1.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
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Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing, the writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, with the closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, and the script remained undeciphered throughout the medieval and early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphs would only be solved in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός, a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω, supposedly a calque of an Egyptian phrase mdw·w-nṯr gods words. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα the sacred engraved letters, the word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective. Hieroglyphs emerged from the artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing, proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems develop in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called Scorpion I recovered at Abydos in 1998. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qaab. There are around 800 hieroglyphs dating back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, by the Greco-Roman period, there are more than 5,000. However, given the lack of evidence, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Since the 1990s, and discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs, as writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic and demotic scripts. These variants were more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental, the Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule, and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors, another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally
2.
Hebrew alphabet
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Historically, there have been two separate abjad scripts to write Hebrew. In the remainder of this article, the term Hebrew alphabet refers to the Jewish square script unless otherwise indicated, the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case, but five letters have different forms used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. There is a trend in modern Modern Hebrew toward the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, the paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, after the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants and it has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. Also, a system of points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using letters, either with or without niqqud-diacritics, except for Hebrew words. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization, one of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study. The Tiberian system also includes a set of marks, called trope. These are shown below the normal form in the following table, although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right
3.
Palmyrene alphabet
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Palmyrene was a historical Semitic alphabet used to write the local Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic. It was used between 100 BCE and 300 CE in Palmyra in the Syrian desert, the oldest surviving Palmyrene inscription dates to 44 BCE. The last surviving inscription dates to 274 CE, two years after Palmyra was sacked by Roman Emperor Aurelian, ending the Palmyrene Empire, use of the Palmyrene language and script declined, being replaced with Greek and Latin. Two forms of Palmyrene were developed, The rounded, cursive form derived from the Aramaic alphabet and later a decorative, both the cursive and monumental forms commonly used typographic ligatures. Palmyrene used a system which built up numbers using combinations of their symbols for 1,2,3,4,5,10. It is similar to the used for Aramaic which built numbers using their symbols for 1,2,3,10,20,100,1000. There are some styles in which the r-letter is the same as the d-letter with a dot on top, ligation after b, ḥ, m, n, and q before some other consonants was common in some inscriptions but was not obligatory. There are also two fleurons that tend to appear near numbers, examples of Palmyrene inscriptions were printed as far back as 1616 but accurate copies of Palmyrene/Greek bilingual inscriptions were not available until 1756. The Palmyrene alphabet was deciphered in the 1750s, literally overnight, by Abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy using these new, Palmyrene was added to the Unicode Standard in June,2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for Palmyrene is U+10860–U+1087F
4.
Mandaic alphabet
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The Mandaic alphabet is based on the Aramaic alphabet, and is used for writing the Mandaic language. The Mandaic name for the script is Abagada or Abaga, after the first letters of the alphabet, rather than the ancient Semitic names for the letters, the letters are known as â, bâ, gâ and so on. The alphabet consists of 24 letters, the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet, as the number 24 is auspicious for Mandaeans, the additional letters are somewhat artificial. The 23rd letter is adu, the relative particle, the 24th is the first letter, a, repeated. Thus, Mandaeans say that the abagada has perfected the alpha, unlike most other Semitic alphabets, the vowels are usually written out in full. The first and last letter, a, is used to represent a range of open vowels, the sixth letter, wa, is used for close back vowels, and the tenth letter, ya is used for close front vowels. These last two can also serve as the consonants w/v and y. The eighth letter corresponds to the Semitic heth, and is called eh, a similar situation exists for the sixteenth letter, e, which usually represents e at the beginning of a word or, when followed by wa or ya, represents initial u or i respectively. All the letters in the Mandaic alphabet are considered by Mandaeans to have magic properties, a hint at a few of these meanings is given alongside the respective letters. Postclassical and modern Mandaic uses a lot of Persian words, four additional letters are used in writing nonclassical words. They are, in fact, simple modifications of the canonical letters and are not considered to bring the sum of letters to 28. The letters gha, dha, fa and ja are produced by placing two horizontally-aligned dots under ga, da, pa and sha, respectively and they can be compared to the four novel letters in the Persian alphabet, and the eighteen novel letters in the Sindhi alphabet. The Mandaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October,2010 with the release of version 6.0, the Unicode block for Mandaic is U+0840–U+085F, Ginza Rabba-English Translation Dictionary, English-Mandaic-English Dictionary, Arabic-Mandaic-Arabic I learn Mandaic Everson, Michael. Proposal for encoding the Mandaic script in the BMP of the UCS - ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N3485R
5.
