Zomi’s heart sang.
“The ancient sagas tell us that Man is the word-hungry animal, but I rather like to think of us as the idea-hungry animal. The Ano logograms are the most sophisticated machines ever devised for working with ideas.”
Elder Comi set the writing knife down one more time and straightened his back, a smile on his face. “Well’en. Gramersie.”
“Gramersie,” said Luan Zya.
He turned to Zomi, who was still staring at the clay logograms and turning over Luan’s words in her head. “Mimi-tika, Elder Comi and I have reached an agreement. We will lunch here first, and then he will send a few villagers to act as our guides as we climb the mountain to survey the flora and fauna. Can you help me get the trading goods from the gondola?”
Still a bit dazed, Zomi followed Luan to carry back baskets of goods. Some of them had been brought from Dasu, and others had been bought at the port of Ingça: cast-iron cooking pots, large knives for cleaving meat and chopping vegetables, bolts of hemp cloth, packets of spices, sugar, and salt. She handed them to the boy and the girl, who had come to gather the tea service and used dishes.
Elder Comi stood up and grinned, revealing his surprisingly healthy and strong teeth. “Hale repast.” He bent to pick up the writing tray.
“Wait!” Zomi shouted.
Luan and Elder Comi both turned to look at her.
“Please leave the writing tray.” Zomi gestured at Elder Comi to make herself understood. She turned to Luan. “Can you teach me the logograms?”
Luan chuckled. “I thought you weren’t interested in them.”
“You didn’t tell me earlier they were for engineering ideas!”
Being rather far inland, the hamlet didn’t offer the fresh fish that Zomi was used to consuming for main meals; instead, lunch consisted of dried fish, small nodules of steamed bread, and rice noodles in a soup of wild greens and melons.
“You never explained how to interpret the logogram with the scallop shell and the two hands,” said Zomi, as she sipped the soup.
“Remember to use two eating sticks for the noodles instead of your hands,” said Luan. “Kon Fiji said that—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Zomi. “One eating stick for dumplings and pot stickers; two for noodles and rice; three for fish and fruit and meat so that you can use two of them in one hand to hold the food while dividing it into smaller pieces with the last. And as a woman, I have to take care to always leave my eating sticks on the table so that they lay chastely next to each other when not in use. You’ve been telling me these rules at every meal! I have been listening.”
“I know you think these rules are silly, but proper manners, like good handwriting, will soothe the minds of others so that they are more receptive to your ideas.”
Zomi picked up two eating sticks and halfheartedly stuffed some noodles into her mouth. Since she couldn’t talk with her mouth full—more lessons on manners—she pointed at the logogram impatiently.
Luan laughed, shaking his head. “You truly are hungry for knowledge. All right, think of each Ano logogram as a small machine, made up from components with distinct effects. The scallop shell is a semantic root, which designates the overall semantic domain of the logogram. Since the ancient Ano used shells as their first currency, the scallop shell references all things having to do with trade, finance, and wealth. There are hundreds of these semantic roots that you must learn to master the logograms.”
Zomi swallowed the noodles in her mouth. “What about the hands?”
“Chew the food, child! Chew! The hands are more complicated. They are motive modifiers, which means that they narrow and refine the semantic root to point to a more specific meaning. The combination of the open hand and the closed fist is a standard way to represent change or transformation. Putting them all together tells you that this logogram means ‘trade,’ or ingcrun in Classical Ano.”
“And that’s what you and Elder Comi were discussing!” Zomi said. “You were talking about climbing the mountain, and he proposed a trade.”
“That’s right. But take a look at this pair of logograms down here.” Luan used his eating sticks to point to two other logograms in the writing tray.
Zomi stared at them and muttered to herself. “Hmm… both of these seem to have smaller versions of the logogram for ‘trade’ in them… And they both have a flat slablike thing on top… are these supposed to be fish fillets?”—Luan almost choked on a mouthful of pastry as she said this—“They look the same, Teacher.”
“Do they really?”
Zomi crouched down again, examining the logograms from every angle. “Oh, I see what you mean. The flat fish fillet thing has different symbols carved into them: This one has a semicircle with a line in the middle that ends in a swirl; that one has a semicircle with a line poking between a pair of triangles.”
“That’s right. The ‘fish fillet’—why do you always have food on your mind? Haven’t you eaten enough? The ‘fish fillet’ is called a phonetic adapter. The first logogram is the Ano word crua, which means ‘to buy,’ and the second logogram is the Ano word athu, which means ‘to sell.’ The phonetic adapter is marked with symbols that give you a hint of how the logograms are supposed to be pronounced—in this case, whether the tongue is rolled or positioned between the teeth. Phonetic adapters allow words that are semantically closely related to be distinguished. Indeed, the phonetic adapters inspired our ancestors to invent the zyndari letters. But you still haven’t discovered all the details. Examine the ‘trade’ component some more.”
Zomi reached out to explore the logograms with her hands, trying to detect details that were hard to see given the uniform gray of the logograms. “I can see there are other marks and patterns carved into the side of the shell—the semantic root. Do these mean anything?”
“Those are called inflection glyphs, and they mark the conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. In formal writing, they’re usually colored to make them easier to see—and also for aesthetics—but in calligraphy, they’re often omitted for a more elegant outline. Also, by changing the height or angle of the logograms, a writer can indicate tone, emphasis, and—but we’re now probably getting too advanced. You’ll pick these up in time.”
“So you make complicated logograms out of simpler ones, just like you build a new machine out of machines you already have.”
“Exactly!” Luan was finished with his meal and pushed the rest of the dish of pastries at Zomi. “Let’s start with a simple example: Take the logogram for ‘mountain’ and combine it with the logogram for ‘fire’ ”—he quickly sculpted the merged logogram with a few well-placed motions of the knife—“what do you get?”
“A… volcano?”
“Yes! All right, let’s try something a little more complicated. If you take the logogram for ‘volcano’ and add the motive modifier for ‘blossom,’ what do you have?”
Zomi pondered this. “A volcanic flower?”
“You’re thinking too literally. Remember how the mirror can be used not just for seeing yourself, but also for projecting an image onto another surface? Think metaphorically.”
Zomi imagined a flower blooming… and she sped it up in her mind. “A volcanic eruption.”
Luan’s face exploded into a wide grin. “Yet one more example. What do you get if you use the logogram for a volcanic eruption as a motive modifier, and place it next to the semantic root of air-over-heart, which means ‘mind’ because the ancient Ano believed that thoughts originated in the heart, not the brain?”