1.
Alphabet
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
Alphabet
–
Edward Bernard 's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689.
Alphabet
–
Writing systems
Alphabet
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and
languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
Alphabet
–
Codex Zographensis in the
Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval
Bulgaria
2.
Armenian language
–
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
Armenian language
–
Armenian manuscript, 5th–6th century.
Armenian language
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regions where Armenian is the language of the majority
Armenian language
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The Four Gospels, 1495, Portrait of St Mark Wellcome with Armenian inscriptions
Armenian language
–
First Armenian language Bible.
3.
Mesrop Mashtots
–
Mesrop Mashtots listen, also known as Mesrob the Vartabed, was an early medieval Armenian linguist, theologian, statesman and hymnologist. He is best known for having invented the Armenian alphabet c. 405 AD and he was also the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and Georgian alphabets, according to a number of scholars and contemporaneous Armenian sources. Mesrop Mashtots was born in a family in the settlement of Hatsekats in Taron. He was the son of a man named Vardan, Koryun, his pupil and biographer, tells us that Mashtots received a good education, and was versed in the Greek and Persian languages. On account of his piety and learning Mesrop was appointed secretary to King Khosrov IV and his duty was to write in Greek and Persian characters the decrees and edicts of the sovereign. Leaving the court for the service of God, he took holy orders, there, says Koryun, he practiced great austerities, enduring hunger and thirst, cold and poverty. He lived on vegetables, wore a shirt, slept upon the ground, and often spent whole nights in prayer. This life he continued for a few years, Armenia, so long the battle-ground of Romans and Persians, lost its independence in 387, and was divided between the Byzantine Empire and Persia, about four-fifths being given to the latter. Western Armenia was governed by Byzantine generals, while an Armenian king ruled, the Church was naturally influenced by these violent political changes, although the loss of civil independence and the partition of the land could not destroy its organization or subdue its spirit. Persecution only quickened it into greater activity, and had the effect of bringing the clergy, the nobles, three men are prominently associated with this work, Mesrop, Patriarch Isaac, and King Vramshapuh, who succeeded his brother Khosrov IV in 389. In 394, with the help of blessing of Armenias Catholicos, Sahak Partev, Mesrop, as noted, had spent some time in a monastery preparing for a missionary life. With the support of Prince Shampith, he preached the Gospel in the district of Goghtn near the river Araxes, converting many heretics, again, the Holy Scriptures and the liturgy, being written in Syriac, were, to a large extent, unintelligible to the faithful. Hence the constant need of translators and interpreters to explain the Word of God to the people, Mesrop, desirous to remedy this state of things, resolved to invent a national alphabet, in which undertaking Isaac and King Vramshapuh promised to assist him. It is hard to exactly what part Mesrop had in the fixing of the new alphabet. According to his Armenian biographers, he consulted Daniel, a bishop of Mesopotamia, and Rufinus, with their help and that of Isaac and the king, he was able to give a definite form to the alphabet, which he probably adapted from the Greek. Others, like Lenormant, think it derived from the Avestan, mesrops alphabet consisted of thirty-six letters, two more were added in the twelfth century. The first sentence in Armenian written down by St, the result of the work of Isaac and Mesrop, says St. It is historically proven, that Saint Mesrop himself taught in Amaras monastery of Artskah region of Armenia, but his activity was not confined to Eastern Armenia
Mesrop Mashtots
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Painting by Stepanos Nersisian (1815–84), kept at the Pontifical Residence at the
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin
Mesrop Mashtots
–
Mesrop Mashtots creating the Armenian alphabet, by
Francesco Maggiotto (1750-1805).
Mesrop Mashtots
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Mesrop Mashtots, by the Venetian painter
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). Fresco at
Würzburg Residence in
Bavaria.
Mesrop Mashtots
–
Illustration of Mesrop Mashtots from a 1776 Armenian manuscript
4.
Greek alphabet
–
It is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 24 letters, Modern and Ancient Greek use different diacritics. In standard Modern Greek spelling, orthography has been simplified to the monotonic system, examples In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic, among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants and aspirated plosives in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding fricative sounds in Modern Greek. This leads to groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the spellings in most of these cases. The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers, Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern, in other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek. Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components, among them are several digraphs of vowel letters that formerly represented diphthongs but are now monophthongized. In addition to the three mentioned above, there is also ⟨ου⟩, pronounced /u/, the Ancient Greek diphthongs ⟨αυ⟩, ⟨ευ⟩ and ⟨ηυ⟩ are pronounced, and respectively in voicing environments in Modern Greek. The Modern Greek consonant combinations ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩ stand for and respectively, ⟨τζ⟩ stands for, in addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal, thus ⟨γγ⟩ and ⟨γκ⟩ are pronounced like English ⟨ng⟩. There are also the combinations ⟨γχ⟩ and ⟨γξ⟩ and these signs were originally designed to mark different forms of the phonological pitch accent in Ancient Greek. The letter rho, although not a vowel, also carries a rough breathing in word-initial position, if a rho was geminated within a word, the first ρ always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing leading to the transiliteration rrh. The vowel letters ⟨α, η, ω⟩ carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the iota subscript. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, ⟨ᾱι, ηι, ωι⟩, another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis, indicating a hiatus. In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as monotonic, was adopted for use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό. There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script, the form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity. In this system, ⟨κ⟩ is replaced with ⟨c⟩, the diphthongs ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ are rendered as ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ respectively, and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ are simplified to ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively
Greek alphabet
–
Dipylon inscription, one of the oldest known samples of the use of the Greek alphabet, c. 740 BC
Greek alphabet
–
Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
Greek alphabet
–
A 16th-century edition of the New Testament, printed in a renaissance typeface by
Claude Garamond
Greek alphabet
–
A page from the
Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century bible manuscript in Gothic
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
Pahlavi scripts
–
Parthian (above), along with Greek (below) and Middle Persian was being used in inscriptions of early
Sassanian kings. Shapur inscription in
Naqsh-e Rajab
Pahlavi scripts
–
Parthian version of
Shapur I 's inscription at
Ka'ba-ye Zartosht.
