Old Turkic script
The Old Turkic script is the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates during the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language. The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolai Yadrintsev; these Orkhon inscriptions were published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893. This writing system was used within the Uyghur Khaganate. Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Yenisei Kirghiz inscriptions, it has cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and the Old Hungarian alphabet of the 10th century. Words were written from right to left. According to some sources, Orkhon script is derived from variants of the Aramaic alphabet, in particular via the Pahlavi and Sogdian alphabets, as suggested by Vilhelm Thomsen, or via Kharosthi. Another explanation of the script's origin aside from derivation from tamgas, an alternate possible derivation from Chinese characters was suggested by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893.
Turkic inscriptions dating from earlier than the Orkhon inscriptions used about 150 symbols, which may suggest that tamgas first imitated Chinese script and gradually was refined into an alphabet. Thomsen connected the script to the reports of Chinese account from a 2nd-century BCE Yan renegade and dignitary named Zhonghang Yue, who "taught the Chanyu to write official letters to the Chinese court on a wooden tablet 31 cm long, to use a seal and large-sized folder"; the same sources tell that when the Xiongnu noted down something or transmitted a message, they made cuts on a piece of wood. At the Noin-Ula burial site and other Hun burial sites in Mongolia and regions north of Lake Baikal, the artifacts displayed over twenty carved characters. Most of these characters are either identical with or similar to the letters of the Turkic Orkhon script. Contemporary Chinese sources conflict as to whether the Turks had a written language by the 6th century; the Book of Zhou, dating to the 7th century, mentions that the Turks had a written language similar to that of the Sogdians.
Two other sources, the Book of Sui and the History of the Northern Dynasties claim that the Turks did not have a written language. The Old Turkic corpus consists of plus a number of manuscripts; the inscriptions, dating from the 7th to 10th century, were discovered in present-day Mongolia, in the upper Yenisey basin in central South Siberia, and, in smaller numbers, in the Altay mountains and in Xinjiang. The texts are epitaphs, but there are graffiti and a handful of short inscriptions found on archaeological artifacts, including a number of bronze mirrors; the website of the Language Committee of Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan lists 54 inscriptions from the Orkhon area, 106 from the Yenisei area, 15 from the Talas area, 78 from the Altai area. The most famous of the inscriptions are the two monuments which were erected in the Orkhon Valley between 732 and 735 in honor of the Göktürk prince Kül Tigin and his brother the emperor Bilge Kağan; the Tonyukuk inscription, a monument situated somewhat farther east, is earlier, dating to ca.
722. These inscriptions relate in epic language the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese, their liberation by Bilge; the Old Turkic manuscripts, of which there are none earlier than the 9th century, were found in present-day Xinjiang and represent Old Uyghur, a different Turkic dialect than the one represented in the Old Turkic inscriptions in the Orkhon valley and elsewhere. They include a 9th-century manuscript book on divination. Old Turkic being a synharmonic language, a number of consonant signs are divided into two "synharmonic sets", one for front vowels and the other for back vowels; such vowels can be taken as intrinsic to the consonant sign, giving the Old Turkic alphabet an aspect of an abugida script. In these cases, it is customary to use superscript numerals ¹ and ² to mark consonant signs used with back and front vowels, respectively; this convention was introduced by Thomsen, followed by Gabain and Tekin. Synharmonic setsOther consonantal signsA colon-like symbol is sometimes used as a word separator.
