Writing system

A writing system, also called a script, is a type of ''symbolic communication system'' used to represent elements or statements expressible in some spoken language, for the purpose of communication. ==General properties== Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the related spoken language in order to successfully read and comprehend the text. Contrast this with other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps, and mathematics, which do not necessarily depend upon prior knowledge of a given language in order to extract associated meaning. Every human community possesses a spoken language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of humankind. However, the development and adoption of writing systems has occurred only variously. Once established, writing systems on the whole are modified much more slowly over time than their spoken language counterparts, and often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the discourse of the speech community. The great benefit conferred by writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in some language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation. All writing systems require: :* a set of defined base elements or symbols (termed characters or graphemes); :* a set of rules and conventions understood and shared by a community, which arbitrarily assign meanings to the base elements, their ordering, and relations to one another; :* a spoken language whose constructions are represented and able to be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and rules; :* some physical means of distinctly representing its symbols by application to a permanent or semi-permanent medium, so that they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised). ==Basic terminology== The generic term ''text'' may be used to refer to any given instance produced using a writing system. The act of composing a text may be referred to as ''writing'', and the act of interpreting the text as ''Reading (activity)''. ''Orthography'' is the study of writing systems, their rules and relations, and also serves as a term which describes the set of elements and rules themselves. The generic word for symbols in a writing system is a "grapheme", while a "glyph" is a graphical representation of a grapheme. The glyphs of most writing systems are made up of lines (or strokes) and are therefore called Linear writing, but there are glyphs in Non-linear writing made up of other types of marks. Writing systems are conceptual systems, as are the spoken languages to which they refer. Writing systems may be regarded as ''complete'' according to the extent to which they are able to represent all that may be expressed in the spoken language. == History of writing systems == The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late 4th millennium BC, i.e. the earliest writing systems may be considered as dating to the late Neolithic. The first writing system is generally believed to have been the Sumerian script, which developed into cuneiform (script). Egyptian hieroglyphs date to approximately the same time. Other early writing systems probably influenced by these innovations were the undeciphered Proto-Elamite script and the Indus valley script . The status as an actual writing system of the latter is unclear. Similarly, it is disputed whether the late neolithic Old European script should be considered a sort of proto-writing-system, or whether it is purely ornamental. The first alphabets emerge around 2000 BC, see Middle Bronze Age alphabets. The Chinese script may have evolved independently, around 1200 BC. ==Types of writing system== The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily pictogram or ideogram in nature. Most writing systems can be broadly divided into three categories: logographic, syllabic and alphabetic; however, all of these feature types may be found in any given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system uniquely. The term complex system is sometimes used to describe those where the admixture makes classification problematic.

Type of writing system	What each symbol represents	Example
Logographic	morpheme	Chinese Hanzi
Syllabic	syllable	Katakana
Alphabetic	phoneme	Latin
Abugida	consonant+vowel, vowel	Devanagari
Abjad	consonant	Arabic
Featural	phonetic feature	Hangul

