Unless you were a maths, physics or Greek major, chances are your knowledge, like mine, may not have gone much farther than epsilon. I like how the letter names and shapes map or don’t to the Roman or Latin alphabet.

Know your Greek alphabet

The sort of artefact that make history fascinating. Amazing to behold, a fascinating story, a controversial past and the key to the mystery of hieroglyphics.

The Rosetta Stone has inscribed on it a decree by priests honouring Ptolemy V, who was 13 at the time. The inscription is in hieroglyphic and demotic - both scripts of the Egyptian language - and Greek. Comparing the known Greek with the hieroglyphs with some remarkable talent became the key to deciphering the written language of hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone can be seen for free at the British Museum. I highly recommend it. You could also read Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure a manga comic book featuring the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone

Learning and using kind words first when travelling will take you further than others. Before I enter a country with a new language I write a list of these words and find out how to say them.

Learn kind words first in new countries

There are others too. But these are big ones. Curious? Read Metaphors We Live By was a frame-changing easy read for me.

PS Accidentally, mixed my metaphors in the final sketch. The Mind Is A Machine metaphor is so pervasive it’s hard to ‘sketch’ across thinking without it.

Sketchplanations tagged with language