In some cases a ring is used instead. A reading example: transliterated t²ṅr²i, this spells the name of the Turkic sky god, Tengri. Variants of the script were found from Xinjiang in the east to the Balkans in the west; the preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 10th centuries. These alphabets are divided into four groups by Kyzlasov Asiatic group Eurasiatic group Southern Europe groupThe Asiatic group is further divided into three related alphabets: Orkhon alphabet, Göktürks, 8th to 10th centuries Yenisei alphabet, Talas alphabet, a derivative of the Yenisei alphabet, Kangly or Karluks 8th to 10th centuries. Talas inscriptions include Terek-Say rock inscriptions found in the 1897, Koysary text, Bakaiyr gorge inscriptions, Kalbak-Tash 6 and 12 inscriptions, Talas alphabet has 29 identified letters; the Eurasiatic group is further divided into five related alphabets: Achiktash, used in Sogdia 8th to 10th centuries. S
Geʽez script
Geʽez known as Ethiopic, is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia. It originated as an abjad and was first used to write Geʽez, now the liturgical language of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Beta Israel, the Jewish community in Ethiopia. In Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called fidäl, meaning "script" or "alphabet"; the Geʽez script has been adapted to write other Semitic, languages Amharic in Ethiopia, Tigrinya in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is used for Sebatbeit, Meʼen, most other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is used for Tigre, it has traditionally been used for Blin, a Cushitic language. Tigre, spoken in western and northern Eritrea, is considered to resemble Geʽez more than do the other derivative languages; some other languages in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo, used to be written using Geʽez, but have migrated to Latin-based orthographies. For the representation of sounds, this article uses a system, common among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages.
This differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet. See the articles on the individual languages for information on the pronunciation; the earliest inscriptions of Semitic languages in Eritrea and Ethiopia date to the 9th century BC in Epigraphic South Arabian, an abjad shared with contemporary kingdoms in South Arabia. After the 7th and 6th centuries BC, variants of the script arose, evolving in the direction of the Geʽez abugida; this evolution can be seen most in evidence from inscriptions in Tigray region in northern Ethiopia and the former province of Akkele Guzay in Eritrea. By the first centuries AD, what is called "Old Ethiopic" or the "Old Geʽez alphabet" arose, an abjad written left-to-right with letters identical to the first-order forms of the modern vocalized alphabet. There were minor differences such as the letter "g" facing to the right, instead of to the left as in vocalized Geʽez, a shorter left leg of "l", as in ESA, instead of equally-long legs in vocalized Geʽez.
Vocalization of Geʽez occurred in the 4th century, though the first vocalized texts known are inscriptions by Ezana, vocalized letters predate him by some years, as an individual vocalized letter exists in a coin of his predecessor Wazeba. Linguist Roger Schneider has pointed out anomalies in the known inscriptions of Ezana that imply that he was consciously employing an archaic style during his reign, indicating that vocalization could have occurred much earlier; as a result, some believe that the vocalization may have been adopted to preserve the pronunciation of Geʽez texts due to the moribund or extinct status of Geʽez, that, by that time, the common language of the people were later Ethio-Semitic languages. At least one of Wazeba's coins from the late 3rd or early 4th century contains a vocalized letter, some 30 or so years before Ezana. Kobishchanov and others have suggested possible influence from the Brahmic family of alphabets in vocalization, as they are abugidas, Aksum was an important part of major trade routes involving India and the Greco-Roman world throughout the common era of antiquity.
According to the beliefs of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the original consonantal form of the Geʽez fidel was divinely revealed to Henos "as an instrument for codifying the laws", the present system of vocalisation is attributed to a team of Aksumite scholars led by Frumentius, the same missionary said to have converted the king Ezana to Christianity in the 4th century AD. It has been argued that the vowel marking pattern of the script reflects a South Asian system, such as would have been known by Frumentius. A separate tradition, recorded by Aleqa Taye, holds that the Geʽez consonantal alphabet was first adapted by Zegdur, a legendary king of the Ag'azyan Sabaean dynasty held to have ruled in Ethiopia c. 1300 BC. Geʽez has 26 consonantal letters. Compared to the inventory of 29 consonants in the South Arabian alphabet, continuants are missing of ġ, ẓ, South Arabian s3, as well as z and ṯ, these last two absences reflecting the collapse of interdental with alveolar fricatives.
