Introducing Bliss

Bliss Symbols (aka Bliss) is a language where writers construct full sentences by combining symbols. Bliss is used by individuals with severe speech and physical impairments around the world to communicate and also by those with mathematical, logical or philosophical interests that discover this fascinating language.

This page is a short introduction to the Bliss language. For more resources, please see this post on the Bliss Facebook group.

"Supporting Bliss means performing an important service to mankind" - Bertrand Russell (1950)

Chapter 1: A first glimpse

1 + 1 = 2 is easily understood in all languages. Likewise, H20 means water in all languages.

Bliss is a pictorial language capable of representing rich and complex concepts like any other natural language but with dramatically more simplicity. In Bliss, the visual representations of concepts are not linked to their phonetics, or sound. In this way, the language is written and read the same by individuals regardless of their mother tongue.

Enough talking, lets see some Bliss!

The sun over the earth obviously indicates day, likewise the moon over the earth obviously means night.

Symbols for man and woman are obvious and similar to childrens drawings. The symbol for person is a degendered version of the two. Standard concepts of first, second and third person are also universal and taken advantage of to convey I, you and they.

For emotion (or feeling) we take the age-old symbol of a heart (although note this is used to represent a multitude of emotions, not specifically love as it is sometimes used). Happiness and sadness then naturally follow as a improving or decaying emotion, and love is inspired by the cupids arrow piercing a heart. Desire is a fiery emotion of longing and want and is represented here by combining the heart, representing emotion, with the flame.

Notice how we have combined basic symbols to form more complex meanings. We will later see more ways to combine basic symbols.

Indicators

These symbols work primarily in combination with other symbols to indicate which form of meaning we want.

The symbols are somewhat arbitrary, but a useful pneumonic is that the symbol for physical action looks like an A for action, and the symbol for human evaluation looks like a V for eValuation. You can also think of these as nouns (material things), verbs (physical actions) and adjectives (human evaluations).

Note how the symbol for human evaluation shows the outline of a cone, standing on its top, indicating a very precarious position. The cone may instantly topple over when pushed and it takes a lot of balancing to keep it in this precarious position. Just as with many evaluations of ours, which we hold, and which often topple over, when challenged.

We can write a specific meaning of a symbol by placing the symbol for material things, physical actions and human evaluations above them. Here are a few more examples.

Notice how having seen the symbol for water, the symbol for rain is easily understood as water falling downward.

Movement is a fundamental concept and it's symbol is the final one we learn in this chapter.

The symbol for legs is inpired by the Egyption heiroglyph. As an action, legs represent to move, or to go.

The first sentence

We now have all we need to write our first sentence.

It's meaning is left as an exercise to the reader.

Chapter 2: Tenses and rich symbol combinations

Before we start, lets take a look at what we hope to build up to in this chapter. Don't worry about understanding the Bliss right now, we'll get there together!

The symbol for time

Time has no obvious visual representation so in Bliss we represent it with a curve turned backwards to mirror the past and turned forward to signify the future. In between past and future is the present.

To indicate tense, we could add these symbols alongside the action indicator, however a single time indicator will be sufficient to indicate action and tense.

Symbols can be reduced in size to reduce their meaning, for example combining day and a small copy of the symbol for the past represents yesterday.

Combinations of symbols

The symbol for mind is the outline of the crest of a human head. We can naturally turn it into a container to convey knowledge.

These symbols are relatively self-explanitory, although it's worth recognising how from a single concept like 'container' others such as to give and receive naturally follow. Also note how once you know the symbol 'give' it is trivial to guess the symbol for 'receive'. Note how different this is to other languages.

Once you know the building blocks, these words need no explanation.

Chapter 3: I am what I own

Existence

All life ultimately derives it's energy from the sun. Bliss combines the symbol for person with sun to create at the symbol for existence (or life).

By reducing the symbols size we acheive a smaller meaning, to be.

Now try translating the following as an exercise:

Possession

To own something means an addition or a gain of some very earthly thing.

Now we know how to express possession we need to know the words for more things we can possess.

We may now write

In English we have a very useful little verb "to have". Having something not indicate ownership outright, but has a smaller meaning. Just like we captured "to be" a smaller form of "to exist", we can minimize "to own" resulting in the verb "to have".

The final piece of the puzzle is to learn how to write "my money". This is easily done.

As we can see, the addition symbol written low beside any noun creates a possessive.

Chapter 4: Senses

The senses are almost so intuitive that they need no explanation.

The eye is much like a typical childs drawing.

The ear is also easily recognisable.

The mouth is the root of many concepts including speaking, tasting, breathing and many more. In Bliss we use a simple circle, inspired by the open mouth.

Like the eye and the ear, the symbol for nose (hopefully!) requires no explanation.

Now lets take a look at how we can combine senses together with other symbols to construct more complex concepts.

Transparency is the ability to see through something solid, while the symbol for asleep and awake are represented by either closed or open eyes.

News is the combination of things we see and hear, while sound is the earthly experience of the ear.

These symbol combinations need no explanation.

These symbol combinations need no explanation.

Chapter 5: Plurals

In Bliss you don't need to worry whether the plural of sheep is sheep or sheeps, you simply write that there are multiple of something.

Increasing magnitude is easily captured by increasing the number of multiplication signs.

Once we have seen building and city, it becomes immediately obvious how to write forest once you have seen tree. This is a great strength of the language.

We can also combine symbols together with plurals, easily creating concepts such as rich person.

Chapter 6: Progress and problems

So far we have learned 36 nouns, 36 verbs and 36 adjectives. We've also studied past and future tenses as well as plurals.

Let's now test ourselves with some practice sentences. Try to work out what each means.

Chapter 7: Eats shoots and leaves.

This story us teaches how single words in most languages have a number of distinct meanings and misinterpretation of a single word can result in confusion and disaster.

Sometimes when translating into Bliss it is possible to accidentally write the wrong word because what you intended to write sounds (in English) the same as what you did write.

In English, reading this Bliss sentence out loud sounds correct, but the symbols used do not actually represent the desired meaning.

It is important to always think about the underlying meaning you want to represent rather than translating word for word.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have now learned enough to get started reading and writing Bliss with the aid of a dictionary.

There are nine more chapters planned for this book so please check back in the future for the remainder of the content. In the meantime, please join our community on Facebook to stay up to date with resources and news about Bliss. Please send any comments or suggestions about the text to owencmoore@gmail.com.