Pahlavi scripts
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Coin of
Ardashir I (r. 224–42) with Inscriptional Pahlavi writings.
Pahlavi scripts
–
Inscriptional Pahlavi text from
Shapur III at
Taq-e Bostan, 4th century
6.
Syriac alphabet
–
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD. Syriac is written right to left. It is a script where some, but not all. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants, the vowel sounds are supplied either by the readers memory or by optional diacritic marks. In addition to the sounds of the language, the letters of the Syriac alphabet can be used to represent numbers in a similar to Hebrew. When Arabic began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, Malayalam was also written with Syriac script and was called Suriyani Malayalam. These writings are usually called Karshuni or Garshuni, Garshuni is often used today by Neo-Aramaic speakers in written communication such as letters and fliers. There are three variants of the Syriac alphabet, ʾEsṭrangēlā, Maḏnḥāyā, and Serṭā. The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is ʾEsṭrangēlā, although ʾEsṭrangēlā is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac, it has received some revival since the 10th century. It is often used in publications, in titles and inscriptions. In some older manuscripts and inscriptions it is possible for any letter to join to the left, vowel marks are usually not used with ʾEsṭrangēlā. The East Syriac dialect is written in the Maḏnḥāyā form of the alphabet. Other names for the script include Swāḏāyā, ʾĀṯūrāyā, Kaldāyā, the Eastern script resembles ʾEsṭrangēlā more closely than the Western script, being somewhat a midway point between the two. Some transliteration schemes find its inclusion necessary for showing spirantization or for historical reasons, whether because its distribution is mostly predictable or because its pronunciation was lost, neither the East nor West variants of the alphabet have a sign to represent the schwa. The West Syriac dialect is written in the Serṭā form of the alphabet, also known as the Pšīṭā, Maronite. Most of the letters are derived from ʾEsṭrangēlā, but are simplified. A cursive, chancery hand is evidenced in the earliest Syriac manuscripts, from the 8th century, the simpler Serṭā style came into fashion, perhaps because of its more economical use of parchment. The Nabataean alphabet was based on this form of Syriac handwriting, lowercase Omega, used only in the vocative interjection ʾō
Syriac alphabet
–
Estrangela alphabet
Syriac alphabet
–
11th century book in Syriac Serṭā.
Syriac alphabet
–
Isho or Eesho, the
Aramaic name of
Jesus
7.
Caucasian Albanian alphabet
–
It was one of only two indigenous alphabets ever developed for speakers of indigenous Caucasian languages to represent any of their languages, the other being the Georgian alphabet. The Armenian language, the language of Caucasus with its own alphabet, is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. Koriun, a pupil of Mesrop Mashtots, in his book The Life of Mashtots, wrote about the circumstances of its creation, Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. The alphabet was in use from its creation in the early 5th century through the 12th century, and was used not only formally by the Church of Caucasian Albania, but also for non-religious means. Although mentioned in sources, no examples of it were known to exist until its rediscovery in 1937 by a Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze. 7117, an Armenian language manual from the 15th century and this manual presents different alphabets for comparison, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Caucasian Albanian among them. The Caucasian Albanian alphabet came with a comment in Armenian, Ałuanic girn e - Աղուանից գիրն է - that is translated from Armenian as the letters from Albania, Abuladze made an assumption that this alphabet was based on Georgian letters. Between 1947 and 1952, archaeological excavations at Mingachevir under the guidance of S, the Udi language, spoken by some 8,000 people, mostly in Azerbaijan but also in Georgia and Armenia, is considered to be the last direct continuator of the Caucasian Albanian language. 49 of the characters are found in the Sinai palimpsests, several punctuation marks are also present, including a middle dot, a separating colon, an apostrophe, paragraph marks, and citation marks. The Caucasian Albanian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June,2014 with the release of version 7.0
Caucasian Albanian alphabet
–
Matenadaran
MS No. 7117, fol. 142r
Caucasian Albanian alphabet
–
Mesrop Mashtots by
Francesco Maggiotto (1750-1805). Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian medieval evangelizer and enlightener, invented the Gargarean ("Caucasian Albanian") alphabet in the 5th century, shortly after creating the
Armenian script.
Caucasian Albanian alphabet
–
A capital from a 5th-century church with an inscription using Caucasian Albanian lettering, found at
Mingachevir in 1949
8.
Latin script
–
Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩
Latin script
–
Latin Roman
9.