On the other hand, emphatic P̣ait ጰ, a Geʽez innovation, is a modification of Ṣädai ጸ, while Pesa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ. Thus, there are 24 correspondences of Geʽez and the South Arabian alphabet: Many of the letter names are cognate with those of Phoenician, may thus be assumed for Proto-Sinaitic. Two alphabets were used to write the Geʽez language, an abjad and an abugida; the abjad, used until c. 330 AD, had 26 consonantal letters: h, l, ḥ, m, ś, r, s, ḳ, b, t, ḫ, n, ʾ, k, w, ʿ, z, y, d, g, ṭ, p̣, ṣ, ṣ́, f, p Vowels were not indicated. Modern Geʽez is written from left to right; the Geʽez abugida developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to the consonantal letters. The diacritics for the vowels, u, i, a, e, ə, o, were fused with the consonants in a recognizable but irregular way, so that the system is laid out as a syllabary; the original form of the consonant was used when the vowel was the so-called inherent vowel. The resulting forms are shown below in their traditional order.
For some vowels, there is an eighth form for the diphthong -wa or -oa
Hieratic
Hieratic is a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian, the principal script used to write that language from its development in the 3rd millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid 1st millennium BCE. It was written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus. In the second century, the term hieratic was first used by Clement of Alexandria, it derives from the Greek for "priestly writing", as at that time, hieratic was used only for religious texts and literature, as had been the case for the previous eight and a half centuries. Hieratic can be an adjective meaning "f or associated with sacred persons or offices. Hieratic developed as a cursive form of hieroglyphic script in the Naqada III period 3200–3000 BCE. Although handwritten printed hieroglyphs continued to be used in some formal situations, such as manuscripts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, noncursive hieroglyphic script became restricted to monumental inscriptions. Hieratic was used into the Hellenistic period. Around 660 BCE, the more-cursive Demotic script arose in northern Egypt and replaced hieratic and the southern shorthand known as abnormal hieratic for most mundane writing, such as personal letters and mercantile documents.
Hieratic continued to be used by the priestly class for religious texts and literature into the third century BCE. Through most of its long history, hieratic was used for writing administrative documents, legal texts, letters, as well as mathematical, medical and religious texts. During the Græco-Roman period, when Demotic had become the chief administrative script, hieratic was limited to religious texts. In general, hieratic was much more important than hieroglyphs throughout Egypt's history, being the script used in daily life, it was the writing system first taught to students, knowledge of hieroglyphs being limited to a small minority who were given additional training. In fact, it is possible to detect errors in hieroglyphic texts that came about due to a misunderstanding of an original hieratic text. Most hieratic script was written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, stone or pottery ostraca. Thousands of limestone ostraca have been found at the site of Deir al-Madinah, revealing an intimate picture of the lives of common Egyptian workmen.
Besides papyrus, ceramic shards, wood, there are hieratic texts on leather rolls, though few have survived. There are hieratic texts written on cloth on linen used in mummification. There are some hieratic texts inscribed on a variety known as lapidary hieratic. During the late 6th Dynasty, hieratic was sometimes incised into mud tablets with a stylus, similar to cuneiform. About five hundred of these tablets have been discovered in the governor's palace at Ayn Asil, a single example was discovered from the site of Ayn al-Gazzarin, both in the Dakhla Oasis. At the time the tablets were made, Dakhla was located far from centers of papyrus production; these tablets record inventories, name lists and fifty letters. Of the letters, many are internal letters that were circulated within the palace and the local settlement, but others were sent from other villages in the oasis to the governor. Hieratic script, unlike manuscript hieroglyphs, reads from right to left. Hieratic could be written in either columns or horizontal lines, but after the 12th Dynasty, horizontal writing became the standard.