=== Logographic writing systems === ''Main article: Logogram'' A logogram is a single written character which represents a complete grammatical word. Most Chinese characters are classified as logograms. As each character represents a single word (or, more precisely, a morpheme), many logograms are required to write all the words of language. The vast array of logograms and the memorization of what they mean are the major disadvantage of the logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, since the meaning is inherent to the symbol, the same logographic system can theoretically be used to represent different languages. In practice, this is only true for closely related languages, like the dialects of Chinese language, as syntactical constraints reduce the portability of a given logographic system. Both Korean language and Japanese language use Chinese logograms in their writing systems, and many of the symbols carry the same meaning in the different languages. However, they are different enough from Chinese that a Chinese text is not easily understood by a Japanese or Korean reader. While most languages do not use wholly logographic writing systems many languages use some logograms. A good example of modern western logograms are the Arabic numerals — everyone who uses those symbols understands what 1 means whether he or she calls it ''one'', ''eins'', ''uno'', or ''ichi''. Other western logograms include the ampersand &, used for ''and'', and the at sign @ , used in many contexts for ''at''. Logograms are sometimes called ideograms, a word that refers to symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas, but linguists avoid this use, as Chinese characters are often semantics–phonetic compounds, symbols which include an element that represents the meaning and element that represents the pronunciation. Some nonlinguists distinguish between lexigraphy and ideography, where symbols in lexigraphies represent words, and symbols in ideographies represent words or morphemes. The most important (and, to a degree, the only surviving) modern logographic writing system is the Chinese one, whose characters are used, with varying degrees of modification, in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other east Asian languages. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Mayan writing system are also logographic systems, although they have since faded from use. See List of writing systems for the complete list of logographic writing systems. === Syllabic writing systems === ''Main article: Syllabary'' As logographic writing systems use a single symbol for an entire word, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllable, which make up word. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound, or just a vowel alone. In a true syllabary there is no systematic graphic similarity between phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for the vowels). That is, the characters for "ke", "ka", and "ko" have no similarity to indicate their common "k"-ness. Compare #Abugidas, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are similar graphically (typically, a common consonantal base is annotated in a more or less consistent manner to represent the vowel in the syllable). Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. The English language, on the other hand, allows complex syllable structures, with a relative large inventory of vowels and complex consonant clusters, making it cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. To write English using a syllabary, every possible syllable in English would have to have a separate symbol, and whereas the number of possible syllables in Japanese is no more than one hundred or so, in English there are many thousands. Other languages that use syllabic writing include Mycenaean Greek language (Linear B) and Native American languages such as Cherokee alphabet. Several languages of the Ancient Near East used forms of cuneiform (script), which is a syllabary with some non-syllabic elements. See List of writing systems for a complete list of syllabaries. === Alphabetic writing systems === ''Main article: Alphabet'' An alphabet is a small set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents or represented historically a phoneme of a spoken language. The word ''alphabet'' is derived from alpha (letter) and beta (letter), the first two symbols of the Greek alphabet. In a perfectly phonology alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. Each language has general rules that govern the association between letters and phonemes, but, depending on the language, these rules may or may not be consistently followed. Perfectly phonological alphabets are very easy to use and learn, and languages that have them (for example, Finnish) have much lower barriers to literacy than languages such as English, which has a very complex and irregular spelling system. As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language. In modern times, when linguists invent a writing system for a language that didn't previously have one, the goal is usually to make perfectly phonological alphabet. An example of such writing systems is the "IPA" (International Phonetic Alphabet). See alphabet for more information about alphabets. See List of writing systems for a list of all alphabets. ====Abjads==== ''Main article: Abjad'' 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 regular alphabets in that they only have characters for consonantal sounds. Vowels are not usually marked in abjad. All known abjads (except maybe Tifinagh) belong to the Semitic family of scripts, and derive from the original Northern Linear Abjad. The reason for