ID this language please

[SanteeFats]

I have had a picture for almost 50 years with Asian (?) characters on it. Several people who could read a few different languages looked at it and had no idea.
I would like to find out what the language is before I kick the bucket so any help will be greatly appreciated..

[palo5]

Just guessing, because I'm not an expert, but it reminds me very strongly of Mongolian scripts I've seen. The language and dialects can be confusing because they can be written in a number of different writing systems. This may be one of them

[seany65]

It could of course be utter rubbish, that was written by someone in the factory where the pic was printed.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by seany65

It could of course be utter rubbish

I doubt that very much. It's careful artwork & caligraphy

[Denaniel]

I posted the images on the Duolingo forum, which has literally millions of language students sharing info. Two people replied to say it was Man'yōgana, "an ancient writing system that employs Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language, and was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man'y%C5%8Dgana

So the simple answer is, it is an old form of Japanese writing.

Update (17 April 2019): Turns out the people who guessed Japanese were wrong! See my 2nd post below.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by Denaniel

So the simple answer is, it is an old form of Japanese writing.

Yes, I guessed an older form of writing, but didn't know how to explain that it doesn't look "modern". Good you found an answer

[kogi]

Don't you believe this fake news! After watching 'Ancient Civilizations' on National Geographic it is clear as day that this is a language from an alien civilization from out of space.

Here is the evidence:

[Denaniel]

Update: It's not Japanese, but Chinese!

The people who replied that it was Japanese were outvoted. Several more people replied to say that it is a form of Chinese calligraphy called semi-cursive.

As native Chinese, I'm 100% sure it's Chinese "龍鹫迫脅", which means the dragon and vulture are fighting. That's what this painting is about. As for people who said it's Japanese, I'm assuming they think it's Kanji, but "Kanji" literally means "Han characters". "Han" is the majority group in China, so Chinese is also called "Han characters". For those who have no idea about the history of Japan, over half of Japanese Kanji are originally from Chinese characters.

I think this is the right answer. The characters are read in vertical columns, starting on the right:

迫 龍

脅 鹫

The characters look a little different because it is written in a calligraphic style (something like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-cursive_script )

Here is the first character "dragon" written in Chinese calligraphy: http://www.artnet.com/artists/empero...q1W_KuSDAGHDw2

One of the people who originally said it was Japanese admitted his mistake and explained further:

Wow, I've never thought it was 龍, quite cool but hard to guess for a non-native like me lol. I think that your answer is the right one. The other character doesn't exist in Japanese but the kanji 鷲 which means eagle is quite similar to the hanzi 鹫. In calligraphic style it looks like this https://item-shopping.c.yimg.jp/i/j/...tl-kanji-washi but it doesn't match with the part that is below.

[vo1v0d]

I think it is an ancient dialect called Borrocks and translates as 'made in Taiwan'