Hieratic is noted for its cursive use of ligatures for a number of characters. Hieratic script uses a much more standardized orthography than hieroglyphs. There are some signs that are unique to hieratic, though Egyptologists have invented equivalent hieroglyphic forms for hieroglyphic transcriptions and typesetting. Several hieratic characters have diacritical additions so that similar signs could be distinguished. Hieratic is present in any given period in two forms, a ligatured, cursive script used for administrative documents, a broad uncial bookhand used for literary and religious texts; these two forms can be different from one another. Letters, in particular, used cursive forms for quick writing with large numbers of abbreviations for formulaic phrases, similar to shorthand. A cursive form of hieratic known as "Abnormal Hieratic" was used in the Theban area from the second half of the 20th dynasty until the beginning of the 26th Dynasty, it derives from the script of Upper Egyptian administrative documents and was used for legal texts, land leases and other texts.
This type of writing was superseded by Demotic—a Lower Egyptian scribal tradition—during the 26th Dynasty, when Demotic was established as a standard administrative script throughout a re-unified Egypt. Hieratic has had influence on a number of other writing systems; the most obvious is that on its direct descendant. Related to this are the Demotic signs of the Meroitic script and the borrowed Demotic characters used in the Coptic alphabet and Old Nubian. Outside of the Nile Valley, many of the signs used in the Byblos syllabary were borrowed from Old Kingdom hieratic signs, it is known that early Hebrew used hieratic numerals. The Unicode standard considers hieratic characters to be font variants of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the two scripts
Palmyrene alphabet
Palmyrene was a historical Semitic alphabet used to write the local Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic. It was used between 100 300 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. Palmyrene was derived from cursive versions of the Aramaic alphabet and shares many of its characteristics: Twenty-two letters with only consonants represented Written horizontally from right-to-left Numbers written right-to-left using a non-decimal systemPalmyrene was written without spaces or punctuation between words and sentences. Two forms of Palmyrene were developed: The rounded, cursive form derived from the Aramaic alphabet and a decorative, monumental form developed from the cursive Palmyrene. Both the cursive and monumental forms used typographic ligatures. Palmyrene used a non-decimal system which built up numbers using combinations of their symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20.
It is similar to the system used for Aramaic which built numbers using their symbols for 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 100, 1000, 10000. There are some styles in which the'r'-letter is the same as the'd'-letter with a dot on top, but there are styles in which the two letters are visually distinct. Ligation, after b, ḥ, m, n, q before some other consonants was common in some inscriptions but was not obligatory. There are 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 overnight, by Abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy using these new, accurate copies of bilingual inscriptions. 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
Samaritan alphabet
The Samaritan alphabet is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and Arabic. Samaritan is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, a variety of the Phoenician alphabet in which large parts of the Hebrew Bible were penned. All these scripts are believed to be descendants of the Proto-Sinaitic script; that script was used by both Jews and Samaritans. The better-known "square script" Hebrew alphabet traditionally used by Jews is a stylized version of the Aramaic alphabet called "Assyrian writing" which they adopted from the Persian Empire. After the fall of the Persian Empire, Judaism used both scripts before settling on the Aramaic form. For a limited time thereafter, the use of paleo-Hebrew among Jews was retained only to write the Tetragrammaton, but soon that custom was abandoned; the Samaritan alphabet first became known to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the Samaritan Pentateuch in 1631 by Jean Morin.
In 1616 the traveler Pietro della Valle had purchased a copy of the text in Damascus, this manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a Parisian library. The table below shows the development of the Samaritan script. On the left are the corresponding Hebrew letters for comparison. Column I is the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Column X shows the modern form of the letters. Samaritan script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block for Samaritan is U +0800 -- U +083 F: Moše. Late Samaritan Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis of Its Different Types. Brill. ISBN 978-900413841-4. A Samaritan Bible, at the British library Omniglot.com - Samaritan alphabet Link to free Samaritan font
Proto-Sinaitic script
Proto-Sinaitic referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite, is a term for both a Middle Bronze Age script attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula and the reconstructed common ancestor of the Paleo-Hebrew and South Arabian scripts. The earliest "Proto-Sinaitic" inscriptions are dated to between the mid-19th and the mid-16th century BC. "The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BC, a late date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, by extension locates the invention of the alphabet in Egypt or Canaan respectively." However the discovery of the Wadi El-Hol inscriptions near the Nile River shows that the script originated in Egypt. The evolution of "Proto-Sinaitic" and the various "Proto-Canaanite" scripts during the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence; the "Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions" were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie.
