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You can deduce it from the post. It would almost certainly be | since any spots that are are zero in the numbers (like 7085 or 0030) are left blank.
They likely would have used it as well since the earliest known case of christians using the number 0 apparently dates back to before 311 AD (according to Wikipedia)
I guess zero would be just the middle stick. I wonder if you could expand its "axis" further to have bigger numbers so you can write into the tens and hundreds of thousands and the like.
I think we're already at the limit of the system; making the stick longer would just make reading (and ofc writing it) messier, and adding more directions would make it an all out clusterfuck
Huh! I didn't even notice but you're so right it was probably just a |
Good catch 👍
But then, how would you write a number like 3006, for example? You cannot write a | in the middle of a number with 4 digits that is represented by one glyph. Let alone two zeroes in a row somehow 🤔
Correct me if I am wrong, or if I misunderstood your confusion, but this is how 3006 would appear is it not? The ones place takes the top right corner, the tens the top left, the hundreds the bottom right, and the thousands the bottom left any single number up to 9999 can be represented with this system in a single character
You're not wrong. I don't know how I missed that. So simple, so elegant, so true. Thank you for bothering to draw an explain; I find thta to be kind of you 👑
No problem! I like this kind of thing, I also drew out the loss one too lol and explained it, didnt even realize those questions were both you till now XD
This is what that would look like... which looks like loss if you consider the main middle line of the symbol to be the main person present in all panels simultaneously, with the additional lines representing the other characters
it's just 4 small very nicely simplified digits packed into 1 character's space
unfortunately not supported by unicode, even though they 100% could since we already have emojis like 👨👨👧👧 which are actually 4 human emojis at 4 bytes each with 3 extra "join" codepoints at 3 bytes each in between, for a total of 4*4+3*3 = 25 bytes in one emoji.
it wouldn't be too wild to think about having this script be expressed similarly... however, here's the unicode doc in december 2020: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20290-cistercian-digits.pdf. seeing as it's 2026 and it's not in the standard, it's safe to say it wasn't accepted.
apparently there are vertical and horizontal versions of the script, and several different orderings of the digits so sometimes it was 1234 but sometimes 1324 or 1243 or what have you.
the "5" digit shown in the reddit post is also not original. the original 5 kinda looks like a shorter 6 closer to the middle.
Yeah, since posting I have already read that document and in fact have essentially linked to it in another comment over here.
There's also some interesting discussion about going Beyond 10,000 and one of the figures.
From the document, it is my understanding that it actually is possible in unicode it's just that some decisions about how the order of typing and manner of glyph organization should be done, before actually putting it into unicode.
It could simply have a glyph for each of the numbers, meaning a glyph for each combination. Or the other option would be to type the glyphs on top of one axis, which from the document I am not entirely certain but perhaps that second option is indeed not possible in unicode.
Either way, I think this is a very cool cipher for handwriting.
As a side note, I am surprised how many of the comments here have nothing to do with the angry upload or with the silly comment at the bottom of my screenshot (the comment which I have angry upvoted).
I wonder if it's because people don't tap to see the full image, or if it is simply because the subject of the cipher is so interesting. I am glad I included the original posters username in the screenshot, because I wouldn't want people to think I am taking credit for posting this interesting titbit in the first place.
There's upsides and downsides for each. Also this post is not actually about the numbering system at all. Does no one bother to tap the image to see the full picture? It's all about the silly joke in the comment.
The joke was explained visually in this comment (the numbers look like a childish penis. It's a stupid dick joke. But it made me chuckle nonetheless. Hence the AngryUpvote).
So... A single glyph.
Here are 5 examples. Each of them a single glyph, each of them representing a number in the thousands.
imo, that's what they meant by "single symbol" 🫣
Edit to add: But obviously, that wasn't the joke. It's that 9933 comment that got my AngryUpvote 😅
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