Questions tagged [writing-systems]
A writing system is a system to record spoken language visible on a permanent medium.
167
questions
12
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Was cuneiform ever drawn on a surface, as opposed to carved?
Cuneiform's glyphs are well-known for the odd way they were made; stamping. I wonder though, given that it remained in used for thousands of years, was this the only way it was ever utilized? Was ...
user43283
5
votes
1
answer
681
views
How unpredictable must vowels be for a writing system to classify as an abjad?
I've been pondering a conlang with a rather unusual orthography. I'm only stating this because no natural language has this sort of writing system. Essentially, its a system that only writes ...
user43283
25
votes
1
answer
6k
views
Why do many Arabic letters look exactly like other letters except for dots, yet have no similarity in sound?
Why do many Arabic letters look exactly like other letters except for dots, yet have no similarity in sound?
Examples:
- 763
-4
votes
1
answer
101
views
Origins of the alphabets for Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic languages
I am working on a program to learn some of the most popular non-Western languages: first, Arabic and Hebrew, second, Bengali and Hindu whose scripts are based on Sanskrit, and third, Chinese, Japanese,...
-1
votes
1
answer
198
views
Why is the day of the week capitalized only in Germanic languages and not in Romance languages?
In English, it is written as Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday and January February March April May June July August September November December. On the other hand, in Romance ...
1
vote
0
answers
91
views
Are there any diacritics derived from superscripted "i" (and other letters)?
I know that umlaut (e.g. ä) derives from superscripted "e", ring (e.g. å) derives from superscripted "a", and tilde (e.g. ñ) derives from superscripted "n".
Is there a ...
- 246
1
vote
1
answer
150
views
Closeness between written words and spoken words over different languages
In my understanding, the different languages exist in spoken form and (mostly) in written forms (what about sign languages?).
Some languages have developed a close relationship between the written ...
- 111
7
votes
3
answers
891
views
Why is Devanagari currently used for Sanskrit?
Sanskrit was originally an oral language. It began to be written in the Brahmi script and then over time, most of the Brahmi-derived scripts, Gupta, Siddham, Nagari, Devanagari, Purvi Nagari etc. were ...
2
votes
2
answers
113
views
Is the origin of the Mongolian script fully established?
I have read various theories about the origins of the Mongolian script, which I believe is known as the Hudum Mongol Bichig. Some claim it is ultimately descended from Sogdian runes(which means its ...
- 217
5
votes
1
answer
458
views
What IPA Symbols Are Equivalent to Each of These Middle High German Diacritics?
I recently came across this article on the inclusion of certain superscript combining characters for use with representing Middle High German in Unicode. From what I understand, scribes and early ...
- 91
5
votes
1
answer
382
views
What is the origin of ⟨c⟩ for /ts/?
In several languages' romanizations or orthographies, the letter C is used to represent the /ts/ sound. Where does this come from? Wikipedia notes that ⟨c⟩ is used for Cyrillic ⟨ц⟩ in the ...
- 395
19
votes
5
answers
3k
views
Why were vowels secondary citizens in many of the worlds sound-based writing systems?
Not considering logographic systems like Chinese, and outside Cuneiform (not sure if that is a logo system or something else), it appears at first glance that many of the world's writing systems ...
- 4,342
16
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Should orthographies represent phonemes or phones?
I am currently working with Salvadoran Nawat, an endangered language that has never had a standardized orthography due to being primarily oral. As part of the revitalization process, we need to ...
- 161
-1
votes
1
answer
128
views
Isn't it misleading to call written representations of spoken languages as written languages?
In the following sentences I would refer to anything that can be used to denote something as a symbol.
Any language uses some kind of symbol to denote different things. I presume that any language ...
- 123
-1
votes
2
answers
185
views
Is 'x' the written form for the speech sound ɛks in this sentence?
Consider the following spoken sentence written in phonetic transcription:
lɛt ɛks dɪˈnəʊt ən ˈɛlɪmənt ɒv ðə sɛt ------------1
(I don't know how to do phonetic transcriptions, I used a website for ...
- 123
3
votes
1
answer
113
views
Numbers in Arabic Netspeak
I came across this list of numbers to represent sounds in Arabic netspeak:
2 is A
3 is a heavy (so heavy) A, sure you can't even pronounce it but you could replace with a regular A, no one would care
...