To this may be added a number of short "Proto-Canaanite" inscriptions found in Canaan and dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BC, more the discovery in 1999 of the "Wadi El-Hol inscriptions", found in Middle Egypt by John and Deborah Darnell. The Wadi El-Hol inscriptions suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC; the Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The mountain contained turquoise mines. Many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, included large numbers of Canaanites, allowed to settle the eastern Delta. Most of the forty or so inscriptions have been found among much more numerous hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions, scratched on rocks near and in the turquoise mines and along the roads leading to the temple; the date of the inscriptions is placed in the 17th or 16th century BC.
Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small human statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx. They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script. In 1916, Alan Gardiner, using sound values derived from the alphabet hypothesis, translated a collection of signs as לבעלת lbʿlt Only a few inscriptions have been found in Canaan itself, dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BC, they are all short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, may have been written by Canaanite caravaners, soldiers from Egypt or early Israelites. They sometimes go by the name Proto-Canaanite, although the term "Proto-Canaanite" is applied to early Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions, respectively; the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions were carved on the stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in the heart of literate Egypt. They are at approx. 25°57′N 32°25′E, among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The inscriptions are graphically similar to the Serabit inscriptions, but show a greater hieroglyphic influence, such as a glyph for a man, not read alphabetically: The first of these is a figure of celebration, whereas the second is either that of a child or of dancing. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants rather than different consonants; some scholars think that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is rebbe. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in which some of the signs are treated as logograms or rebuses "Excellent banquet of the celebration of ʿAnat. ʾEl will provide plenty of wine and victuals for the celebration. We will sacrifice to her an ox and a prime fatling." This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, with celebrations for the goddess Hathor involving inebriation. Proto-Canaanite referred to as Proto-Canaan, Old Canaanite, or Canaanite, is the name given to the Proto-Sinaitic script, when found in Canaan.
The term Proto-Canaanite is used when referring to the ancestor of the Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew script before some cut-off date 1050 BC, with an undefined affinity to Proto-Sinaitic. While no extant inscription in the Phoenician alphabet is older than c. 1050 BC, "Proto-Canaanite" is a term used for the early alphabets as used during the 13th and 12th centuries BC in Phoenicia. However, the Phoenician and other Canaanite dialects were indistinguishable before the 11th century BC. A possible example of "Proto-Canaanite" was found in 2012, the Ophel inscription, when during the excavations of the south w
Old Hungarian script
The Old Hungarian script is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Today Hungarian is predominantly written using the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet, but the Old Hungarian script is still in use in some communities; the term "old" refers to the historical priority of the script compared with the Latin-based one. The Old Hungarian script is a child system of the Old Turkic alphabet; the Hungarians settled the Carpathian Basin in 895. After the establishment of the Christian Hungarian kingdom, the old writing system was forced out of use and the Latin alphabet was adopted. However, among some professions and in Transylvania, the script has remained in use by the Székely Magyars, giving its Hungarian name rovásírás; the writing could be found in churches, such as that in the commune of Atid. Its English name in the ISO 15924 standard is Old Hungarian. In modern Hungarian, the script is known formally as Székely rovásírás; the writing system is known as rovásírás, székely rovásírás, székely-magyar írás.