Georgian script
–
The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language, Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, all three are unicase, their letters share the names and alphabetical order, and are written horizontally from left to right. Of the three scripts, Mkhedruli was the civilian royal script of the Kingdom of Georgia mostly used for the royal charters, originally consisting of 38 letters, Georgian is presently written in a 33-letter alphabet, as five letters are currently obsolete in that language. The number of Georgian letters used in other Kartvelian languages varies, the Mingrelian language uses 36,33 of which are current Georgian letters, one obsolete Georgian letter, and two additional letters specific to Mingrelian and Svan. That same obsolete letter, plus a letter borrowed from Greek, are used in writing the Laz language, Georgian scripts were granted the national status of cultural heritage in Georgia in 2015 and inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. The first version of the script attested is Asomtavruli which dates back to at least the 5th century, most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia, a core Georgian kingdom of Kartli. The alphabet was therefore most probably created between the conversion of Iberia under King Mirian III and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430 and it was first used for translation of the Bible and other Christian literature into Georgian, by monks in Georgia and Palestine. This account is now considered legendary, and is rejected by scholarly consensus, a point of contention among scholars is the role played by Armenian clerics in that process. Other scholars quote Koryuns claims without taking a stance on its validity, many agree, however, that Armenian clerics, if not Mashtots himself, must have played a role in the creation of the Georgian script. Another controversy regards the main influences at play in the Georgian alphabet, as scholars have debated whether it was inspired more by the Greek alphabet, or by Semitic alphabets such as Aramaic. Recent historiography focuses on greater similarities with the Greek alphabet than in the other Caucasian writing systems, most notably the order, some scholars have also suggested as a possible inspiration for particular letters certain pre-Christian Georgian cultural symbols or clan markers. Asomtavruli is the oldest Georgian script, the name Asomtavruli means capital letters, from aso letter and mtavari principal/head. It is also known as Mrgvlovani rounded, from mrgvali round, despite its name, this capital script is unicameral, just like the modern Georgian script, Mkhedruli. The oldest Asomtavruli inscriptions found so far date from the 5th century and are Bir el Qutt, from the 9th century, Nuskhuri script starting becoming dominant, and the role of Asomtavruli was reduced. However, epigraphic monuments of the 10th to 18th centuries continued to be written in Asomtavruli script, Asomtavruli in this later period became more decorative. In the majority of 9th-century Georgian manuscripts which were written in Nuskhuri script, Asomtavruli was used for titles, although, some manuscripts written completely in Asomtavruli can be found until the 11th century. In early Asomtavruli, the letters are of equal height, in most Asomtavruli letters, straight lines are horizontal or vertical and meet at right angles. The only letter with acute angles is Ⴟ, there have been various attempts to explain this exception
Georgian script
–
Georgian
Bir el Qutt inscriptions, 430 AD.
Georgian script
–
damts'erloba "script" in Mkhedruli
Georgian script
–
Georgian
Bolnisi inscriptions, 494 AD.
Georgian script
–
Manuscript in Asomtavruli, 10th century.
10.
Cyrillic script
–
The Cyrillic script /sᵻˈrɪlɪk/ is a writing system used for various alphabets across eastern Europe and north and central Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the alphabet for their national languages. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the official script of the European Union, following the Latin script. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and these additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on, modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great, the new form of letters became closer to the Latin alphabet, several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great. West European typography culture was also adopted, Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri was originally a ligature of Yer and I, iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю, Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, there were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. The letters also had values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers, many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet, the Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, Segoe UI is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8, the development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters show a tendency to be very tall and narrow. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early 18th century, over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type, Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography
Cyrillic script
–
Cyrillic
11.
Unicode range
–
The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
Unicode range
–
Example of fraction slash use. This
typeface (
Apple Chancery) shows the synthesized common fraction on the left and the precomposed fraction glyph on the right as a rendering the plain text string “1 1⁄4 1¼”. Depending on the text environment, the single string “1 1⁄4” might yield either result, the one on the right through substitution of the fraction sequence with the single precomposed fraction glyph.
12.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The official chart of the IPA as of 2005. Click to enlarge. The proper symbols for upstep and downstep are not available in this font, and have been substituted.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]
13.
Mojibake
–
Mojibake, from the Japanese 文字 character + 化け transform, is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones. This display may include the replacement character � in places where the binary representation is considered invalid. A replacement can also involve multiple consecutive symbols, as viewed in one encoding and this is either because of differing constant length encoding, or the use of variable length encodings. Failed rendering of glyphs due to either missing fonts or missing glyphs in a font is a different issue that is not to be confused with mojibake, symptoms of this failed rendering include blocks with the codepoint displayed in hexadecimal or using the generic replacement character �. Importantly, these replacements are valid and are the result of error handling by the software. To correctly reproduce the text that was encoded, the correspondence between the encoded data and the notion of its encoding must be preserved. As mojibake is the instance of incompliance between these, it can be achieved by manipulating the data itself, or just relabeling it. Mojibake is often seen with text data that have been tagged with an encoding, it may not even be tagged at all. A major source of trouble are communication protocols that rely on settings on each computer rather than sending or storing metadata together with the data. Whereas Linux distributions mostly switched to UTF-8 for all uses of text, Microsoft Windows still uses codepages for text files, for some writing systems, an example being Japanese, several encodings have historically been employed, causing users to see mojibake relatively often. If the encoding is not specified, it is up to the software to decide it by other means, depending on type of software, the typical solution is either configuration or charset detection heuristics. Both are prone to mispredict in not-so-uncommon scenarios, the encoding of text files is usually governed by the OS-level setting, which depends on brand of operating system and possibly the users language. Therefore, the encoding is systematically wrong for files that come from a computer with a different setting. One solution is to use a byte order mark, but for source code and other machine readable text, another is storing the encoding as metadata in the filesystem. Filesystems that support extended file attributes can store this as user. charset and this also requires support in software that wants to take advantage of it, but does not disturb other software. While a few encodings are easy to detect, in particular UTF-8, Mojibake also occurs when the encoding is wrongly specified. This often happens between encodings that are similar, for example, the Eudora email client for Windows was known to send emails labelled as ISO-8859-1 that were in reality Windows-1252
Mojibake
–
Mojibake caused by a song title in Cyrillic (
Моя Страна) on a car audio system
Mojibake
–
The
UTF-8 -encoded Japanese Wikipedia article for mojibake, as displayed in the
Windows-1252 encoding.
