20.7.28.22:48: WHITE RAT 6.8

? qulugh ai ? sair nyêm nyair

'white rat year, six month, eight day'

1. When practicing Tangut today, I came across the character

𘛢

5264 1mer4 'soldier'

with rare left and right-hand components.

The left side 𘩷 (Boxenhorn code wai) is also in

• 𘛣 5505 1sha3 (transliteration character)

• this is phonetic in 4135 and 5492 below
  

• 𗞔 4135 1sha3 'incense'

• the top component 𘡩 is 'wood'
  

• 𗶯 5492 1sha3 'imperial carriage'

• the bottom component 𘣗 is 'below'; why not 'horse' or 'wheel'?
  

• 𗞼 4197 2nu4 'to light a torch'

• similar to 4135 'incense' above except for 𘦳 'hand' instead of 𘢶; there is no 'fire' component

There is no obvious phonetic or semantic common denominator shared by the five characters with <wai>.

The right side (Boxenhorn code dar; I can't find it in Unicode) is only in one other character:

𗡠

0271 2bi'4 (second syllable of 𗡢𗡠 0702 0271 1to'4 2bi'4 'to seek')

The rare component <dar> is incorrect in the Mojikyo font versions of 0271 and 5264. Mojikyo 0271 has the more common component 𘡭 <dao> (in 32 characters) instead of <dar>, and Mojikyo 5264 has <dar> with a slanted top stroke and without a right-hand diagonal stroke.

There is no obvious phonetic or semantic common denominator shared by the two characters with <dar>.

Do you think the graphic etymology in the Tangraphic Sea for 5264 will make any sense out of this? Let's find out tomorrow.

2. Last night I played episode 43 of 科学忍者隊ガッチャマンF Gatchaman F (1979-80) on its fortieth anniversary. The world of Gatchaman is a parallel Earth with different place names. I wonder if anyone has ever compiled all those names and even tried to put them on a map.

One such name that came up in episode 43 was ニュージョーク Nyūjōku, an obvious play on ニューヨーク Nyūyōku 'New York'. In the subtitles, Nyūjōku was rendered with an umlaut as New Jörk. Is the umlaut canonical, or was that just the subtitler's idea? Normally ö corresponds to Japanese e, not o: e.g., Röntgen became レントゲン Rentogen.

I seem to encounter these stand-in names more often in Japanese rather than American fiction. I just heard a reference to the country of パキスター Pakisutā 'Pakistar' in episode 5 of 宇宙戦士バルディオス Space Warrior Baldios (1980-81) which first aired forty years ago today.