Questions tagged [writing-systems]
A writing system is a system to record spoken language visible on a permanent medium.
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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 ...
18
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4answers
5k views
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
4
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1answer
151 views
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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1answer
58 views
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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1answer
40 views
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 ...
3
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3answers
165 views
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 ...
0
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1answer
48 views
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 ...
4
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1answer
91 views
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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0answers
91 views
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 the first answer to this ...
6
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3answers
214 views
Why does capitalization exist?
For background, I'm a systems developer, not a linguist. There's a tendency to dismiss any grammar rules in my line of work namely because of how "strict" (read: dumb, simple) the computers and ...
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2answers
71 views
Is thorn cognate with Bactrian sho? [closed]
There is a letter thorn that suffered a great loss in Old English with its size being doubled and this double sound is hidden in plain sight. I think that thorn may be related to the Bactrian sho ...
4
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1answer
871 views
The term “proto” in “proto-language”
I noticed that both Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Indo-European have the title of "proto", although the Proto-Sinaitic has actual scripts which were found and studied, i.e. it is a fact that it existed, ...
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2answers
244 views
What is the modern general communication language writing system with simplest letter symbols?
I would like to know what is the modern, formal, writing system with simplest (most minimal) letter symbols by these means:
Total number of letters comprised only or mostly from line segments (...
1
vote
1answer
95 views
Where can I find the letters of documented writing systems, as text, online?
I was looking for the letters of the Safaitic writing system of Ancient North Arabian (ANA) as text, online.
Safaitic is a well documented and researched writing system that was a prominent (if not ...
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2answers
2k views
How well do Semitic languages preserve consonants over time?
I'm not too familiar with the details of Semitic languages, but as far as I can tell it seems the tri-consonantal roots of words are relatively important. If the consonants change over time, did they ...
0
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1answer
99 views
How are words seperated in Arabic? Is empty character sufficient always?
I am trying to count Arabic words in some verses in Quran. What is the universal rule to seperate words in Arabic, particularly in Arabic used in Quran?
My computer program uses empty character to ...
20
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9answers
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Languages which changed their writing direction
I am interested in account of languages that had undergone a change in the writing direction somewhere in the history.
We might say, for example, that Greek was used to be written also (not sure if ...
4
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0answers
102 views
How can I tell if a vowel is “empty”?
In Hittite cuneiform, every glyph with a phonetic meaning is either V (a vowel), CV (a consonant followed by a vowel), VC, or CVC. As a result, there's no way to represent three consonants in a row ...
4
votes
1answer
131 views
How do I know if a cuneiform character is a logogram or determinative?
When I'm looking at a Hittite text, occasionally I'll come across a glyph that has no phonetic meaning. This generally means one of two things: either it's a logogram, or it's a determinative. Either ...
7
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2answers
274 views
The Cyrillic script among the Slavic people
Today the Cyrillic script is used by the East Slavs, such as the Russians and the Bulgarians, but the West Slavs (e.g. the Czechs, the Poles) and some South Slavs (e.g. the Croats, the Slovenes) use ...
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6answers
366 views
Do multi-dimensional writing systems exist?
I am not sure whether linguistics board is the right place to ask this question, but since I couldn't find any better place here is the question:
Most (all?) of the writing systems are using the ...
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1answer
102 views
relationship between writing systems, scripts, and font. Terminology clarification required
I want a clarification on terminology. A language is written in a particular script . but there are various styles for writing a script. For e.g. arabic is written in arabic script, and it can be ...
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0answers
129 views
Does an alphabet with the uniform letter frequency distribution exist?
A language employs some kind of alphabet for writing. One could naïvely expect that each letter bears the same amount of entropy. But in reality that is not the case. For example in English each ...
2
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0answers
74 views
What made some languages change normal writing orientation?
For Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese, writing was done in 漢字 (English spelling may vary), going down and stopping and switching to the next line on the left and repeating the process again. ...
3
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0answers
63 views
Learning a script as an adult
It is well-known that it is difficult to compete with native speakers when learning a language as an adult. But is there a similar phenomenon with writing systems? Can non-natives (e.g. of Arabic or ...
2
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2answers
108 views
Other Extensible Scripts Besides Latin
Besides the Latin script with its menagerie of diacritics and modified glyphs, what other phonetic scripts are extensible to such a degree to accommodate new sounds?
I know the Greek alphabet and ...
2
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0answers
94 views
Are there examples of symbols similar to modern emoji or emoticons that were used before 20th century?
In other words, any symbols (ideograms) used to convey emotions that fit the description of "ancient emoji".
I'm mostly interested in ancient and medieval attested symbols, but anything from before ...
4
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2answers
166 views
Rejecting writing down a language for various reasons
I remembered reading somewhere about a language that its speakers believe the written words are sacred (or some other reasons) they chose to refrain from putting spoken words into written forms even ...
0
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4answers
805 views
Is it possible to have a word-based language completely without word inflection?
First, sorry if I'm not using the correct terminology here.
By "word-based", I mean typical Indo-European languages (plus Uralic) where there are only tens of characters (e.g. "A to Z" (Latin) or "А ...