14.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
Unicode
–
Logo of the
Unicode Consortium
15.
Specials (Unicode block)
–
Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
Specials (Unicode block)
–
Replacement character
16.
Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
Writing system
–
Writing systems
Writing system
–
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Writing system
–
Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations
Writing system
–
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia
17.
Armenian numerals
–
The system of Armenian numerals is a historic numeral system created using the majuscules of the Armenian alphabet. There was no notation for zero in the old system, the principles behind this system are the same as for the Ancient Greek numerals and Hebrew numerals. In modern Armenia, the familiar Arabic numerals are used, Armenian numerals are used more or less like Roman numerals in modern English, e. g. Գարեգին Բ. means Garegin II and Գ. Since not all browsers can render Unicode Armenian letters, the transliteration is given. The final two letters of the Armenian alphabet, o and fe were added to the Armenian alphabet only after Arabic numerals were already in use, thus, they do not have a numerical value assigned to them. Numbers in the Armenian numeral system are obtained by simple addition, although the order of the numerals is irrelevant since only addition is performed, the convention is to write them in decreasing order of value. This is done by drawing a line over them, indicating their value is to be multiplied by 10000, Ա =10000 Ջ =9000000 ՌՃԽԳՌՄԾԵ =11431255
Armenian numerals
–
Numeral systems
18.
Classical Armenian orthography
–
The classical Armenian orthography is the orthography developed during the early 19th century for the Armenian language. Today, it is used primarily by the Armenian diaspora, which has rejected the Armenian orthography reform that happened in Soviet Armenia in the 1920s, in the Armenian diaspora, some linguists and politicians allege political motives behind that reform. The classical Armenian orthography uses the 36 original letters of the Armenian alphabet, at the end of a word, /ɛ/ is always written <է>. For example, Մարգարէ, Վահէ, կը վազէ, at the beginning of a word, /ɛ/ is written <է>. In the middle of a word when followed by a vowel, when followed by two consonants within a root word, /ɛ/ is written <ե>. For example, ներկ, ուղերձ, խենդ, փեղկ, when making a noun plural, <եր> or <ներ> is added to the end of the noun. For example, տուփ → տուփեր, դրամ → դրամներ, when followed by an <լ>, <հ>, <ղ>, <մ>, or <ռ>, /ɛ/ is written <ե>. The following are exceptions, դէմ, վէմ, and also foreign proper nouns, the vowel is usually not written. For example, we say, but write մտածում, we say, <ը> is written in the following situations, At the start of a word, when the second sound is a or. For example, is written ընտրել, is written ընկեր, is written ըմբոստ, is written ըմբռնել, at the start of a word, when the vowel stems from the or sound. For example, is written ըղձալ, because it stems from the noun, and is written ըմպել, because it stems from the noun, ումպ–ել. At the start or middle of a word whose only vowel is. For example, is written ըստ, and is written մըն, within derivative and compound words when the words second part starts with. For example, is written անընդունելի, because it is a word formed from the prefix. And is written արագընթաց, because it is a word formed from the root words արագ and ընթացք. Within a word after the letters <ու>, when <ու> is not followed by a vowel, for example, վնաս becomes վը–նաս, and զգալ becomes ըզ–գալ. For example, լոյսը is formed by adding ը to the end of լոյս, /œ/ is a rare sound in Armenian that is used to write foreign words. For example, the name is written Էօժենի
Classical Armenian orthography
–
Origin
19.
Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924
–
An orthography reform of the Armenian alphabet was conducted between 1922 and 1924 in Soviet Armenia. Although it is used by Armenians outside of Armenia and the Post-Soviet states. This and a variety of educational reforms resulted in almost 90% literacy throughout the country by the early 1950s. Although the orthography of the Armenian language was changed by this reform, in fact, some other nations of the former USSR changed their entire scripts from Arabic and Latin to Cyrillic. Since the establishment of the third Republic of Armenia in 1991, some members of the Armenian church in Armenia also support the use of the Classical spelling. This issue concerns the letter pairs յ/հ, ու/վ and diphthongs ոյ/ույ, եա/յա, եօ/յո, the following, more complex changes are also made, The digraph ու /u/ becomes a full, independent letter in the 34th place of the alphabet. The letters է and օ were deleted from the alphabet, since then, they are written only at the beginning of a word and in compound words. ե or ո are used respectively in their places. The only exceptions are ով /ov/ who and ովքեր /ovkhɛɾ/ those, the letter ւ is no longer an independent letter and appears only as a component of ու. In its place, վ is written, the ligature և was initially abolished, but in 1940 it became a full, independent letter in the 37th place of the alphabet. Some words originally written with եվ are now written with this letter, in the conjugation of verbs, կ is added directly. Classical Armenian orthography Armenian language Armenian alphabet Armenian SSR Reforms of Russian orthography Armenian Orthography converters Armenian Orthography Converter
Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924
–
Origin
20.
