Questions tagged [writing-systems]
A writing system is a system to record spoken language visible on a permanent medium.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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
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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 ...
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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?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Why was the letter K removed from the Welsh alphabet?
Honestly, why did they remove letter K from the alphabet?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ?
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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". ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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)?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 (...
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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"
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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,...
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What is the official/correct orthography for Alsatian / Elsässisch German?
As per the Wikipedia article on the Alsatian language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_dialect#Orthography) the orthography
includes the latin letters A,B,C ... X,Y,Z and the following vowels ...
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Glagolitic Ⰾ (l) is like Ⰴ (d). Is it related to Latin / Old Latin l / d lingua dingua, lacrima dacrima?
Glagolitic Ⰾ (l) is like Ⰴ (d). Is it related to Latin / Old Latin l / d lingua dingua, lacrima dacrima?
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Which writing systems have the highest/lowest stroke-to-sound ratios?
Preemptive note: This question is about sound-based writing systems, excluding logographic systems like Chinese. Transitional systems like Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya script or Man’yōgana are also ...
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Is the Cyrillic letter 'Z' the same as the number 3
Why do the Cyrillic 'Z'(З) and the number '3' seem to be the same glyph? Is there a difference that I'm just not seeing? They look identical to me
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Why did "s" use to look like "f"?
Example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Houghton_EC65.M6427P.1667aa_-_Paradise_Lost%2C_1667.jpg
Paradife loft.
There is no way that I can ever read that as:
Paradise lost.
The ...
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Can all scripts be used to write all different languages?
I am thinking about making an introductory book to some different "languages", for self learning. But I realize I'm blending the writing system with the pronunciation system, and am starting to get ...
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Where does the letter <j> come from to some Cyrillic alphabets?
Most South-West languages of Slavic language family, like Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, include the Latin letter in their alphabets, which has not been a part of Cyrillic writing system they're ...
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How are the Ogham stones inscribed?
I earlier asked How to convert Old Irish Latin script to Ogham? and am not quite complete with the answer. I have a similar question still trying to dig into how to build an Ogham generator. But ...
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Why do we make a distinction between letters and punctuation marks?
In English, for example, the word "don't" is made up of 4 letters ("d", "o", "n" and "t"), and one punctuation mark ("'").
However, there seems to me to be no reason for this distinction. Without any ...
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Is there a database or standard (ISO etc.) which maps Unicode or ISO-15924 scripts with the ISO-639/Glottolog etc. languages that use them
Is there a database or standard (ISO etc.) which maps Unicode or ISO-15924 scripts with the ISO-639/Glottolog etc. languages that use them, so that I can make queries like the following on it:
For an ...
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Are there logographic writing systems for the blind? Do blind users of logographic writing systems struggle like how deaf users of alphabets do?
I'm not a linguist, but I borrowed a textbook from my university library and read the chapter on writing systems. The textbook is Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction by William O'Grady. In it, ...
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Was the Thai letter ด really derived from ต?
Understanding the relative chronology of implosivization in Thai and Khmer, and how it interacted with the development of the scripts, is difficult (at least for me). In this answer it is suggested ...
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