Pahlavi scripts
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Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script, the Pahlavi script, Pahlavi compositions have been found for the dialects/ethnolects of Parthia, Persis, Sogdiana, Scythia, and Khotan. Independent of the variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, Pahlavi is then an admixture of written Imperial Aramaic, from which Pahlavi derives its script, logograms, and some of its vocabulary. Spoken Middle Iranian, from which Pahlavi derives its terminations, symbol rules, Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the characteristics of a language, but is not one. It is a written system, but much Pahlavi literature remains essentially an oral literature committed to writing. If this etymology is correct, Parthav presumably became pahlaw through a semivowel glide rt change to l, the term has been traced back further to Avestan pərəthu- broad, also evident in Sanskrit pŗthvi- earth and parthivi of the earth. Common to all Indo-Iranian languages is a connotation of mighty, the earliest attested use of Pahlavi dates to the reign of Arsaces I of Parthia in early Parthian coins with Pahlavi scripts. There are also several Pahlavi texts written during the reign of Mithridates I, such fragments, as also the rock inscriptions of Sassanid kings, which are datable to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, do not, however, qualify as a significant literary corpus. It is in an archaic script than Book Pahlavi. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Pahlavi script was replaced by the Arabic script, except in Zoroastrian sacred literature, the replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirids in 9th century Khurasan. In the present-day, Pahlavi is frequently identified with the dialect of south-west Iran, formerly and properly called Pārsi. This practice can be dated to the immediately following the Islamic conquest. Tables showing the letters and their names or pronunciations are available on line, the Pahlavi script is one of the two essential characteristics of the Pahlavi system. Its origin and development occurred independently of the various Middle Iranian languages for which it was used, the Pahlavi script is derived from the Aramaic script as it was used under the Achaemenids, with modifications to support the phonology of the Iranian languages. It is essentially a typical abjad, where, in general, only vowels are marked with matres lectionis. In addition to this, during much of its later history, similarly, certain words continued to be spelt with postvocalic ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ even after the consonants had been debuccalized to ⟨h⟩ in the living language. The Pahlavi script consisted of two widely used forms, Inscriptional Pahlavi and Book Pahlavi, a third form, Psalter Pahlavi, is not widely attested
6.
Brahmi script
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Brahmi is the modern name given to one of the oldest writing systems used in South and Central Asia from the 1st millennium BCE. Brahmi is an abugida that thrived in the Indian subcontinent and uses a system of marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. It evolved into a host of other scripts that continue in use, Brahmi is related to the ancient Kharosthi script, which was used in what is now eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kharosthi died out in ancient times, the best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the pin-man script, that is stick figure script. Thence the name was adopted in the work of Georg Bühler. The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called Late Brahmi, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, classified together as the Brahmic scripts. Dozens of modern scripts used across South Asia have descended from Brahmi, one survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it. The script was associated with its own Brahmi numerals, which provided the graphic forms for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system now used through most of the world. The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, for example, the Lipisala samdarshana parivarta lists 64 lipi, with the Brahmi script starting the list. The Lalitavistara Sūtra states that young Siddhartha, the future Buddha, mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from Brahmin Lipikara, a shorter list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the texts of Jainism, such as the Pannavana Sutra and the Samavayanga Sutra. These Jaina script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoshthi at number 4 but also Javanaliya, while the contemporary Kharosthi script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993, an origin in Semitic scripts has been proposed by some scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber and Georg Bühlers On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet. The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was an indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, however, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharosthi and Brahmi. Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the form and the structure has been extensive. It is also accepted that theories of Vedic grammar probably had a strong influence on this development. In contrast, some reject the idea of foreign influence
7.