Iranian Armenians
–
Iranian-Armenians, are ethnic Armenian citizens of Iran. They are mostly concentrated in Tabriz, Tehran and Isfahans Jolfa quarter, the Armenians have a many millennia old history within the modern-day borders of Iran. They are amongst the inhabitants of Irans northwestern regions, with the territory having made up part of historical Armenia numerous times in history. Many of the oldest Armenian churches, monasteries, and chapels, are located within modern-day Iran, iranian-Armenians were very influential and active in the modernization of Iran during the 19th and 20th centuries. After the Iranian Revolution, many Armenians emigrated to Armenian diasporic communities in North America, today the Armenians are Irans largest Christian religious minority. Since Antiquity there has always been much interaction between Ancient Armenia and Persia and these historical Armenian regions that nowadays include Iranian Azerbaijan are Nor Shirakan, Vaspurakan, and Paytakaran. Many of the oldest Armenian chapels, monasteries and churches in the world are located within region of Iran. On the Behistun inscription of 515 BC, Darius the Great indirectly confirmed that Urartu, Armenia became a satrap of the Persian Empire for a long period of time. Regardless, relations between Armenians and Persians were cordial, the cultural links between the Armenians and the Persians can be traced back to Zoroastrian times. Prior to the 3rd century AD, no other neighbor had as much influence on Armenian life and they shared many religious and cultural characteristics, and intermarriage among Parthian and Armenian nobility was common. For twelve more centuries, Armenia was under the direct or indirect rule of the Persians, while much influenced by Persian culture and religion, Armenia also retained its unique characteristics as a nation. Although Armenians have a history of interaction and settlement with Persia/Iran and within the modern-day borders of the nation. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran divided Armenia, from the early 16th century, both Western Armenia and Eastern Armenia fell under Iranian Safavid rule. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian geo-political rivalry that would last in Western Asia, Iran quickly recognized the Armenians dexterity in commerce. The community became active in the cultural and economic development of Iran, Bourvari is a collection of villages in Iran, between the city of Khomein and Aligoodarz. The following villages populated by the Armenians in Bourvari were, Dehno, Khorzend, Farajabad, Bahmanabad and this included the irrevocable loss of Eastern Armenia in 1828 per the Treaty of Turkmenchay. From 1795 to 1804 during the earliest clashes leading up to the 19th century wars between the Russian and Persian Empire Armenians were taken as captive in Iran, there were also 20,000 Armenians who moved for Georgia. The ceding of what is modern-day Armenia in 1828 resulted in a large amount of Armenians falling now under the rule of the Russians
Iranian Armenians
–
Sarkies Brothers
Iranian Armenians
Iranian Armenians
–
Yeprem Khan
Iranian Armenians
–
Irene Zazians
21.
Typographic ligature
–
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph. An example is the character æ as used in English, in which the letters a and e are joined, the common ampersand developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters e and t were combined. The origin of typographical ligatures comes from the invention of writing with a stylus on fibrous material or clay, the earliest known script, Sumerian cuneiform, includes many cases of character combinations that, over time, gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Ligatures figure prominently in many manuscripts, notably the Brahmic abugidas. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their speed by combining characters. Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes, for example, in blackletter, letters with right-facing bowls and those with left-facing bowls were written with the facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as h, m, scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the century employed hundreds of such abbreviations. In hand writing, a ligature is made by joining two or more characters in atypical fashion by merging their parts or by writing one above or inside the other. While in printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, for example, in some cases the fi ligature prints the letters f and i with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, Ligatures began to fall out of use due to their complexity in the 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include Gill Sans. Inexpensive phototypesetting machines in the 1970s also generally avoid them, the trend was further strengthened by the desktop publishing revolution starting around 1977 with the production of the Apple II. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution, as most of the early PC development was designed for the English language dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as the number of traditional hand compositors and hot metal typesetting machine operators dropped since the mass of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented, some of the world’s greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world’s worst fonts, Ligatures have grown in popularity over the last 20 years due to an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of the first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting was Donald Knuths TeX program, now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets, these include FF Scala, Seria and others by Martin Majoor, mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko contains a particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity
Typographic ligature
–
Simple example of widely used ligatures typed by handwriting typographic font.
Typographic ligature
–
Long s + i ligature in a
Garamond font.
Typographic ligature
–
Ligatures "Th" and "Wh" illustration
Typographic ligature
–
"ß" in the form of a "ſʒ" ligature on a street sign in Berlin ("Petersburger Straße"). The sign on the right ("Bersarinplatz") ends with a "tʒ" ligature.
22.
