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Andrew West 魏安

@babelstone.co.uk
1.7K followers 437 following 788 posts

Independent researcher of Tangut, Khitan, and Jurchen. Developer of BabelPad and BabelMap. Maintainer of BabelStone Han font. Responsible for adding over 10,000 characters to the Unicode Standard. orcid.org/0000-0002-2063-7389

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 30/07/2025
It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends. corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...
corp.unicode.org
Andrew C. West 魏安 1960–2025
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/06/2025
Yeah, better avoid the Princeton Arms
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 27/06/2025
U+8043 聃
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 22/06/2025
Didn't he not touch the bible during his inauguration?
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 17/06/2025
UK seems to be conspicuously absent
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 14/06/2025
"Chinese Ethnicity" 中华民族 rears its ugly head again
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 12/06/2025
The old SSEES entrance
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/06/2025
It would be great if you can find it, but may be like looking for a needle in a haystack without the exact coordinates. 🤞
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 09/06/2025
谢谢,看了,已经回信了, 可是我实在没有空参加这个项目,请原谅。
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 08/06/2025
I haven't read her paper or seen a rubbing of the inscription, so I can't comment, but by all reports the inscription is in poor condition.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/06/2025
See my critique of her reading of the Arkhara river Jurchen inscription, for which she reads the extraordinarily early date of 1127 on evidence that does not stand up to scrutiny
babelstone.co.uk
Jurchen Inscription on the River Arkhara
This post discusses a recently-identified inscription in the Jurchen script on the bank of the River Arkhara in Russia.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/06/2025
She has a miraculous ability to fluently and confidently read Khitan and Jurchen inscriptions which are obscure to everyone else. She also has a habit of accepting uncritically all sorts of modern fake inscriptions (either gullible or complicit, I don't know which)
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/06/2025
Just be very cautious about anything that Aisin Gioro Ulhicun writes
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 05/06/2025
And Sergoe UI Symbol which ships with Windows, so ⯨⯩⯪⯫ should render OK for people on a recent Windows machine
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 04/06/2025
資治通鑑?
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 04/06/2025
Is the base text 史記? The characters "鞅陽之聚縣丞縣田陌" on the first column appear in sequence in 史記 卷68: 於是以『鞅』為大良造。將兵圍魏安邑,降之。居三年,作為築冀闕宮庭於咸『陽』,秦自雍徙都『之』。而令民父子兄弟同室內息者為禁。而集小(都)鄉邑『聚』為『縣』,置令、『丞』,凡三十一『縣』。為『田』開阡『陌』封疆,而賦稅平。平斗桶權衡丈尺。行之四年,公子虔復犯約,劓之。居五年,秦人富彊,天子致胙於孝公,諸侯畢賀。
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 02/06/2025
Yes. Although it is possible to create your own input method or modify an existing input method, for example my BabelPad text editor easily allows for custom input methods:
Screenshot of BabelPad showing a custom Han pinyin input method listing characters with reading tā, including U+323BF 𲎿
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 02/06/2025
As far as I am aware, nothing happens automatically, and those responsible for particular input methods will need to manually update them if they want to support the new characters — but very few CJK input methods ever update for new versions of Unicode!
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 28/05/2025
I finally have sufficient confidence in my reconstruction to propose this character for encoding
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 27/05/2025
My reconstruction and identification of a partially-preserved Tangut character in a unique fragment of the Homophones text held at the British Library www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
Fragment of folio 56A of the B version of the Tangut Homophones text held at the British Library, showing twelve partial entries with eight complete or partial head characters. The partial head character on the bottom right is identified and proposed for encoding in the linked document.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 25/05/2025
First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...
Gold paizi found in Chengde, Hebei in 1972, with a vertical inscription in Jurchen small script characters (two clusters of three characters each) beneath a huaya 花押 symbol. Photograph courtesy of Vladimir Belyaev.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 23/05/2025
This was of course unacceptable to ISO member bodies, especially those not in the privileged set of ten, so Germany 🇩🇪 and Ireland 🇮🇪 proposed to encode 676 characters for all ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes (AA–ZZ), representing flags for all actual and potential ISO-recognized countries and territories.
en.wikipedia.org
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 - Wikipedia
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 23/05/2025
Back in 2009 when emoji encoding was being thrashed out acrimoniously by the Unicode Technical Committee and ISO member bodies, the UTC did not want to encode a full set of national flag emoji, but only wanted to encode emoji for the ten national flags used in Japanese vendor sets (🇨🇳🇩🇪🇪🇸🇫🇷🇬🇧🇮🇹🇯🇵🇰🇷🇷🇺🇺🇸).
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 23/05/2025
It's about as likely as Unicode adding a Confederate flag emoji (which I assume we are only days or weeks away from Trump demanding)
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/05/2025
Previous discussion on the same question of the Tangutishness of the Japanese invented script
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/05/2025
Tangut has some open components which are blocked, similar to 月, but never any closed box components such as 口, either by themselves or surrounding other elements. So when I see lots of characters with box components I think it is not a Tangut-like script.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/05/2025
Hm, I've had this exact same conversation with someone else on bluesky a while back. To me it looks nothing like Tangut. One of the defining features of Tangut script that distinguishes it from kanji and this invented script is that Tangut does not have any box components such as 口囗日目田皿 etc.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 04/05/2025
