The Earth Language Dictionary

Introduction of the Main EL Dictionary . Japanese(日本語の字典案内)

Illustrated Dictionary:
The Illustrated Dictionary Guide and Classification linking to the human body and animals (生物絵解き字典)
The Illustrated Dictionary [Direction, Location and shape] (位置・方向・形の図入り字典)(January 21, 2009)
All pages of the dictionary have been roughly constructed and need your help for checking and testing.

Index of The Earth Language Dictionary 
This is also a table of all bases in EL. Click a symbol to see how it works.
When cursor points a basis, its meaning or function in English appears for beginners' convenience.
But an EL symbol and its English word are not always the same; please see details in each pages.
(記号をクリックして解説や応用文字をご覧ください。
もくじのポップアップで出る英単語は記号の意味や機能を思い出す目安です。)

** n: numeral, g: grammatical notation, p: phonetic bracket, (the top) d: definition bracket,
r: the bracket to remove original meaning, l: the left, r: the right
To know how the EL system works, please read the EL System section

Alterations
The shapes of the following bases were a little changed in the detail 
for betterment after started this site (1996):
Renewed bases on October 2006:
06 (a little lowered), 09 (the vertical line became shorter),
10 (the vertical line became shorter), 11 (once longer but returned to the original shape)
13 (narrower), 14 (narrower), 32 (the location switched from the right to the left),
35 (totally became a little smaller as n8), 55 (the angle of the straight line changed),
56 (the angle of the straight line changed), 60 (the location shifted a little bit to the left)
Renewed on September 2007:
gf (narrower as hyphen, since this isn't compounded on top of any other symbol)

Each base page includes the following components:

# The title of the page shows the number* and the shape of the base
within a mesh frame, with the explanation about each shape and the reason of
taking that shape. Everything in a page relates to the particular base.
*General bases are numbered according to the shape from simple to complicated:
straight, curved and mixed. Other notations are numbered with alphabets.

# Two kinds of hand-signs of the base: {the hand shape, and the movement or the position}
See here to learn how to use the EL sign.
* Unless describing specially, the standard position is in front of one's shoulder.
The illustration of the hand is usually from the perspective of the reader;
and you need not care about the left and the right directions.
The readers distinguish the direction of a symbolic movement by
if it's inward or outward from the signer's center.

# The ASCII: to show which key works for typing it in ordinary American keyboard.
** The EL ASCII is renewed too, discussing with Jo Chen, after he developed the new EL font
using a different system. (October 2006)
Now the ASCII for Font EARTH3 is used in this dictionary.
(When you use the original font, you have to work with the original ASCII.

# The name of the base: indicated by name*
that works like a vocal word; see here for more information.
* It is represented using EL phonetics and its English explanation.

# What the base works for in the phonetic system: indicated by phonetic value:
See here about the phonetic system and how to distinguish
a phonetic usage from other writings.

* The alphabet in [ ] is SAMPA (ASCII of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
* If you see the mark [function] under phonetic value, it means
the phonetic function of the base as a diacritic
(to shift the organs for pronouncing a phoneme in a base overlay with its particular way,
or to add tone kind of expressions). Each explanation follows.
* If the technical terms are hard to understand for you, here explains.

# The basic image or the grammatical function as the single usage
indicated by definition (single):
A base is used as an ideogram or a grammatical notation;
five of 70 bases work as grammatical marks only when they are single,
forgetting its own image in a base overlay. Here explains what the base do as its single form.

* Now each definition of EL character is simply and roughly described in English,
but the detail of an EL character and its English word are not always the same.
An EL character might mean a little different from culture backgrounds.

For example, the images of a tree must be very different between in Africa
and in Canada. Since everyone has each own experience, people can't have
the completely same image through a symbol. The EL symbolic character
is used with the thought allowing the kind of differences with the specific width
in each meaning. This is very important to understand each other beyond cultures.

EL characters are going to be image-measurements to compare cultures.
Discussing the details of an EL definition among many cultures can help
understanding each other and investigating the future earth people's thought.
Welcome to build this dictionary together.

# The main image(s)* of the base in a base overlays:
This item is indicated by main images (in base overlays), distinguishing from the occasion of single usage.

* A shape lets us recall more than one image, specially compounded with other shapes.
So the image of a base in base overlays is not always the same.
I describe the image of each occasion with the reason related to the shape.
But sometimes a base overlay is made as a simplified picture, using the bases for
just elements of the shape. Those are used as fundamental base overlays like another base;
the examples are at the end of each page.
Also some picture-like base overlays are in the Fundamental Characters section.