Quotation mark
–
The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media, the double quotation mark is older than the single. By the middle sixteenth century, printers had developed a form of this notation. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century, the usage of a pair of marks, closing and opening, at the level of lower case letters was generalized. By the nineteenth century, the design and usage began to be specific within each region, in Western Europe the usage became to use the quotation marks in pairs but “pointing” outside. In Britain those marks were elevated to the height of the top of capital letters. In France, by the end of the century those marks were modified to a more angular shape. Some authors claim that the reason for this was a one, in order to get a character that was clearly distinguishable from the apostrophes, the commas. Other authors claim that the reason for this was an aesthetical one, nevertheless, while other languages do not insert a space between the quotation marks and the word, the French usage does insert them, even if it is a narrow space. The curved quotation marks usage was exported to some non-Latin scripts, the angular quotation marks usage was exported to some non-Latin scripts, like Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Far East angle brackets quotation marks are also a development of the angular quotation marks. In Central Europe, however, the practice was to use the marks in pairs. The German tradition preferred the curved quotation marks, the first one at the level of the commas, alternatively, these marks still “pointed” inside but could be angular and in-line with lower case letters. Some neighboring regions adopted the German tradition but some adopted the second mark as “pointing” to the right. In Sweden, both marks “pointed” to the right but both were at the top level, neither at the bottom, in Eastern Europe there was a hesitation between the French tradition and the German tradition. The single quotation mark emerged around 1800 as a means of indicating a level of quotation. One could expect that the logic would be the corresponding single mark everywhere, British English tends to reverse the usage — single quotation marks are primary, and double quotation marks are secondary —this distinction, however, dating back to around the 1960s. In some languages using the quotation marks, the usage of single ones became obsolete, being replaced by double curved ones
Quotation mark
–
Guillemets by the
Imprimerie nationale in Bulletin de l’Agence générale des colonies, № 302, Mai 1934, showing the
comma -shaped symbols sitting on the
baseline.
23.
Semicolon (punctuation)
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The semicolon or semi-colon is a punctuation mark that separates major sentence elements. A semicolon can be used two closely related independent clauses, provided they are not already joined by a coordinating conjunction. Semicolons can also be used in place of commas to separate items in a list, the first printed semicolon was the work of the Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder in 1494. Manutius established the practice of using the semicolon to separate words of opposed meaning, ben Jonson was the first notable English writer to use the semicolon systematically. The modern uses of the semicolon relate either to the listing of items or to the linking of related clauses, in Unicode it is encoded at U+003B, Semicolon. Although terminal marks mark the end of a sentence, the comma, semicolon and colon are normally sentence internal, the semicolon falls between terminal marks and the comma, its strength is equal to that of the colon. When a semicolon marks the boundary of a constituent, the right boundary is marked by punctuation of equal or greater strength. When two or more semicolons are used within a construction, all constituents are at the same level, unlike commas. Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter would ordinarily be capitalized mid-sentence, modern style guides recommend no space before them and one space after. They also typically recommend placing semicolons outside ending quotation marks, although this was not always the case, for example, the first edition of the Chicago Manual of Style recommended placing the semicolon inside ending quotation marks. Several fast food restaurants can be found within the cities, London, England, Paris, France, Dublin, Ireland, Madrid. Here are three examples of sequences, one, two, and three, a, b, and c, first, second, and third. Between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, I went to the basketball court, I was told it was closed for cleaning. I told Kate shes running for the hills, I wonder if she knew I was joking, either clause may include commas, this is especially common when parallel wording is omitted from the second, Ted has two dogs, Sam, one. When a comma replaces a period in a quotation, or when a quotation otherwise links two independent sentences, I have no use for this, he said, you are welcome to it and she asked, I found it on the floor. In Arabic, the semicolon is called Fāṣila Manqūṭa which means literally a dotted comma, in Arabic, the semicolon has several uses, It can be used between two phrases, in which the first phrase causes the second. Example, He played much, so, his clothes became dirty and it can be used in two phrases, where the second is a reason for the first. Example, Your sister did not get high marks, because she didnt study, in Greek and Church Slavonic, a semicolon indicates a question, similar to a Latin question mark
Semicolon (punctuation)
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The frequency of semicolons in English texts from 1500–2008
24.
Abbreviation
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An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. It consists of a group of letters taken from the word or phrase, a contraction is an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily a contraction. Acronyms and initialisms are regarded as subsets of abbreviations and they are abbreviations that consist of the initial letters or parts of words. Abbreviations have a history, created so that spelling out a whole word could be avoided. This might be done to time and space, and also to provide secrecy. Shortened words were used and initial letters were used to represent words in specific applications. In classical Greece and Rome, the reduction of words to single letters was common, in Roman inscriptions, Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation. However, some could have more than one meaning, depending on their context, Abbreviations in English were frequently used from its earliest days. Manuscripts of copies of the old English poem Beowulf used many abbreviations, for example 7 or & for and, the standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviations. At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, for example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time, an example from the Oxford University Register,1503, Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ. The Early Modern English period, between the 15th and 17th centuries, had abbreviations like ye for Þe, used for the word the, hence, by later misunderstanding, during the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. The use of abbreviation for the names of J. R. R. Tolkien and his friend C. S. Lewis, but before that, many Britons were more scrupulous at maintaining the French form. In French, the period follows a abbreviation if the last letter in the abbreviation is not the last letter of its antecedent. Like many other cross-channel linguistic acquisitions, many Britons readily took this up and followed this rule themselves, while the Americans took a simpler rule and applied it rigorously. Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. The U. S. media tend to use periods in two-word abbreviations like United States, many British publications have gradually done away with the use of periods in abbreviations
Abbreviation
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Example of
Latin text with abbreviations
Abbreviation
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Road sign in China—"km" is a symbol, not an abbreviation, as it is not a contraction of a Chinese word
25.
