vaguely like the example on the knife. Consult Bernard Comrie’s “Languages of China” or David Diringer’s “The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind” for more details. Both should be available at university libraries. Good luck!