Introduction to linguistics
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication. There are about 4,000 languages that make use of an established writing system.
All writing systems require:
at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually termed signs and collectively called a script;
at least one set of rules and conventions (orthography) understood and shared by a community, which assigns meaning to the base elements (graphemes), their ordering, and their relation to one another;
at least one language (generally spoken) whose constructions are represented and can be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and rules;
some physical means of distinctly representing the symbols by application to a permanent or semi-permanent medium, so they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised).
Generally, there are three major types of writing systems: alphabets, syllabaries, and logographies. There are a number of subdivisions of each type, and there are different classifications of writing systems in different sources.
Alphabets use a standard set of letters representing the consonants and vowels of a spoken language. The correspondence is almost never one-to-one. Usually several different letters represent one phoneme and/or several phonemes are represented by the same letter. Alternately, a sequence of two or more letters can represent a single phoneme. Abjads differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, and in abugidas or alphasyllabaries each character represents a consonant-vowel pairing.
Syllabaries consist of symbols that represent syllables, which are considered to be a basic building block of the words.
Logographies use characters corresponding to words, morphemes, or other semantic units.
Alphabets typically use a set of less than 100 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have several hundred, and logographies can have thousands of symbols.
A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes (basic units of sound) of a language.
Alphabets, or phonemic alphabets, are sets of letters that represent consonants and vowels. The word “alphabet” is derived from alpha and beta, the first two symbols of the Greek alphabet.
Alphabets currently in use include Armenian, Cyrillic, Georgian (Mkhedruli), Greek, Korean (hangŭl), Latin/Roman, N’Ko, and Tifinagh.
The first type of alphabet that was developed was the abjad. An abjad is an alphabetic writing system where there is one symbol per consonant. Abjads differ from other alphabets in that they have characters only for consonant sounds, although vocalization is used in specific contexts, such as in religious books and children’s books. The term “abjad” takes its name from the old order of the Arabic alphabet’s consonants ‘alif, bā’, jīm, and dāl.
Arabic, Hebrew, and Thaana are the only abjads currently in use, but Samaritan and Syriac are used to a limited extent.
An abugida is an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate a different vowel than the inherent one. The graphic similarity of most abugidas comes from the fact that they are derived from abjads, so that consonants make up the symbols with the inherent vowel and new vowel symbols are markings added on to the base symbol. The name “abugida” is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ge’ez script used in some contexts.
Abugidas that are currently in use include Bengali, Burmese, Cree (Nêhiyaw), Dehong Dai (Tai Le), Devanāgarī, Fraser, Ge’ez (Ethiopic), Gujarāti, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Inuktitut, Kannada, Khmer, Lao, Malayalam, Naskapi (Innu Aimun), Ojibwe (Anishinaabe), Odia, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Tibetan.
The ones used to a limited extent are Balinese, Batak, Bilang-bilang, Blackfoot (Siksika), Buhid, Carrier (Dulkw’ahke), Chakma, Cham, Dhurwa, Ditema, Gondi, Grantha, Hanifi, Hanuno’o, Hmong, Javanese, Jenticha, Kaithi, Kerinci, Khoiki, Kirat Rai, Kulitan, Lampung, Lanna, Lepcha (Róng-Ríng), Limbu/Kirati, Lontara, Lota Ende, Manipuri (Meetei Mayek), Mon, Mwangwego, New Tai Lue, Ranjana, Rejang, Sasak, Satera Jontal, Saurashtra, Shan, Sharda, Siddham, Sorang Sompeng, Soyombo, Sundanese, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tikamuli, Tolong Siki, Tigalari, and Varang Kshiti.
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent or approximate syllables, which make up words.
Syllabaries currently in use include Cherokee (Tsalagi), Hiragana (Japanese), Katakana (Japanese), and Yi (Nosu).
The symbols used in logographic systems often represent both sound and meaning. These scripts can also be called semanto-phonetic, logophonetic, morphophonemic, or logosyllabic.
They may include the following types of symbol:
Pictograms or pictographs resemble the things they represent. Logograms are symbols that represent parts of words or whole words.
Ideograms or ideographs are symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas.
Compound characters include a semantic element, which represents or hints at their meaning, and a phonetic element, which shows or hints at their pronunciation.
The semanto-phonetic writing systems currently in use are Chinese (Zhōngwén) and Japanese (Nihongo), while Naxi is used mainly for decorative, ceremonial or religious purposes.
Scripts are also graphically characterized by the direction in which they are written. Egyptian hieroglyphs were written either left to right or right to left.
The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions: horizontally (side to side), or vertically (up or down). Prior to standardization, alphabetic writing was done both left-to-right and right-to-left.
The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be written right-to-left. Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to the left of the page, but nowadays are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influence.
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