Kharosthi
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The Kharosthi script, also spelled Kharoshthi or Kharoṣṭhī, is an ancient script used in ancient Gandhara to write the Gandhari Prakrit and Sanskrit. It was popular in Central Asia as well, an abugida, it was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE. Kharosthi is encoded in the Unicode range U+10A00–U+10A5F, from version 4.1.0, Kharosthi is mostly written right to left, but some inscriptions already show the left to right direction that was to become universal for the later South Asian scripts. Each syllable includes the short /a/ sound by default, with other vowels being indicated by diacritic marks, Kharosthi includes only one standalone vowel sign which is used for initial vowels in words. Other initial vowels use the a character modified by diacritics, using epigraphic evidence, Salomon has established that the vowel order is /a e i o u/, rather than the usual vowel order for Indic scripts /a i u e o/. That is the same as the Semitic vowel order, also, there is no differentiation between long and short vowels in Kharosthi. Both are marked using the same vowel markers, the alphabet was used in Gandharan Buddhism as a mnemonic for remembering a series of verses on the nature of phenomena. In Tantric Buddhism, the list was incorporated into ritual practices, Kharosthi included a set of numerals that are reminiscent of Roman numerals. The symbols were I for the unit, X for four, ੭ for ten, the system is based on an additive and a multiplicative principle, but does not have the subtractive feature used in the Roman number system. Note that the table beside reads right-to-left, just like the Kharosthi abugida itself, the Kharosthi script was deciphered by James Prinsep using the bilingual coins of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. This in turn led to the reading of the Edicts of Ashoka, some of which, scholars are not in agreement as to whether the Kharosthi script evolved gradually, or was the deliberate work of a single inventor. An analysis of the script forms shows a clear dependency on the Aramaic alphabet, however, no intermediate forms have yet been found to confirm this evolutionary model, and rock and coin inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE onward show a unified and standard form. An inscription in Aramaic dating back to the 4th century BC was found in Sirkap, according to Sir John Marshall, this seems to confirm that Kharoshthi was later developed from Aramaic. The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994, the entire set of manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, making them the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered. Kharosthi was added to the Unicode Standard in March,2005 with the release of version 4.1, the Unicode block for Kharosthi is U+10A00–U+10A5F, Brahmi History of Afghanistan History of Pakistan Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan Kaschgar und die Kharoṣṭhī Dani, Ahmad Hassan. Kharoshthi Primer, Lahore Museum Publication Series -16, Lahore,1979 Falk, Schrift im alten Indien, Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen, Gunter Narr Verlag,1993 Fussmans, Gérard. Les premiers systèmes décriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988-1989 Hinüber, der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag,1990 Nasim Khan, M. Ashokan Inscriptions, A Palaeographical Study. Two Dated Kharoshthi Inscriptions from Gandhara, Journal of Asian Civilizations, Vol. XXII, No.1, July 1999, 99-103
8.
Ancient South Arabian script
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The ancient Yemeni alphabet branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the 9th century BC. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages of the Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyaritic, the earliest inscriptions in the alphabet date to the 9th century BC in the Akele Guzai region, Eritrea. There are no vowels, instead using the mater lectionis to mark them, in Ethiopia and Eritrea it evolved later into the Geez script, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages. Zabūr is the name of the form of the South Arabian script that was used by the ancient Yemenis in addition to their monumental script. As yet only one thousand such texts have been discovered, of which perhaps some 26 have been published. It is usually written from right to left but can also be written left to right. When written from left to right the characters are flipped horizontally, the spacing or separation between words is done with a vertical bar mark. Letters in words are not connected together and it does not implement any diacritical marks, differing in this respect from the modern Arabic alphabet. The South Arabian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October,2009 with the release of version 5.2, the Unicode block, called Old South Arabian, is U+10A60–U+10A7F. Note that U+10A7D OLD SOUTH ARABIAN NUMBER ONE represents both the one and a word divider. Photos from National Museum of Yemen, Photos from Yemen Military Museum, Eduard Glaser Carl Rathjens Stein, the Ancient South Arabian Minuscule Inscriptions on Wood, A New Genre of Pre-Islamic Epigraphy. Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux, die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München. Il trono della regina di Saba, Artemide, Roma. pp. 149–155, Ancient scripts on South Arabian SI Omniglots entry on South Arabian
9.
