To those with knowledge of Asian languages.

[Tola]

Take a good, long look at Belkar's Mark of Justice in the recent strip.

Is it a known word/sentence/meaning? I'm not convinced it's just a random symbol or gibberish.

Currently, connection to here is FOUL: can't really search for this.

[honkuimushi]

It's not any commonly used Japanese Kanji. Chinese of course uses a lot more characters, but I doubt it has any meaning in Chinese either. It contravenes many of the rules used for stroke order and just looks like a pain to write with a brush.

While I can't read either, it looks more like Sanskrit or Arabic than any Chinese derived writing system.

[Tingel]

For it to mean something, it'd have to be a logogram. Most languages of the world use phonograms, so there aren't many options. I am almost completely sure that the symbol on Belkar's forehead was made up by Mister Burlew. It doesn't even resemble any modern or major ancient language, Asian or otherwise.



EDIT:
@honkuimushi: I can guarantee that the symbol is not Chinese, Japanese, Korean or anything related, nor is it Sanskrit or Arabic. The latter two don't use logograms anyway, which means even if the Mark of Justice were rooted in those languages, it couldn't possibly convey any relevant meaning.

[paladinofshojo]

My giuess is that it means "Justice" since it is the "Mark of Justice" afterall right?

[Tingel]

That would indeed make a considerable amount of sense. But Tola's inquiry was about a possible real-world significance of the symbol - and I am quite sure there is none.

The made-up Azurite script has been used in the comic before, for example as part of the divine summoning circle in strip #267. I doubt that Mister Burlew actually invented a meaningful script for Azure City, though (otherwise I'd assume the script would see more prominent use in the comic).

[Occasional Sage]

I'm not convinced it's just a random symbol or gibberish.

You should be. It's not a part of a real-world script, unless it's HIGHLY stylized. I'd give even that less than a 1%, though.

[Arkenputtyknife]

Mongolian contains some characters that vaguely resemble it, such as ᡈ (Unicode 6216), as do some other scripts such as Georgian and Tibetan. (Apologies if that doesn't come out or looks stupid on your system—it looks pretty bad on mine, too.) None of them are a good match. While there are a great many scripts which aren't currently supported on my machine, I'd say it's very likely that it's a more-or-less random squiggle.

[Zolem]

Im prety sue it's Celestial, which uses phonetic and logrithmic symbolic comunication.

[TigerHunter]

Im prety sue it's Celestial, which uses phonetic and logrithmic symbolic comunication.
That makes a large amount of sense.

[Innis Cabal]

it is not any single kanji or katakana, its a made up symbol

http://japanesekanji.nobody.jp/image/justice.gif

[Austran]

My giuess is that it means "Justice" since it is the "Mark of Justice" afterall right?

Probaly it was made up, but it really ressembles a "J" of Justice.

[Halvormerlinaky]

That makes a large amount of sense.

I don't want to derail this thread too much, but what exactly are you trying to do to that tiger in your avatar?

[hamishspence]

Theres are a few in strip symbols, and one in SoD on Eugenes back. I do not know asian langauges, I could say if any resemble Asian symbols.

[Runa]

Others have said as much, but I'm going to add my two cents anyway:

Single-symbol-for-a-meaning type characters exist in both Japanese (where they are called kanji) and Chinese, the latter even being the root of the Japanese characters of that nature (and to a lesser extent most of the phonetic characters, which were often taken from parts of kanji).

Take it from somebody who is learning Japanese from a teacher who speaks Japanese, Chinese AND Korean: it does not look at all like it could be a kanji character, Chinese character, or Korean writing. The visual style - which is quite distinct, and Korean and Chinese and kanji are also quite distinct in there styles - is all wrong, and as someone else pointed out, it would likely have a different (and bizarre) stroke order than you'd normally find there.

And take it from someone who has known Muslims before: it doesn't look much like Arabic, either, which is much more flowing and cursive in appearance, more the kind of thing you'd do calligraphy in than the carve-it-into-a-rock kind of style we see in the MoJ symbol. And from what little Sanskrit I recall seeing in my various college textbooks, it's nowhere near looking like that, either.

If it's based on any existing characters, it would have to be much more obscure than any of those (like Tibetan or whatnot), or from a conlang (constructed language). Possibly a D&D language like Celestial, as mentioned by someone else.

So unless it's an obscure cultic rune or something, I would say there's a strong chance that it's either from D&D or (more likely, since D&D languages are probably copyrighted material) something Rich designed himself.

[AtomicKitKat]

It's Indian. Or South Asian, if you want to be politically correct.

Derived from it at any rate.

Here's one of them. (http://www.ancientscripts.com/images/tamil.gif)

Here's another. (http://www.esm.psu.edu/~axl4/Lakhtakia/Hindi/Alphabet.gif)

[rxmd]

It's Indian. Or South Asian, if you want to be politically correct.

Derived from it at any rate.
Certainly doesn't belong in any South Asian script I've ever had the pleasure of working with and that is quite a number by now (Devanagari/"Hindi", Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Tibetan, as well as Arabic)

I doubt it's derived from anything, it's just a squiggle put together by the Giant.

[Kami2awa]

It looks a lot like the symbols in Durokan's dungeon, which leads me to believe its just Rich's way of drawing a generic magic rune...

[AtomicKitKat]

Certainly doesn't belong in any South Asian script I've ever had the pleasure of working with and that is quite a number by now (Devanagari/"Hindi", Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Tibetan, as well as Arabic)

I doubt it's derived from anything, it's just a squiggle put together by the Giant.

I did say derived. It looks a bit like a rotated "za" in Tamil, with a bit cropped/added. South Asian is certainly the closest real-world match thus far.

[Bag_of_Holding]

In case any of you were wondering, it's not Korean either. :smallbiggrin:

[Kgw]

I think that it's made-up symbol; in OoD you can see marks similar to Belkar's when Roy's father swear his oath.

[Liwen]

It's a guy sitting on the beach with some triangular shaped objet in his left hand, maybe a boomerang.