Tilde
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The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in came from the Latin titulus. The reason for the name was that it was written over a letter as a scribal abbreviation, as a mark of suspension. Thus the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to Ao Dñi, such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the labour and the cost of vellum. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with suspension marks and other abbreviations, the tilde has since been applied to a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right. These are encoded in Unicode at U+0303 ◌̃ Combining Tilde and U+007E ~ Tilde, in lexicography, the latter kind of tilde and the swung dash are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word. This symbol informally means approximately, about, or around, such as ~30 minutes before and it can mean similar to, including of the same order of magnitude as, such as, x ~ y meaning that x and y are of the same order of magnitude. The tilde is used to indicate equal to or approximately equal to by placing it over the = symbol, like so. The text of the Domesday Book of 1086, relating for example, the text with abbreviations expanded is as follows, Mollande tempore regis Edwardi geldabat pro iiii hidis et uno ferling. In dominio sunt iii carucae et x servi et xxx villani et xx bordarii cum xvi carucis, ibi xii acrae prati et xv acrae silvae. Pastura iii leugae in longitudine et latitudine, elwardus tenebat tempore regis Edwardi pro manerio et geldabat pro dimidia hida. Ibi sunt v villani cum i servo, valet xx solidos ad pensam et arsuram. Eidem manerio est injuste adjuncta Nimete et valet xv solidos, ipsi manerio pertinet tercius denarius de Hundredis Nortmoltone et Badentone et Brantone et tercium animal pasturae morarum. The incorporation of the tilde into ASCII is a result of its appearance as a distinct character on mechanical typewriters in the late nineteenth century. Any good typewriter store had a catalog of alternative keyboards that could be specified for machines ordered from the factory, at that time, the tilde was used only in Spanish and Portuguese typewriters. In Modern Spanish, the tilde is used only with n and N, both were conveniently assigned to a single mechanical typebar, which sacrificed a key that was felt to be less important, usually the 1⁄2— 1⁄4 key. Portuguese, however, uses not ñ but nh and it uses the tilde on the vowels a and o
Tilde
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Text of Exeter
Domesday Book of 1086
Tilde
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Carta marina showing Finnish economy, with the captions Hic fabricantur naves and Hic fabricantur
bombarde abbreviated
26.
Exclamation mark
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The exclamation mark or exclamation point is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and often marks the end of a sentence. Similarly, an exclamation mark is often used in warning signs. Other uses include, In mathematics it denotes the factorial operation, at the beginning of an expression to denote logical negation, e. g. A means the logical negation of A, also called not A. Graphically the exclamation mark is represented as a stop point with a vertical line above. One theory of its origin is that it is derived from a Latin exclamation of joy, the modern graphical representation is believed to have been born in the Middle Ages. Medieval copyists wrote the Latin word io at the end of a sentence to indicate joy, over time, the i moved above the o, and the o became smaller, becoming a point. The exclamation mark did not have its own dedicated key on standard manual typewriters before the 1970s, instead, one typed a period, backspaced, and typed an apostrophe. In the 1950s, secretarial dictation and typesetting manuals in America referred to the mark as bang, appeared in dialogue balloons to represent a gun being fired, although the nickname probably emerged from letterpress printing. This bang usage is behind the names of the interrobang, an unconventional character, and a shebang line. In the printing world, the mark can be called a screamer, a gasper. In hacker culture, the mark is called bang, shriek, or, in the British slang known as Commonwealth Hackish. For example, the password communicated in the spoken phrase Your password is em-nought-pee-aitch-pling-en-three is m0ph. n3, the exclamation mark is common to languages using the Latin alphabet, although usage varies slightly between languages. The exclamation mark was adopted in languages written in other scripts, such as Greek, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Devanagari. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark may be an exclamation, or an imperative, or may indicate astonishment or surprise, They were the footprints of a gigantic hound. Exclamation marks are occasionally placed mid-sentence with a similar to a comma, for dramatic effect, although this usage is obsolescent, On the walk. Informally, exclamation marks may be repeated for emphasis. The exclamation mark is used in conjunction with the question mark. This can be in protest or astonishment, a few writers replace this with a single, nonstandard punctuation mark, the interrobang, which is the combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark
Exclamation mark
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Trilingual billboard in
Barcelona (detail), showing the initial exclamation mark for Spanish, but not for
Catalan (top line) and English.
Exclamation mark
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Warning signs are often an exclamation point enclosed within a
triangle
Exclamation mark
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New Zealand road sign warning of a "cattle stop" (
cattle grid /cattle guard)
Exclamation mark
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This Action Comics cover from 1959 ends every sentence with an exclamation point or
question mark. Often, few or no
periods would be used in the entire book.
27.