Tifinagh
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Tifinagh is an abjad used to write the Berber languages. A modern alphabetical derivate of the script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century. Tifinagh is believed to have descended from the ancient Libyan or Libyco-Berber script, the latter writing system was widely used in antiquity by speakers of Berber languages throughout Africa and on the Canary Islands. It is attested from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, the scripts origin is uncertain, with some scholars suggesting it is related to the Punic alphabet or the Phoenician alphabet. There are two variants, eastern and western. The eastern variant was used in what is now Constantine, the Aures region and it is the best-deciphered variant, due to the discovery of several Numidian bilingual inscriptions in Libyan and Punic. 22 letters out of the 24 were deciphered, the western variant was more primitive. It was used along the Mediterranean coast from Kabylie to the Canary Islands, the Libyco-Berber script was a pure abjad, it had no vowels. The writing was usually from the bottom to the top, although right-to-left, the letters would take different forms when written vertically than when they were written horizontally. The Libyco-Berber script is used in the form of Tifinagh to write the Tuareg languages. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art, among these are the 1,500 year old tomb of the Tuareg matriarch Tin hinan, where vestiges of a Tifinagh inscription have been found on one of its walls. Occasionally, the script has been used to other neighboring languages such as Tagdal Songhay. Common forms of the letters are illustrated at left, including various ligatures of t and n, gemination, though phonemic, is not indicated in Tifinagh. The letter t, +, is combined with a preceding letter to form a ligature. Most of the letters have more than one form, including mirror-images of the forms shown here. When the letters l and n are adjacent to themselves or to each other, for example, since the letter l is a double line, ||, and n a single line, |, the sequence nn may be written |/ to differentiate it from l. Similarly, ln is ||/, nl |//, ll ||//, nnn |/|, traditionally, the Tifinagh script does not indicate vowels except word-finally, where a single dot stands for any vowel. In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh letters to transcribe vowels, Neo-Tifinagh is the modern fully alphabetic script developed from earlier forms of Tifinagh
10.
Paleohispanic scripts
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The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script. Most of them are unusual in that they are rather than purely alphabetic, despite having supposedly developed, in part. Some researchers conclude that their origin may lie solely with the Phoenician alphabet, the Paleoiberian scripts are classified into three major groups, southern, northern, and Greco-Iberian, with differences both in the shapes of the glyphs and in their values. Inscriptions in the scripts have been found mainly in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent only 5% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from right to left and they are, the Espanca script, the Tartessian or Southwestern script, also known as South Lusitanian, the Southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional. Inscriptions in the scripts have been found mainly in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent 95% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from left to right and they are, the Northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine, Dual variant Non-dual variant the Celtiberian script Western variant Eastern variant. This unique writing system has been called a semi-syllabary, in addition, the original format did not distinguish voiced from unvoiced plosives, so that ga stood for both /ga/ and /ka/, and da stood for both /da/ and /ta/. On the other hand, the continuants were written with simple alphabetic letters, as in Phoenician, if correct, this innovation would parallel the creation of the Latin letter G by the addition of a stroke to C, which had previously stood for both /k/ and /g/. The Tartessian script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries, although the letter used to write a plosive was determined by the following vowel, as in a semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. This redundant typology re-emerged in a few texts of northeastern Iberian and Celtiberian scripts. The only known full Paleoiberian signary, on the undated Espanca tablet, follows the Phoenician/Greek order for the first 13 of its 27 letters, Α Β Γ Δ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Π. However, the order of what appears to be /u/ directly after Τ, the obvious question about the origin and evolution of these scripts is how a purely alphabetic script was changed into, or perhaps unconsciously reinterpreted as, a partial syllabary. It may be instructive to consider an unrelated development in the evolution of the Etruscan alphabet from Greek, Greek had three letters, Γ, Κ, and Ϙ, whose sounds were not distinguished in Etruscan. Nonetheless, all three were borrowed, becoming the letters C, K, and Q. When the Etruscan alphabet was adapted to Latin, the letter C stood for both /k/ and /g/, as Etruscan had had no /g/ sound to maintain the original sound value of Greek Г. Something similar may have happened during the evolution of the Paleoiberian scripts, in Tartessian script, vowels were always written after the plosives, but they were redundant — or at nearly so — and thus it seems they were dropped when the script passed to the Iberians. Among the velar consonants, ka/ga of southeastern Iberian and the southwestern script derives from Phoenician/Greek Γ, ke/ge from Κ, Phoenician/Greek labial letter Β was the source of southwestern be, southeastern ba, the use of Π is uncertain but may have been the source of bi
11.
