1.
Alphabet
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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
2.
Manchu language
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Manchu is a severely endangered Tungusic language spoken in Manchuria, it was the native language of the Manchus and one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty of China. Most Manchus now speak Mandarin Chinese, according to data from UNESCO, there are 10 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. Manchu language enjoys high historical value for historians of China, especially for the Qing dynasty and they supply information that is unavailable in Chinese and, when both Manchu and Chinese versions of a given text exist, they provide controls for understanding the Chinese. Like most Siberian languages, Manchu is a language that demonstrates limited vowel harmony. It has been demonstrated that it is derived mainly from the Jurchen language though there are many words from Mongolian. Its script is written and taken from the Mongolian alphabet. The Manchu language uses the Manchu script, which was derived from the traditional Mongol script, Manchu is usually romanized according to the system devised by Paul Georg von Möllendorff in his Manchu grammar. Its ancestor, Jurchen, used the Jurchen script, which is derived from the Khitan script, there is no relation between the Jurchen script and the Manchu script Chinese Characters can also be used to transliterate Manchu. Mongols learnt their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels. The Manchus followed the same syllabic method when learning Manchu script, today, the opinion on whether it is alphabet or syllabic in nature is still split between different experts. In China, it is considered syllabic and Manchu is still taught in this manner, the alphabetic approach is used mainly by foreigners who want to learn the language. Studying Manchu script as a syllabary takes a longer time, Manchus when learning, instead of saying I, a---la, I, o---lo, &c. were taught at once to say la, lo, &c. Many more syllables than are contained in their syllabary might have formed with their letters. The Qing dynasty referred to the Manchu language in various Chinese titles such as Qingwen 清文, or Qingyu 清語 and Guoyu 國語, the national was also applied to the Manchu writing as in Guowen 國文 in addition to Guoyu 國語. In the Manchu language version of the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the term Chinese language referred to all three Chinese, Manchu, and Mongol languages, not just one language, Guoyu now refers to Standard Chinese. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchen people and Jurchen language as Manchu, Manchu began as a primary language of the Qing dynasty Imperial court, but as Manchu officials became increasingly sinicized, many started losing the language. Trying to preserve the Manchu identity, the government instituted Manchu language classes and examinations for the bannermen. Chinese classics and fiction were translated into Manchu, and a body of Manchu literature accumulated, as the Yongzheng Emperor explained, If some special encouragement … is not offered, the ancestral language will not be passed on and learned
3.
Xibe language
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The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the Peoples Republic of China. Some researchers such as Jerry Norman hold that Xibe is a dialect of Manchu, whereas other Xibologists, such as An Jun, argue that Xibe should be considered the successor to Manchu. Ethnohistorically, the Xibe people are not considered Manchu people, because they were excluded from chieftain Nurhacis 17th-century tribal confederation to which the name Manchu was later applied, Xibe has 7 case morphemes,3 of which are used quite differently from modern Manchu. The categorization of morphemes as case markers in spoken Xibe is partially due to the status of numerous suffixes in the language. Despite the general controversy about the categorization of case markers versus postpositions in Tungusic languages,4 case markers in Xibe are shared with literary Manchu. Xibes 3 innovated cases, the ablative, lative and instrumental-sociative share their meanings with similar forms in neighboring Uyghur, Kazakh. The general vocabulary and structure of Xibe has not been affected as much by Chinese as Manchu has, however, Xibe has absorbed a large body of Chinese sociological terminology, especially in politics, like gəming and zhuxi, and economics, like chūna and daikuan. Written Xibe is more conservative and rejecting of loanwords, but spoken Xibe contains additional Chinese-derived vocabulary such as nan for man where the Manchu-based equivalent is niyalma, there has also been some influence from Russian, including words such as konsul and mashina. Smaller Xinjiang languages contribute mostly cultural terminology, such as namas from Uygur, Xibe is written in a script that derived from the Manchu alphabet. There was a proposal in China by 1957 to adapt the Cyrillic alphabet to Xibe, see also, Manchu alphabet This lists the letters in Xibe that differentiate it from Manchu as well as the placement of the letters. In 1998, there were eight primary schools that taught Xibe in the Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, from 1954 to 1959, the Peoples Publishing House in Ürümqi has published over 285 significant works, including government documents, belles-lettres, and school books, in Xibe. Since 1946, the Xibe-language Qapqal News has been published in Yining, in Qapqal, Xibe-language programming is allocated 15 minutes per day of radio broadcasting and 15 to 30-minute television programmes broadcast one or twice per month. Xibe is taught as a language by the Ili Normal University in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of northern Xinjiang. A few Manchu language enthusiasts from Eastern China have visited Qapqal Xibe County in order to experience an environment where a variety closely related to Manchu is spoken natively, li, Shulan, 锡伯语简志/Outline of the Xibo language, Beijing, Nationalities Publishing House Ramsey, S. B. Radloff, Studies of Ethnic Literature, 60–63, archived from the original on September 29,2007 Raimundo Veronika, Spoken Sibe, Morphology of the Inflected Parts of Speech, ISBN9788024621036 Abkai — Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Daur Fonts and Keyboards SibeCulture. com, Xibe-English-Chinese phrases
4.