Acute accent
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The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. An early precursor of the accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. The acute accent was first used in the orthography of Ancient Greek. In Modern Greek, a stress accent has replaced the pitch accent, the Greek name of the accented syllable was and is ὀξεῖα sharp or high, which was calqued into Latin as acūta sharpened. The acute accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in several languages, Blackfoot uses acute accents to show the place of stress in a word, soyópokistsi leaves. Bulgarian, stress, which is variable in Bulgarian, is not usually indicated in Bulgarian except in dictionaries and sometimes in homonyms that are distinguished only by stress. However, Bulgarian usually uses the accent to mark the vowel in a stressed syllable, unlike Russian. Catalan uses it in stressed vowels, é, í, ó, ú, Dutch uses it to mark stress or a more closed vowel if it is not clear from context. Sometimes, it is used for disambiguation, as in één – een, meaning one. Galician Italian The accent is used to indicate the stress in a word, or whether the vowel is open or wide, or closed, for example, pèsca= Peach, while pésca = fishing. For example, kákhi in that direction but kakhí take something to back there. Leonese uses it for marking stress or disambiguation, Modern Greek marks the stressed vowel of every polysyllabic word, ά, έ, ή, ί, ό, ύ, ώ. Hopi has acute to mark a higher tone, Navajo where the acute marks a higher tone. Occitan Portuguese, á, é, í, ó, ú, stress is irregular in Russian, and in reference and teaching materials, stress is indicated by an acute accent above the stressed vowel. The acute accent can be used both in the Cyrillic and sometimes in the romanised text, Spanish marks stressed syllables in words that deviate from the standardized stress patterns. It is also used to distinguish minimal pairs such as el, also stress-related are the different spellings of the words en/én and et/ét. Then, the points out that there is one and only one of the object. Some loanwords, mainly from French, are written with the acute accent, like filé
Acute accent
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A sample extract of
Icelandic.
28.
Emphasis (typography)
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In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasize them. It is the equivalent of prosodic stress in speech, the most common methods in Bold fall under the general technique of emphasis through a change or modification of font, italics, boldface and small caps. Other methods include the alteration of letter case and spacing as well as color, the human eye is very receptive to differences in brightness within a text body. Therefore, one can differentiate types of emphasis according to whether the emphasis changes the “blackness” of text. With one or the other of these techniques, words can be highlighted without making them out much from the rest of the text. This was used for marking passages that have a different context, such as words from languages, book titles. By contrast, a bold font weight makes text darker than the surrounding text, for example, printed dictionaries often use boldface for their keywords, and the names of entries can conventionally be marked in bold. Small capitals are used for emphasis, especially for the first line of a section, sometimes accompanied by or instead of a drop cap. If the text body is typeset in a typeface, it is also possible to highlight words by setting them in a sans serif face. It is still using some font superfamilies, which come with matching serif and sans-serif variants. In Japanese typography, due to the legibility of heavier Minchō type. Of these methods, italics, small capitals and capitalisation are oldest, with bold type, the house styles of many publishers in the United States use all caps text for, chapter and section headings, newspaper headlines, publication titles, warning messages, word of important meaning. Capitalization is used less commonly today by British publishers. All-uppercase letters are a form of emphasis where the medium lacks support for boldface, such as old typewriters, plain-text email, SMS. Culturally all-caps text has become an indication of shouting, for example when quoting speech and it was also once often used by American lawyers to indicate important points in a legal text. Another means of emphasis is to increase the spacing between the letters, rather than making them darker, but still achieving a distinction in blackness and this results in an effect reverse to boldface, the emphasized text becomes lighter than its environment. This is often used in typesetting and typewriter manuscripts. On typewriters a full space was used between the letters of a word and also one before and one after the word
Emphasis (typography)
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Shakespeare's play
Othello, printed in 1623. Bold type had not yet been invented. Emphasis is provided by using italics, used for key words, stage directions and the names of characters, and capitalisation of key words.
Emphasis (typography)
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Roman emphasis example
29.
Question mark
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The question mark is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions, the question mark glyph is also often used in place of missing or unknown data. In Unicode, it is encoded at U+003F, lynne Truss attributes an early form of the modern question mark in western language to Alcuin of York. Truss describes the punctus interrogativus of the late 8th century as and this earliest question mark was a decoration of one of these dots, with the lightning flash perhaps meant to denote intonation, and perhaps associated with early musical notation like neumes. It has also suggested that the glyph derives from the Latin quaestiō, meaning question. The lowercase q was written above the o, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol. According to a 2011 discovery by a Cambridge manuscript expert, Syriac was the first language to use a mark to indicate an interrogative sentence. The Syriac question mark has the form of a double dot. In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, however, the question mark may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma, Is it good in form. Or, Showing off for him, for all of them, what did he have to be hubrid about. —but from mood and nervousness. This is quite common in Spanish, where the use of bracketing question marks explicitly indicates the scope of interrogation, en el caso de que no puedas ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros. In Spanish, since the edition of the Ortografía of the Royal Academy in 1754. An interrogative sentence, clause, or phrase begins with a question mark ⟨¿⟩ and ends with the question mark ⟨. ⟩, as in, Ella me pregunta «¿qué hora es. » – She asks me. The one exception is when the mark is matched with an exclamation mark, as in. – Who do you think you are, nonetheless, even here the Academy recommends matching punctuation, ¡¿Quién te has creído que eres. Other languages of Spain, Catalan and Galician also uses the opening question mark though usually only in long sentences or in cases which would otherwise be ambiguous. Basque only use one question mark, in Armenian the question mark takes the form of an open circle and is placed over the last vowel of the question word. It is defined in Unicode at U+055E ՞ ARMENIAN QUESTION MARK, the Greek question mark appeared around the same time as the Latin one, in the 8th century
Question mark
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One possible origin of the question mark from Latin.
Eastern Armenian (help·info) or in 
