Here’s the very short, four and one-half minute, version:

You can download the slides from the video here.

Here’s more detail – but still just an introduction:

Blissymbolics is a constructed language conceived as an ideographic writing system consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts. Blissymbols differ from most of the world’s major writing systems in that the characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language.                               – Wikipedia

constructed – consciously devised instead of naturally evolved
ideographic – graphic symbols that represent an idea or concept, without phonology
generative – able to create an infinite number of concepts from an initial finite set.

Each Blissymbol represents a concept rather than a word.  For that reason, a single Blissymbol may represent multiple words – or a single word may require multiple Blissymbols.  Because Blissymbols are tied to concepts rather than words, they are language independent. 

More importantly, for individuals who are struggling to communicate and learn language, Blissymbols map directly to objects and ideas in their world.  There’s no need to first learn a spoken language – with maddeningly confusing overlays like synonyms or homonyms – and then learn a complex written code (e.g., “i” before “e” except after “c” or when sounded as “a” as in “neighbor” and “weigh”) in order to represent those spoken words.  [Interestingly, Braille adds an entirely new and separate layer on top of this complexity.  Braille dots must be translated to alphabetic characters and then the alphabetic characters must be translated to spoken words replicating all the complexity discussed above.]

Orientation in Space

Blissymbols are placed between an earth line and a skyline.  The skyline is drawn more thinly than the earth line so the lines themselves are oriented:

The meaning of a symbol can change if the symbol is placed closer to the skyline than to the earth line and vice versa.

Indicators can be added to the symbol, above the skyline to further qualify the symbol as representing a verb, adjective, adverb, plural, and past/present/future tense. More on that below.

Primitives are often Pictographic

At their root, many of the simplest concepts in Blissymbolics are represented by pictographic images.  The symbol for person is drawn as a vertical line intersecting a horizontal line along the earth line.  The vertical line is the major axis of the standing body and the horizontal line represents the individual’s feet :

Here are a few more examples:

Bliss concepts can incorporate “qualifiers”:

A “first person” person is “me”, a “second person” person is you, and so on.

Bliss pronouns and related concepts can be gendered:

Blissymbols can be superimposed to extend concepts:

Indicators extend concepts – Verbs

Charles Bliss envisioned volcanos as the embodiment of action so he chose an upward pointing arrowhead as the indication of activity – a verb.

The “action indicator” is placed above the skyline and transforms a noun into a verb:

Placing an action indicator over the symbol for “eye” produces the concept of “to see”.  This comes from the idea of: “what does the eye do?”

Here’s another example:

Placing a line along the earth line references the earth so a line under the symbol for mouth asks: “what does the mouth get from the earth?”  The answer is “food”.  Put an action indicator over the symbol for food and that transforms “food” into “to eat”.

Placing an action indicator over each of the simple pictographic concepts above transforms each one of them into it’s related action form:

Blissymbols are “conceptual”

There are a couple of things to call to your attention at this point. 

First note that there is a single Blissymbol for the words “see”, “look” and “watch”.  That’s because it’s a single concept.  In that way, Blissymbolics is much simpler to learn than a typical spoken language.  An added benefit of this graphical, conceptual language is there’s no confusion between the symbol “to watch”, shown above, and the symbol representing a timepiece worn on the wrist:

Homonyms don’t derail learning Blissymbols because they’re not based on a spoken language.  Similarly, Blissymbols distinguish between the concepts of “to feel” as in “to sense with one’s fingers” (as shown above) and “to feel” as in “to react emotionally to an event”:

The second thing to note is the way that placing an action indicator above the symbol for “nose” results in the concept of “smell” instead of “breathe” and an action indicator over the symbol for mouth represent the concept “say” rather than “taste”.  There are reasonable justifications for both of these decisions.  The nose is responsible for smelling, but one could just as easily breathe through one’s mouth:

The mouth, on the other hand, plays a role in tasting, but we know that the nose plays just as large – if not a larger – role:

These concepts and their representation are carefully considered and standardized by an international body called Blissymbolics Communication International (BCI).  By including members of several cultures with different spoken languages on the standards body, BCI ensures that Blissymbols will be culture and language independent – in other words, purely conceptual.

Indicators extend concepts – Adjectives and Adverbs

Charles Bliss grew up during Nazi rule and was adamant that his new language would not be used for propaganda.  In particular, he wanted the language to call out concepts that are a matter of one’s opinion and not, necessarily, a fact.   These are the adjectives and adverbs.

Bliss inverted the activity indicator to create an “evaluation” indicator.  You can think of the evaluation indicator as balancing on its point like a toy top.  It could easily fall to the left or the right.  You might agree, or, then again, you might disagree.

Like the action indicator, the evaluation indicator is placed above the skyline.  Here are three related adjectives:

These three Blissymbols also demonstrate the fact that a symbol’s location between the earth and sky lines influences how it is interpreted.  The “quantity” symbol on the earth line represents “many” or “much”.    Moving the same symbol below the skyline and resting it on a “shelf” represents the concept “more” (i.e., more than many).  You can think of the shelf as keeping the quantity from falling down to “many”.  Putting a shelf above the quantity symbol means that the quantity can’t increase any further so it is at its “maximum/most” value.  On the other hand, because each of these symbols includes an evaluation indicator, they just represent someone’s opinion.  Therefore, you may disagree!

Turning Blissymbols into Tactile Symbols

Our Bliss Tactile Symbols incorporate all the cues necessary to recognize the Blissymbol:

Our tactile symbols incorporate tactile equivalents of both the earth line and the skyline.  The earth line is twice as deep and wide as the skyline to aid in tactual orientation.

The Blissymbol itself is included as a raised element.   The size and location of the element matches the official symbol exactly.  Note: we have removed the action and evaluation indicator from the graphic to reduce tactile complexity and rely on the shape of the symbol (see below) to communicate the same information.

Braille is optionally included on the side of the symbol and descriptive text is optionally engraved on the back of the symbol.

The top of the symbol is shaped to mirror the word/concept class of the Blissymbol.  This is done to help a user of the symbol more quickly locate the tactile symbol they want based solely on the shape of the symbol.  The Bliss Tactile Symbol designer supports four different top shapes:

adverb/adjective/determiner	verb	noun/pronoun/preposition

You can also create a symbol with a flat top-edge for “other” purposes like creating a symbol representing a phrase.

More in-depth training

For a deeper look at Blissymbols, we recommend this online training by Margareta Jennische.  At the time of this writing, Margareta is the President of Blissymbolics Communication International – so you know she knows her stuff!

Blissymbols in Action

The following video shows a young Swedish girl using printed Blissymbols to communicate. [If you don’t speak Swedish, turn on closed captions and then under Settings choose Auto-translate to English.]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JJNE2gF2Hog%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26fs%3D1%26hl%3Den-US%26autohide%3D2%26wmode%3Dtransparent