Scientists can not give an exact origin for the script. Amateur historian Attila Grandpierre describes the incision of an axe socket found in the plains of Campagna, near Rome, made around 1000 BC. Linguist András Róna-Tas derives Old Hungarian from the Old Turkic script, itself recorded in inscriptions dating from c. AD 720; the origins of the Turkic scripts are uncertain. The scripts may be derived from Asian scripts such as the Pahlavi and Sogdian alphabets, or from Kharosthi, all of which are in turn remotely derived from the Aramaic script. Alternatively, according to some opinions, ancient Turkic runes descend from primaeval Turkic graphic logograms. Speakers of Proto-Hungarian would have come into contact with Turkic peoples during the 7th or 8th century, in the context of the Turkic expansion, as is evidenced by numerous Turkic loanwords in Proto-Hungarian. All the letters but one for sounds which were shared by Turkic and Ancient Hungarian can be related to their Old Turkic counterparts.
Most of the missing characters were derived by script internal extensions, rather than borrowings, but a small number of characters seem to derive from Greek, such as'eF'. Peter Z. Revesz places Old Hungarian into the Cretan Script Family that includes in one branch the Carian alphabets, Cretan hieroglyphs, the Cypriot syllabary, Linear A, Linear B, Old Hungarian, Tifinagh; this study did not involve the Old Turkic script, which may belong to the Cretan Script Family given the similarities found by András Róna-Tas. The modern Hungarian term for this script, rovás, derives from the verb róni, derived from old Uralic, general Hungarian terminology describing the technique of writing derive from Turkic, which further supports transmission via Turkic alphabets. Epigraphic evidence for the use of the Old Hungarian script in medieval Hungary dates to the 10th century, for example, from Homokmégy The latter inscription was found on a fragment of a quiver made of bone. Although there have been several attempts to interpret it, the meaning of it is still unclear.
In 1000, with the coronation of Stephen I of Hungary, Hungary became a Kingdom. The Latin alphabet was adopted as official script; the runic script was first mentioned in the 13th century Chronicle of Simon of Kéza, where he stated that the Székelys may use the script of the Blaks. The Old Hungarian script became part of folk art in several areas during this period. In Royal Hungary, Old Hungarian script was used less, although there are relics from this territory, too. There is another copy – similar to the Nikolsburg Alphabet – of the Old Hungarian alphabet, dated 1609; the inscription from Énlaka, dated 1668, is an example of the "folk art use". There are a number of inscriptions ranging from the 17th to the early 19th centuries, including examples from Kibéd, Makfalva, Marosvásárhely, Csíkrákos, Mezőkeresztes, Nagybánya, Felsőszemeréd, Kecskemét and Kiskunhalas. Hungarian script was first described in late Humanist/Baroque scholarship by János Telegdy in his primer "Rudimenta Priscae Hunnorum Linguae".
Published in 1598, Telegdi's primer presents his understanding of the script and contains Hungarian texts written with runes, such as the Lord's Prayer. In the 19th century, scholars began to research the rules and the other features of the Old Hungarian script. From this time, the name rovásírás began to re-enter the popular consciousness in Hungary, script historians in other countries began to use the terms "Old Hungarian", "Altungarisch", so on; because the Old Hungarian script had been replaced by Latin, linguistic researchers in the 20th century had to reconstruct the alphabet from historic sources. Gyula Sebestyén, an ethnographer and folklorist, Gyula Németh, a philologist and Turkologist, did the lion's share of this work. Sebestyén's publications, Rovás és rovásírás and A magyar rovásírás hiteles emlékei contain valuable information on the topic. Beginning with Adorján Magyar in 1915, the script has been promulgated as a means for writing modern Hungarian; these groups approached the question of representation of the vowels of modern Hungarian in different ways.
Adorján Magyar made use of characters to distinguis
(Ϛ), ϰ
),[7] or from a cursive variant of kappa (ϰ), which could strongly resemble a u,[7] or by inverting Greek pi (𐍀) /p/, perhaps due to similarity in the Gothic names: pairþa versus qairþa[citation needed])