Devanagari
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Devanagari, also called Nagari, is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines. The Nagari script has roots in the ancient Brāhmī script family, the Nagari script was in regular use by the 7th century CE and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium. Nagari has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts, the Devanagari script is also used for classical Sanskrit texts. The Devanagari script is closely related to the Nandinagari script commonly found in ancient manuscripts of South India. Devanagari script has forty-seven primary characters, of which fourteen are vowels, the ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters. The script has no distinction similar to the capital and small letters of the Latin alphabet, generally the orthography of the script reflects the pronunciation of the language. Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet and it is a descendant of the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada. Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of the Nagari-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nagari scripts, the 7th-century Tibetan king Srong-tsan-gambo ordered that all foreign books be transcribed into the Tibetan language. Other closely related scripts such as Siddham Matrka was in use in Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. Nāgarī is the Sanskrit feminine of Nāgara relating or belonging to a town or city and it is a phrasing with lipi as nāgarī lipi script relating to a city, or spoken in city. The use of the name devanāgarī is relatively recent, and the older term nāgarī is still common, the rapid spread of the term devanāgarī may be related to the almost exclusive use of this script to publish Sanskrit texts in print since the 1870s. As a Brahmic abugida, the principle of Devanagari is that each letter represents a consonant. This is usually written in Latin as a, though it is represented as in the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter क is read ka, the two letters कन are kana, the three कनय are kanaya, etc. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is derived क्नय् knay, the halant is often used for consonant clusters when typesetting conjunct ligatures is not feasible. Consonant clusters are written with ligatures, for example, the three consonants क्, न्, and य्, when written consecutively without virāma form कनय, as shown above. Alternatively, they may be joined as clusters to form क्नय knaya, कन्य kanya and this system was originally created for use with the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, which have a very limited number of clusters. When applied to Sanskrit, however, it added a deal of complexity to the script
12.
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
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Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families. Canadian syllabics are used to write all of the Cree languages from Naskapi to the Rocky Mountains, including Eastern Cree, Woods Cree, Swampy Cree. They are also used to write Inuktitut in the eastern Canadian Arctic and they are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe in Western Canada, as well as for Blackfoot, where they are obsolete. Among the Athabaskan languages further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh, Chipewyan, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ, syllabics have occasionally been used in the United States by communities that straddle the border, but are principally a Canadian phenomenon. In Cree, for example, the consonant p has the shape of a chevron, in an upward orientation, ᐱ, it transcribes the syllable pi. Inverted, so that it points downwards, ᐯ, it transcribes pe, pointing to the left, ᐸ, it is pa, and to the right, ᐳ, po. The consonant forms and the vowels so represented vary from language to language, *The obsolete sp- series, which is not supported by Unicode, is here represented by Latin and Cyrillic letters, there is no good substitution for spi. The clockwise 90° rotation relates vowels as the later series sh- does, because the script is presented in syllabic charts and learned as a syllabary, it is often considered to be such. This is unlike a syllabary, where each combination of consonant. All were written with a line to show the vowel was short. These were originally written midline, but are now superscripted, the consonants -l and -r were marginal, only found in borrowings, baby talk, and the like. These, and -h, could occur before vowels, but were written with the final shape regardless, the vowels fall into two sets, the back vowels -a and -o, and the front vowels -e and -i. Each set consists of a vowel, -a or -e. In all cases, back-vowel syllables are related through left-right reflection, how they relate to front-vowel syllables depends on the graphic form of the consonants. Symmetrical, vowel, p-, t-, sp-, are rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, while those that are asymmetrical top-to-bottom, c-, k-, m-, n-, s-, y-, are rotated 180 degrees. The lower front-vowel syllables are derived this way from the low back-vowel syllables, for example, all scripts except the one for Blackfoot use the triangle for vowel-initial syllables. By 1841, when Evans cast the first movable type for syllabics and he instead filed across the raised lines of the type, leaving gaps in the printed letter for long vowels. This can be seen in early printings, later still a dot diacritic, originally used for vowel length only in handwriting, was extended to print, Thus today ᐊ a contrasts with ᐋ â, and ᒥ mi contrasts with ᒦ mî
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