Proto-Sinaitic script
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It is also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite, and Canaanite. 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, and a date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, the so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie. The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly 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 which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years, many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of Canaanites who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta. 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 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 and they are all very short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, and may have been written by Canaanite caravaners or soldiers from Egypt. They sometimes go by the name Proto-Canaanite, although the term Proto-Canaanite is also applied to early Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions, 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 in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, 25°57′N 32°25′E, among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions. 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 likely rebbe, and that the אל ʾl at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ʾel god. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in 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 and we will sacrifice to her an ox and a prime fatling. This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, according to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters would have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but most of the names of the letters would have remained the same. Below is a table showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the values, names, and descendants of the Phoenician letters. The Other section shows the corresponding Archaic Greek, Modern Greek, Etruscan, abjad Byblos syllabary Ugaritic script Albright, Wm. F
5.
Phoenician alphabet
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The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
6.
Aramaic alphabet
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The ancient Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BCE. It was used to write the Aramaic language and had displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the writing of Hebrew, the letters all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels. Rather, it is a different type, the earliest inscriptions in the Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet. Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below, Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform, as the predominant writing system. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised, its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, the Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system. A group of 30 Aramaic documents from Bactria has been recently discovered, an analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC in the Persian Achaemenid administration of Bactria, the widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew. Formerly, Hebrew had been using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, the Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the Roman era, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. A cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, the Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets, as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via Karosthi. Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmic family of scripts, today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the Syriac alphabet, Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet. The near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature. In Maloula, one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken and they started to use the Syriac alphabet instead. In Aramaic writing, Waw and Yodh serve a double function, originally, they represented only the consonants w and y, but they were later adopted to indicate the long vowels ū and ī respectively as well. In the latter role, they are known as matres lectionis or mothers of reading. Ālap, likewise, has some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis because in initial positions, it indicates a glottal stop, among Jews, the influence of Hebrew often led to the use of Hē instead, at the end of a word
7.
Syriac alphabet
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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
8.
Sogdian alphabet
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The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet, the Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language, the others being the Manichaean alphabet and the Syriac alphabet. It was used throughout Central Asia, from the edge of Iran in the west, to China in the east, like the writing systems from which it is descended, the Sogdian writing system can be described as an abjad, but it also displays tendencies towards an alphabet. The script consists of 17 consonants, many of which have alternate forms for initial, middle, as in the Aramaic alphabet, long vowels were commonly written with matres lectionis, the consonants aleph, yodh and waw. However, unlike Aramaic and most abjads, these consonant signs would also serve to express the short vowels. To disambiguate long vowels from short ones, an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel, the alphabet also includes several diacritics, which were used inconsistently. It is written right to left, but by the time it had evolved into its child system. Voiced and voiceless fricatives are not distinguished in the script. Aramaic logograms also appear in the script, remnants of adapting the Aramaic alphabet to the Sogdian language and these logograms are used mainly for functional words such as pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. * those letters are not used in Sogdian words, Early Sogdian dates to the early fourth century C. E. and is characterized by distinct, separated graphemes. The sutra script appears around 500 C. E. while the cursive script develops approximately a century later, the cursive script is thus named because its letters are connected with a base line. Since many letters in the script are extremely similar in form, to the point of being indistinguishable. As the Sogdian alphabet became more cursive and more stylized, some became more difficult to distinguish, or were distinguished only in final position. The Sogdian script is known from texts of Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Christianity, as well as from secular sources such as letters, coins. The oldest known Sogdian documents are the Ancient Letters, found in 1920 by Sir Aurel Stein in a watchtower near Dunhuang and these letters date to approximately 312-313 C. E. and are written in Early Sogdian. The Sogdian Buddhist texts, written in the script, are younger. They were found during the first two decades of the century in one of the caves of the Thousand Buddhas in the Chinese province of Gansu. The bulk of these reside in the British Museum, the Bibliothèque nationale de France
9.