# If the base is indicated by definition (grammar), it is a grammatical symbol;
and the explanation about how it works follows.

# examples of base overlay:
There are examples of base overlays, which include the base of that page title.

When the base has plural images, the sections are separated
according to the kind of images. It helps to find out the character in your mind.
The following writing of each base overlay is the meaning of the base overlay;
and the elements of each character are shown mostly as the bases numbers in { }.

EL does not have an indefinite article, because it's generally understandable
since usually a single shaped ideogram symbolizes a thing, as the same idea to
Kanji/Chinese characters.
When specifically distinguishing as single, 02 which means one is put in front
of the character; and when specifying the ideogram as plural, 27(plural) is
compounded with it.

Not only fundamental characters, some applications are also in the examples,
to illustrate how we create EL single-characters for more vocabularies.
Some characters might look too complicated for you. Beginners or in case
a base overlay looks complicated, you may express it as plural fundamental
 characters separately, putting hyphen (gf) between them. Some examples of
the dictionary is for the future convenience. Visual thoughts can easily get images
through the total vision at once. By being accustomed, one would soon increase the
elements of a character naturally.

The Illustrated Dictionary Guide and Classification linking to the human body and animals
The Illustrated Dictionary [Direction, Location and shape]
These pages could also help your understanding for classifications.

(NB)
# A base has a dotted frame in the writing to distinguish it more easily from
English letters. Also it's to help beginners to know the bases shapes and
each location in the same frame.

# The base number is often used instead of the real character for
the explanation, such as {01,33,34} for the elements of
Please print out the bases chart or the dictionary index table,
and refer to it for the numbers.

# Please download the EL Font. In case your mailing tool doesn't support
that font, use EL ASCII, which is also you can learn through the
Font download page above, or use just the numbers.

# Hand-writing would make you memorize EL easily and fast. I recommend
you to use a grid lined notebook at first for catching the character shapes
and the location in the frame correctly. However you actually can draw
base lines more freely by hand, emphasizing peculiarity of the relation of line elements

.

Japanese

字典の見方ご案内

字典内の解説は、次を参考にご覧ください。

★　記号番号は、記号をサーチしやすいよう形の単純さの順につけています。
　　字典のページナンバーともなるほか、アスキーに代わって番号で記号を伝えることもできます。

★　各記号ページのトップの図は、記号の位置と形を示すため
　　網入り枠線をつけています。

★　hand-signs（手話）には、手の形と動きまたは位置のサインの２種があり、
　　手話の解説をお読みの上、図でご覧ください。

★ ASCII は、記号入力のための米語キーボードのキーに一致します。
　　なるべく記号を想起しやすく対応しています。
　　＊２００６年１０月に新しいシステムのフォントのためのＡＳＣＩＩとして
　　フォントのタイプ法の考案者(ドイツ人JO Chenさん)と討議の上更新しました。
　　（旧フォントのＡＳＣＩＩとはわずかですが異なります)

★　name（記号の名前）は、地球語の表音記号と国際表音記号
　　または英単語の音声の例で表記しています。

★　表音記号の機能を合せ持つ記号は、phonetic：のあとに主に
　　国際表音用語で記していますが、詳しくは 表音の仕組みをご覧ください。
　　 [ ]内は、国際音声記号のＡＳＣＩＩ、ＳＡＭＰＡです。

★　definition (single):　につづく解説は、その記号が単独で表意目的に
　　用いられる場合のみの意味です。字母のイメージも参照してください。

★　examples of C-c:の下には、そのページの記号を用いる
　　「重ね文字」の例をあげています。「重ね文字」に関しては、
　　漢字利用者にはわかりやすいでしょう。構成する記号を番号で表示しています。
　　字母のイメージをプリントして参照しながらご覧になれば、
　　文字と形の関係をおわかりいただけるかと思います。
　　逆に、この字典を利用して英単語をおぼえるのにもお役立て下さい。
　　字母の各イメージとともに重ねた基礎文字・象形文字の例も参照してください。

★　慣れれば使えそうな字も例として字典には含めています。
　　複雑な形を見てどうぞ恐れないでください。初心者や複雑な形を使いたくない場合には、
　　基礎的な文字に分解して主体となる字を先にでつないで表示してください。

★　各ページの上下にはリンクアイコンがあり、ポインタをあてると相応する英単語が出ます。

★　地球語フォントをダウンロードし、ぜひお役立てください。ダウンロードと
同じページにASCIIとの対応表もあります。ご意見お待ちします。