The book is very familiar to me, as I used it as a set text for part of an overview of Chinese fiction course that i taught in the mid 1990s.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 02/05/2025
We went to Harbin next. Apparently the Ice Festival only started as an annual event in January 1985, but I can't remember whether there were still any ice sculptures standing when we visited. But anyway, here I am with tóngxué Nicky S. having fun on an elephant slide. 📷 Adrian P. Bradshaw.
Andrew West wearing a straw hat and Nicky S. wearing a beret on a sliding down a concrete slide in the form of a tusked elephant. Photograph by Adrian P. Bradshaw on or about 2nd May 1985.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 01/05/2025
Suave, sophisticated, international man of style and mystery. Me wearing my Lhasa straw hat adorned with a plastic lobster in celebration of the May Day holiday, Chéngdé 承德 China, 1st May 1985. 📷 Adrian P. Bradshaw.
Youthful Andrew West sitting against a wall painted with three large explanation marks, wearing a long greyish-white scarf and a straw hat decorated with a red plastic lobster. At Chengde, China, on or about 1st May 1985. Photograph by Adrian P. Bradshaw.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
You should have asked earlier!
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
⿱莫用 (U+31C20 𱰠) was added in CJK Ext. H in September 2022 (Unicode 15.0), and ⿰勿愛 (U+324D6 𲓖) will be in CJK Ext. J coming to Unicode 17.0 in September 2025. Both characters were submitted for encoding by UK.
Screenshot from the Unicode code chart for CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H showing the characters U+31C1F through U+31C21.Screenshot from the Unicode code chart for CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J showing the characters U+324D5 through U+324D7.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
For reference, this is the encoding proposal (2nd time round after the first proposal in 2016 to represent the characters as variation sequences was rejected)
unicode.org
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Already accepted, and coming to Unicode 17.0 in September!
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Yes, it would have been a very fine edition. And I agree that 納悶兒 is better than "他先還迷惑了一陣儿" in the 1969 version. But what about "一火兒"?!
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Ah, not my copy, but a copy @evertype.bsky.social got from interlibrary loan before I bought my copy. It's available here temporarily:
babelstone.co.uk
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Exactly. I have a pdf scanned from my copy of the book somewhere (probably on my old computer) that I can look out for you if you're interested.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
I managed to buy a second hand copy (www.babelstone.co.uk/Twitter/Arch...) so I can tell you: 63. Instead of the internal rhyme jaws: claws , it is rendered alliteratively by yeau-ren de ya 'the teeth that bite'.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Chao's translation of Through the Looking Glass which was published in 1969 as Vol. II of his "Readings in Sayable Chinese", with parallel Gwoyeu Romatzyh and hànzì versions, is a pale imitation of what the 1932 edition would have been. The Chinese typography is horrible, bopomofo replacements ugly.
Yuen Ren Chao: "Readings in Sayable Chinese" (San Francisco, 1969), vol. II p. 31 showing the Jabberwocky poem in Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization.Yuen Ren Chao: "Readings in Sayable Chinese" (San Francisco, 1969), vol. II p. 32 showing the Jabberwocky poem in traditional Chinese characters.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
The Chinese characters that Chao devised for his translation of Jabberwocky are currently in the process of being added to Unicode (here's the submission entry for ⿱卧尨)
hc.jsecs.org
UK-30045 | WS2024v2.0
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
I deleted my twitter account a long time ago, but here's my archive of the twitter thread: www.babelstone.co.uk/Twitter/Arch...
babelstone.co.uk
BabelStone : Twitter Archive : 2022
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
I did a long twitter thread on Chao's Jabberwocky translation and his invented Chinese characters, including an image of his annotated proof of the lost 1932 edition of 《走到鏡子裏》("Through the Looking-Glass") prepared by the Commercial Press in Shanghai but blown up by the Japanese.
Proof sheet for the lost 1932 edition of 《走到鏡子裏》(“Through the Looking-Glass”) prepared by the Commercial Press in Shanghai, with Yuen Ren Chao's hand-written annotations. The 1932 edition of the book was destroyed when the Commercial Press building was bombed during the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in 1932.

Image source: https://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/item/cuhk-2023559
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/04/2025
Please no Umê script -- I can relate to that!
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 26/04/2025
照世盃 is one of my favourites (at least two of the stories are banging), and was going to be my translation project at one time in the distant past.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 25/04/2025
Hmm, looks like my banner and profile pics. Probably not that many people realise you can see Tangut in the wild without leaving Beijing.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 23/04/2025
So right half G = P, left half M = F, and right half R = R? Then what values do the remaining half letters have?
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 17/04/2025
And a lot of false friends such as 仁仅尘寸 on the right
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 16/04/2025
Ah, thank you for the information! I have only seen a handwritten transcription of the main epitaph text, but unfortunately I have not seen photographs or rubbings of the whole epitaph. Can you send me a copy of your term paper? I am sure I will learn a lot from it.
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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 16/04/2025
Interesting idea, but I'm not sure that it's true. There is one fragment of what seems to be a Khitan large script Buddhist text, but I don't think there is a clear distinction between Buddhist and secular use of the two scripts, and our view of the scripts is skewed by their limited preservation.
babelstone.co.uk
Oh, How the Gods Mock Us!
A single small fragment of a paper manuscript held at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities has been identified as written in the Khitan large script. It also preserves fragments o...
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