Old Uyghur alphabet
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The Old Uyghur alphabet was used for writing the Old Uyghur language, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turfan and Gansu that is an ancestor of the modern Yugur language. It was an adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet used for texts with Buddhist, the last known manuscripts are dated to the 18th century. This was the prototype for the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets, the Old Uyghur alphabet was brought to Mongolia by Tata-tonga. Like the Sogdian alphabet, the Old Uyghur tended to use matres lectionis for the vowels as well as for the short ones. The practice of leaving short vowels unrepresented was almost completely abandoned, thus, while ultimately deriving from a Semitic abjad, the Old Uyghur alphabet can be said to have been largely alphabetized. Uyghur alphabets Gorelova, Liliya M. Manchu Grammar, Old Uyghur Alphabet on Omniglot Old Uyghur alphabet and Orkhon Turkic alphabet photos of the original text fragments written in Old Uyghur script discovered at Turpan
10.
Mongolian script
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Derived from Sogdian, Mongolian is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. The Mongolian script has adapted to write languages such as Oirat. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script are used in Inner Mongolia and other parts of China to this day to write Mongolian, Xibe and, experimentally, the Mongolian vertical script developed as an adaptation of the Sogdian to the Mongolian language. From the seventh and eighth to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the western dialect, materials of the Arab-Mongolian and Persian-Mongolian dictionaries, Mongolian texts in Arabic transcription, etc. The development over this period explains why Mongolian script looks like a vertical Arabic script, zain was dropped as it was redundant for. Various schools of orthography, some using diacritics, were developed to avoid ambiguity, the Uyghur script and its descendants—Mongolian, Oirat Clear, Manchu, and Buryat—are the only vertical scripts written from left to right. Mongols learned their script as a syllabary, dividing the syllables into twelve different classes, based on the final phonemes of the syllables, all of which ended in vowels. The Manchus followed the same syllabic method when learning Manchu script, Manchus when learning, instead of saying l, a---la, l, o---lo, etc. were taught at once to say la, lo, etc. Many more syllables than are contained in their syllabary might have formed with their letters. Manchu children were taught the language via the syllabic method, some westerners learn the script in an alphabetic manner instead. Today, the opinion on whether it is alphabet or syllabic in nature is still split between different experts, in China, it is considered syllabic and Manchu is still taught in this manner. The alphabetic approach is used mainly by foreigners who want to learn the language, studying Manchu script as a syllabary takes a longer time. The Traditional Mongolian script is known by a variety of names. Due to its shape like Uighur script, it known as the Uighurjin Mongol script. The name Old Mongol script stuck, and it is known as such among the older generation. It does not distinguish several vowels and consonants that were not required for Uyghur, the result is somewhat comparable to the situation of English, which must represent ten or more vowels with only five letters and uses the digraph th for two distinct sounds. Ambiguity is sometimes prevented by context, as the requirements of vowel harmony, moreover, as there are few words with an exactly identical spelling, actual ambiguities are rare for a reader who knows the orthography. Letters have different forms depending on their position in a word, initial, medial, in some cases, additional graphic variants are selected for visual harmony with the subsequent character
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