- 409
1
vote
2
answers
264
views
Are there heuristics to tell if a character is from Chinese, Kanji, or Chu Nom?
Suppose I know nothing about Chinese writing systems but some basic strokes and radicals. When given a blocky-looking character, how do I tell if it's a character only used in Kanji, in Chữ Nôm, or in ...
- 113
3
votes
0
answers
95
views
Are there any scripts derived from Chinese characters that diverged before Regular Script?
The Wikipedia article on clerical script lists several child systems such as Kanji, Kana, Hanja, Zhuyin, Sawndip, Chữ Hán etc. Are there any writing systems descended from seal script or earlier?
- 246
4
votes
0
answers
101
views
Historically, when was whitespace used versus interpuncts versus no-separation?
The Wikipedia article on whitespace claimed until recently that the use of whitespace as a word separator was rare until its promotion by Alcuin of York in the Carolingian Renaissance. But I've found ...
- 149
1
vote
1
answer
111
views
What are the principles of Middle Egyptian spelling?
In this question, the transliteration jdnw is given as the Middle Egyptian for the equivalent of "lieutenant". If I now want to render that in hieroglyphs, how would that work?
I could ...
- 507
2
votes
1
answer
238
views
Questions about the "Hand of Irulegi"
The Hand of Irulegi is a recently found artifact from Navarra, Spain. It is dated in 1st c. BCE and carries an inscription touted as the oldest attestation of the Basque language.
The text can be ...
- 30.2k
-6
votes
1
answer
347
views
Why was the letter K removed from the Welsh alphabet?
Honestly, why did they remove letter K from the alphabet?
- 320
5
votes
1
answer
3k
views
If the letter V occurs in a few native words, why isn't it included in the Irish Alphabet?
So, I read about the Irish alphabet once, and there was a phrase saying that "V" occurs in a few native words like "vácarnach" which means to quack in English. Shouldn't the letter ...
- 320
0
votes
1
answer
221
views
Is there really any difference between the words Pictography, Ideography, Symbols and Picture-symbols?
I am currently absorbed in Megg's history for Graphic design and I came across certain terms that seem to have incredibly ambiguous meaning (Pictography, Ideography, Symbols & Signs) and one that ...
4
votes
1
answer
133
views
Ways of classifying writing systems by appearance?
Are there any common groupings of writing systems by grapheme appearance? I'm currently writing about language identification and one specific goal I have as part of the work is to include steps for ...
- 141
0
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Why few languages do not have any written form?
There are many languages available in the world which have no written form like shanghainese , Hakka etc .
My question is, why a language do not have any written form ? What's the root cause of it ?
- 11
0
votes
1
answer
106
views
What is the difference between written dialects, spoken dialects, and writing/encoding schemes?
I am working on a language website and am just encountering the need to specify spoken dialects. I already have a sort of scheme for representing written encodings (like Tibetan wiley romanization ...
- 4,342
1
vote
2
answers
82
views
Any online resources on dongba language and hieroglyph？
I visited Yunnan last year and found the fascinating dongba hieroglyph of naxi people and their great epic poetry. I am curious about any online resources on this dongba hieroglyph?
I, personally, ...
- 113
8
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Why does “&” look nothing like e and t
“&” (ampersand) was from a ligature of e and t. but it looks nothing like e and t put together. Why?
- 131
0
votes
1
answer
82
views
Do we know enough to become fluent in written Mayan?
There are about 7000 languages but only three origins of writing: The Middle East, China, and Mesoamerica. The most studied writing system in Mesoamerica is Mayan script. It was once the official ...
- 109
0
votes
1
answer
67
views
Do these letters belong to Kannada?
I am native Kannada speaker. But I've never came across these vowels:
ಌ (U+0C8C)
ೡ (U+0CE1)
ೢ (U+0CE2)
ೣ (U+0CE3)
and these yogavahs:
ೱ (U+0CF1)
ೲ (U+0CF2)
Unlike ಱ, ೞ I've never saw/heard above ...
19
votes
3
answers
5k
views
Why was "zh" picked to represent /ʒ/, and where does it come from?
As a native French speakers I used to be puzzled by Zh being used for /ʒ/. At first because I didn't understand the need for it, since in French j is /ʒ/, and dj is /dʒ/. Then I understood why English ...
- 429
3
votes
2
answers
590
views
What does the letter do ৡ in Bangla?