5
votes
2answers
522 views
When was the first bicameral script developed?
The Wikipedia article on letter case says this without citing any references:
Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic ...
4
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2answers
151 views
(How) did Hittite borrow words from Sumerian?
It was always my understanding that Hittite borrowed the cuneiform script from the Sumerians via Akkadian. This would prevent Hittite from borrowing lexemes from Sumerian unless Akkadian borrowed them ...
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3answers
392 views
Alphabet size affects complexity of written ideas?
Do relatively simple alphabets (Rotokas, Hawaiian) limit the complexity of written ideas? Example: could Rotokas be used to write a technical manual for the space shuttle?
7
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1answer
297 views
Which alphabetic writing system first had spaces between words?
Just recently, I believed that spaces between words were first invented with the Carolingian minuscule, invented by the English scholar Alcuin of York. As I just discovered, spacing wasn't first ever ...
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2answers
101 views
Looking for a character like the greek theta, θ, but with two middle lines
I'm looking for a character in any writing system or even a known symbol (more common is better) that would roughly look like the Greek theta θ, but with two lines in the middle.
If there is none, it ...
5
votes
3answers
975 views
Is a vowel only writing system possible?
An abjad is a writing system in which only consonants are normally written, is the opposite possible?
I've recently discovered that English actually has far more vowel-sounds than we have vowel ...
3
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1answer
54 views
Is there distinct jargon for syllabaries depending on their inventory?
The dictionary definition of a syllabary is "a set of written characters representing syllables and (in some languages or stages of writing) serving the purpose of an alphabet." I would personally ...
0
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2answers
90 views
If the Romanization of Logographic (and other) Languages is Fully Accurate
Wondering if the translation of languages such as Chinese and Japanese into Romanized versions is accurate. That is, it doesn't lose information. For example, in Romanization of Chinese, they say ...
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3answers
800 views
“Character sets” for top 100 languages (as opposed to Unicode)
Searching "the number of languages" shows about ~7,000.
However, Google Translate only has ~100 languages listed.
That makes me wonder if the languages have a lot of overlapping/duplicated elements.
...
4
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2answers
223 views
Is it possible to read the narrow IPA transcription of one's native/fluent language as effortlessly and quickly as its conventional orthography?
it seems there's no neurolinguistic limit on how many letters can a language's alphabet have (it varies a lot between languages), the IPA is a huge phonetic alphabet, As of the most recent change in ...
2
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0answers
36 views
How to quantify and compare different ways of segmenting and transliterating (reading) a text in terms of uncertainty/leeway?
I. Let us say we have a syllabary of n symbols.
II. Let us have three ways or methods of transliterating a text written using the symbols of the syllabary:
The first method considers the syllabary ...
8
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2answers
297 views
Why are the scripts of Crete known as “Linear”?
Two famous, apparently related scripts now known as Linear A (which encoded an as-yet undeciphered language) and Linear B (used to write Greek) were discovered on the island of Crete.
Why are these ...
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1answer
192 views
Are the characters in some writing systems more or less visually distinctive than in others?
I'm curious about how writing systems like Burmese or Thai - the characters of which look to my untrained eye far more similar than Latin or Japanese characters - are distinguished by native readers, ...
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0answers
226 views
When did other slavic nations adopt the Latin-inspired look of printed Cyrillic pioneered in Russia?
Russian Emperor Peter I famously reformed the Cyrillic script in Russia, where, among other changes, he redesigned the letterforms to more closely resemble the look of the modern Latin script.
Here ...
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2answers
89 views
Zellig Harris and the alphabet
I would be very interested if someone could provide me with a useful link to read Zellig Harris's text on the origin of the alphabet. The reference is:
Harris, Zellig S. 1933. “Acrophony and ...
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3answers
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Why is Hangul (Korean script) not considered an Abugida
An abugida is a script where consonant and vowels form a unit of some form, and are typical in South Asia.
Now, the Korean script isn't related to those languages, of course. But the Korean script is ...
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1answer
114 views
'u' as a substition for 'v'
In Shakespeare's First Folio (please see the picture), I found that a letter 'u' is used instead of 'v'. For example, "seuen" means "seven". To know this reason, I visited many websites, but what I've ...
4
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3answers
246 views
Is capitalization a recurring feature across writing systems?
Is it a common feature for a writing system to include a capitalized variant of itself?
What is the purpose of capitalization in itself? Is it ever truly necessary for comprehension?
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2answers
2k views
Julius Caesar original name spelling?
Was Julius Caesar originally spelled with and I before "J" was invented? Or was it spelled some other way? If so, how?
I'm curious.
0
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2answers
239 views
Are there the languages that have writing systems consisting only numbers? [closed]
When I knew about Major Mnemonic System,
I thought: "Are there the languages that have writing systems consisting only numbers?"
Do they exist?
7
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2answers
1k views
In what way is Japanese related to Sanskrit?
The Wikipedia says that Japanese katakana vowels “The gojūon inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. “. Could expert explains this in easy language?