this is that Semitic languages and the related Berber languages have a Morphology (linguistics) which makes the denotation of vowels redundant in most cases. Some abjads (like Arabic and Hebrew) have markings for vowels as well, but only use them in special contexts, such as for teaching. Many scripts derived from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full alphabets, the most famous case being the derivation of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician abjad. This has mostly happened when the script was adapted to a non-Semitic language. The term ''abjad'' takes its name from the old order of the Arabic alphabet's consonants Alif, B�, Jim, D�l, though the word may have earlier roots in Phoenician languages or Ugaritic. Abjad is still the word for alphabet in Arabic language and Indonesian language. See List of writing systems for a list of all abjads. ====Abugidas==== ''Main article: Abugida'' 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 other following vowels than the inherent one. Thus, in an abugida there is no sign for "k", but instead one for "ka" (if "a" is the inherent vowel), and "ke" is written by modifying the "ka" sign in a way that is consistent with how one would modify "la" to get "le". In many abugidas the modification is the addition of a vowel sign, but other possibilities are imaginable (and used), such as rotation of the basic sign, addition of diacritical marks, and so on. The obvious contrast is with syllabary, which have one distinct symbol per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no systematic graphic similarity. The graphic similarity comes from the fact that most abugidas are derived from abjads, and the consonants make up the symbols with the inherent vowel, and the new vowel symbols are markings added on to the base symbol. The Ethiopic script is an abugida, although the vowel modifications in Ethiopic are not entirely systematic. Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics can be considered an abugidas, although they are rarely thought of in those terms. The largest single group of abugidas is the Brahmic family of scripts, however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia. The name ''abugida'' is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ethiopic script used in some religious contexts. The term was coined by Peter T. Daniels. See List of writing systems for a list of all abugidas. === Featural writing systems === In a featural writing system, each part of each symbol corresponds to a phonetic feature. That is, sounds that are phonetically related have symbols that are related, and different phonetic features, like place of articulation or voicing, will be represented the same way for different sounds. The most prominent featural writing system is Korean language Hangul, which also incorporates aspects of logographic writing systems and alphabets in addition to features. There are also systems for recording sign languages, such as SignWriting, where symbols stand for particular features of signs, the symbols often resembling those sign features they stand for. See List of writing systems for a list of all featural writing systems. == Directionality == Different scripts are written in different directions. The early alphabet could be written in any direction: either horizontal (left-to-right or right-to-left) or vertical (up or down). It could also be written boustrophedon: starting horizontally in one direction, then turning at the end of the line and reversing direction. Egyptian hieroglyph is one such script, where the beginning of a line written horizontally was to be indicated by the direction in which animal and human idiograms are looking. 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 alphabet and Hebrew language, came to be written right-to-left. Many East Asian scripts, such as Chinese language and Japanese language, are written top-to-bottom, from the right to the left of the page. There are even scripts that are written from bottom to top, such as those formerly used in the Philippines and other Western Pacific Islands. == See also == *shorthand *calligraphy *penmanship *majuscule and minuscule *neography *N� shu *orthography *pasigraphy *spelling *transliteration *Official script *ISO 15924 - list "Codes for the representation of names of scripts"� *For technical aspects of computer support for multiple writing systems, see the articles CJK and BiDi. == External links == * About African writing systems by the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library at Cornell University: ** http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Welcome.html * General about writing systems ** http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm * [http://omniglot.com/writing/alphabetic.htm Alphabetic Writing Systems] * Michael Everson's [http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/index.html Alphabets of Europe] * The [http://www.unicode.org/ Unicode Consortium] * [http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/wiki/ken/ATypographicOutcry A Typographic Outcry]: a curious perspective == References == * Peter T. Daniels, and William Bright, eds. 1996. The world's writing systems. ISBN 0-19-507-993-0. * DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686 * Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover) * Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing Systems. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1756-7 (paper), ISBN 0-8047-1254-9 (cloth). * Smalley, W.A. (ed.) 1964. Orthography studies: articles on new writing systems, United Bible Society, London. Writing fa:خط ta:எழுத்து முறைமை zh-min-nan:B�n-jī hē-th�ng