There are 14 অ বর্গীয় (O borgiyo) letters in Bengali. But couldn't find out in book what they are. I know that there are 11 vowel letters in Bengali. But while looking for অ বর্গীয়, I just found that ...
- 31
0
votes
4
answers
297
views
How is "mim(م)" letter connected to "dal(د)"?
Whenever I go to mosque, there is always the following image near "ﷲ" name. However, I don't understand how "mim" letter is there. I know "mim" letter as "م". ...
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How do Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs differ?
The Wikipedia article on the History of Writing contains the following quote:
the earliest solid evidence of Egyptian writing differs in structure
and style from the Mesopotamian and must therefore ...
- 141
1
vote
1
answer
224
views
Why does text in Cyrillic or Japanese contain Latin characters for technical/scientific terms?
Through a question on a sister site, I stumbled upon a Bulgarian document that includes drawings and measurements.
What stroke me is that the text in Cyrillic contains Latin characters when it comes ...
- 179
10
votes
4
answers
991
views
Is there a collective term for the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets?
I was just wondering if such a term exists, since they are very similar to each other, and all of them derive from the Greek alphabet, so I thought perhaps there might be a collective term for the ...
3
votes
2
answers
488
views
Books on historical writing systems
Can you recommend books on the writing systems that are not widely used today (e.g. the Germanic runes, the Old Turkic script)?
- 39
0
votes
1
answer
100
views
Is を as almost exclusively an object marker exceptional amongst alphabet usage?
The almost exclusive usage of を in Japanese to mark the object of a sentence- is that the only specialized use of a letter or are there other languages where one letter is designated as being for a ...
- 157
1
vote
3
answers
728
views
Why are Urdu and Shahmukhi perceived as separate scripts?
It is known that the Urdu script is used to write Hindustani languages and Shahmukhi is used to write Punjabi and Saraiki languages.
But both the Perso-Arabic-based scripts are of the same Nastaliq ...
- 265
17
votes
11
answers
3k
views
Writing systems that do not preserve spoken order
Are there writing systems where there are cases of written form of words not preserving the order of speech, i.e. text(A) precedes text(B) in the written form, but speech(B) precedes speech(A)?
Only ...
- 271
0
votes
1
answer
161
views
Boustrophedon-like writing system with single character orientation
Did a writing system ever develop that had a bi-directional writing style, alternating every line, with character orientation and order being preserved between lines? (Essentially Boustrophedon, ...
- 105
1
vote
2
answers
175
views
Probability based algorithm to convert IPA into english language text
For a student job i'm creating a neural network-based method of determining the probability that two written names are referring to the same person (e.g. what is the probability that kelly m. refers ...
- 113
18
votes
4
answers
6k
views
Why were writing systems invented independently during roughly the same period across multiple civilizations?
Homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, and spoken language is believed to have been around for 50,000 to 150,000 years.
Writing is a relatively new phenomenon. According to this source, ...
- 587
0
votes
1
answer
68
views
Why are meaning, sound, and writing "part of the outside world, not part of language"?
The linked question explains why writing isn't language, but the embolded sentence is alleging something different, that writing isn't even "part of language". Why?
Linguistics usually ...
user5306
-1
votes
1
answer
567
views
Why's writing not language?
Writing is not language. How?
Doesn't the sentence — that I underlined in red on p 280 — contradict this? The author wrote that if "language is manifested instead as graphic marks, then we can ...
user5306
0
votes
1
answer
223
views
Do any other languages use ruby characters(furigana) as extensively as Japanese
Just what the question asks.
I’ll note that Chinese does use it extensively with pinyin when teaching Chinese to western foreigners. However I’m referring to using in materials by and for native ...
- 101
0
votes
1
answer
152
views
How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake?
How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake? For example:
Your the best.
This iz the end.
I likes music.
She preatend to be asleep.
One method is to read the erroneous sentence aloud (...
- 117
13
votes
10
answers
3k
views
Are there any diacritics not on the top or bottom of a letter?
I don't know of any besides the horn on Ơ and Ư and the middle tilde on ᵯ and some other consonants
I'm interested in particular in a diacritic precomposed with both "I" and "U"
- 239
3
votes
3
answers
425
views
A term for sign/symbol that represents multiple letters
At the time the Quran was revealed, the Arabic letters that we know of today was different. As I understand it, they did not have the concept of letter in the meaning we understand today.
For example,...
- 463