Fridge magnets in seven scripts

January 11, 2009 1:47 PM

Fridge magnets in seven scripts – Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Korean, Arabic, Devanagari.

“Memo: Pick up bread at store”

posted by joeclark (12 comments total)

This is kind of cute! I think I remember seeing that Korean set in my childhood. It always bugged me, though, that the ㅠ was the only vowel character colour-coded as purple for inexplicable reasons. I still have no explanation for it!
posted by tickingclock at 1:57 PM on January 11, 2009

I want to see the wingdings fridge magnets.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 2:08 PM on January 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

He forgot the☃ magnet. Which they do sell.
posted by 7segment at 2:30 PM on January 11, 2009

Where can you buy the Greek magnets in the US? I'd totally get those if I could find them. I guess it'd be too pepsi-blue to link to the sites where they found the magnets.
posted by Locative at 3:28 PM on January 11, 2009

I got the Korean set but it was defective - it came with 20 ㅛ but no ㅠ,ㅑ, or ㅕ!
posted by moonmilk at 4:45 PM on January 11, 2009 [3 favorites]

I would actually really like having fridge magnets in scripts I don't read. Just seems so literate. Plus I'd think they'd look really sharp on public library refrigerators.
posted by QIbHom at 5:42 PM on January 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Great! The Arabic one is especially cool - both graphically and logistically.
posted by ericbop at 7:40 PM on January 11, 2009

I don't know if that photo is meant to be of the full Korean set, but it's missing a few consonants (the double, sang, ones): ㅃ, ㅉ, ㄸ, ㄲ, ㅆ. Then again, I suppose you could put two single ones side-by-side, but the letter flow's gonna look kinda weird.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:02 PM on January 11, 2009

What? No runes?
posted by felix betachat at 10:05 PM on January 11, 2009

I like the magnets, but if I were you I would have made the primary link to the main site and had the magnets post as a subsidiary "check out his latest post" link. Polyglot Vegetarian is one of my favorite sites; he only posts once a month or so, but each post is an incredibly detailed discussion of the name of a vegetable in every language he can find, with links to all sorts of obscure books. Well, except when he goes off on some crazed tangent like this, where he transcribes the polyglot epigraphs of Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age and digs up their sources, an amazing number of which are available through Google Books. A random sample:

XXXV. (p. 320 / 38, 331):

  “Mi-x-in tzakcaamah, x-in tzakcolobeh chirech nu zaki caam, nu zald colo. … nu chincu, nu galgab, nu zalmet” …
    Rabinal-Achi.

  Quiché (Guatemalan), from a native drama, published by Brasseur de Bourbourg:

  “I have snared and caught him, I have taken and bound him, with my brilliant snares, with my white noose, with my bracelets of chiseled gold, with my rings, and with my enchantments.”

The GA text prints tzakcolobch; it is possible that this is defective type in the earlier editions, for which I only have scans, but it is definitely a c in modern ones.


  Chascus hom a sas palmas deves se meteys viradas.

  Old French proverb: Every one has the palms of his hands turned toward himself.

From Quitard's collection of French proverbs (p. 339; cf. V).

Sure, it's something not everyone is interested in, but if you're interested at all, you're likely to love it.
posted by languagehat at 6:18 AM on January 12, 2009

Fridge futhark.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:29 AM on January 12, 2009

</W.>
posted by sambosambo at 10:26 AM on January 20, 2009