Writing system

== History of writing systems == === Cuneiform not nessarily oldest === While it was long belived that Cuneiform antedated Egyptian Heiroglyphics, relativly recent (late 90's) finds have pushed back the date of Heiroglyphs. The BBC has an article entitled [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/235724.stm Were Egyptians the first scribes?] about the discoveries. The 'History of writing systems' section should be changed, but my prose is often terrible (and my spelling even worse). -- Levi Aho 2004-12-21 13:57:52 (UTC) == Types of writing systems == Hiragana is somewhere between being a syllabary and being an abugida, isn't it? For instance, to write my nickname ("Juuitchan") in hiragana, using the hiragana set as a syllabary will not work: you must use it as an abugida. --User:Juuitchan :I suppose so. The main difference, as I see it, is that the characters of syllabary are not similar if the sounds they represent are similar, while the characters of an abugida are similar if the sounds they represent are similar. In this sense, hiragana has components of both - "ka ki ku ke ko" do not resemble one another, but "ka ga" do resemble one another, as do "kya kyu kyo". Also, some characters (especially small ''tsu'' and small ''ya yu yo'') don't form an entire syllable but help to make up a syllable. -- User:Pne 09:27, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) ---- I really believe that the "classification" of featural writing systems is bogus. It is not a structural description of the elements of the writing system; it is a description of how the glyph shapes have a particular kind of internal relationship. Hangul is an alphabet, where each unit refers to a sound. User:Evertype 20:03, 2004 May 31 (UTC) :Agreed. I think "featural" is a valid label, but this is orthogonal to the classification as alphabet/syllabary/etc. I'd consider Hangul an alphabet, too. -- User:Pne 08:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) == Examples of writing systems == === Runic systems === How come "Runic Futhark" and "Anglo-Saxon Futhorc" both gets mentioned? The Old English variant is a bit different, I agree, but so is Slovene and Hungarian and German, you don't see them listed with special entries?? --User:Gabbe 00:07 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC) :I belive the Anglo-Saxon runes are are considered disctinct from the Germantic runes due to the addition of a number of letters (seven in all, if I remember correctly). Wether this justifies listing as a seperate writing system is debateable, but the Anglo-Saxon runes are a not simply specific usage of Germantic runes. -- Levi Aho 2004-12-21 13:32:27 (UTC) == Terminology == === Orthography === What is the meaningful distinction between this article and "orthography"? Most of the latter article could be transplanted here. --User:Ryguasu 00:15 27 Jun 2003 (UTC) :I always understood "orthography" to refer to systems of spelling. So French and English use the Latin alphabet with different orthographies. User:Joe Cetina 03:54, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- The new definition of orthography given in the text is wrong. User:Cbdorsett 20:40, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Would you be able to help by outlining in what way the proposed definition may be perceived as deficient? I'm sure it could probably be phrased more clearly. :When composing it I relied not only on the sense in which I understand the term, but definitions offered such as that found in the American Heritage Dictionary at Answers.com, which lists: :# ''The art or study of correct spelling according to established usage.'' :# ''The aspect of language study concerned with letters and their sequences in words.'' :# ''A method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols; spelling.'' :Since we are talking here about all types of writing systems, and not just those for which "spelling" and "letters" are relevant and applicable, the definition needs to be extended to cover in general these other instances of writing systems. :Thus, the attempt to capture the two major senses- ''"the study of writing systems, their rules and relations"'' equates to the name of the field of study (senses 1 & 2, above), and ''"describes the set of elements and rules themselves"'' equates to the object of the field of study (sense 3). :In this, the usage of the term "orthography" follows that observed for probably all other "-graphy" or "-ology" words, in that the same term stands for both the "study of", and the "thing studied"; for e.g.: :*''there is more to Geography than the study of maps'' :*''the Nullarbor Plain has an exceedingly flat geography'' :Indeed, the definition currently given in the orthography article (''"the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language"'') could itself probably do with a rewrite/update/expansion. --User:CJLL Wright | User talk:CJLL Wright 07:18, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC) ::Except the "ortho" in "orthography" means "straight" or "correct" (the word literally means "straight writing"). The comparison with geography is not really apt, because the analogous extension meaning for "orthography" would be the general study of straightness or correctness, not the general study of writing. Orthography refers to the rules for spelling, or the study of the rules for spelling, but not for the study of the letters or symbols that are used to spell. There is no general, generic name for the study of writing systems other than "the study of writing systems". The only suitable candidate, graphology, was unfortunately co-opted by pseudoscientists. Maybe we could coin a new term ''graphography''. But the use of "orthography" to refer to the general study of writing sytems is not something that you'll find many linguists agree with. User:Nohat 08:05, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Thanks. I had wanted to avoid using the term "graphology" because of its connotations, although several sources such as Encarta give ''"the study of writing systems and their relationship to the sound systems of languages"'' as a definition. Likewise, the cognate term "grammatology" as used by I.J.Gelb is now associated primarily with the work of Derrida. The term "graphemics" is used in several directory listings, but is perhaps a little obscure. :A better parallel might be with epigraphy, which is used to refer to both the study of inscriptions, and the inscriptions & rules themselves (''"calendrical information features prominently in Mayan epigraphy"''). :However, I take your point; it may well be too much of a stretch then to associate ''orthography'' with study of all aspects of writing systems, although the term is frequently used to address writing systems such as Chinese, Mayan and Harrapan (Indus) scripts where "spelling" is not really an applicable concept. When used in this context, it applies not only to the conventions of romanised transliteration, but refers to the structure and rules of the signs themselves. :Perhaps a reformulation along the lines of ''In the study of writing systems, "orthography" refers to the method and rules of observed writing structure, and their study''? The merits or otherwise of writing system terminology could maybe be explored elsewhere in the article.--User:CJLL Wright | User talk:CJLL Wright 02:26, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

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Words begining with Writing_system:

Writing_system
Writing_system
Writing_Systems
Writing_systems
Writing_systems
Writing_systems