1.
Abjad
–
An abjad is a type of writing system where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel. The name abjad is derived from pronouncing the first letters of the Arabic alphabet in order, the ordering of Arabic letters used to match that of the older Hebrew, Phoenician and Semitic alphabets, ʾ b g d. According to the formulations of Daniels, abjads differ from alphabets in that only consonants, abugidas mark the vowels with a diacritic, a minor attachment to the letter, or a standalone glyph. Some abugidas use a symbol to suppress the inherent vowel so that the consonant alone can be properly represented. In a syllabary, a grapheme denotes a syllable, that is. This caused fatal effects on terminology in general and especially in Semitic philology, the first abjad to gain widespread usage was the Phoenician abjad. Unlike other contemporary scripts, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs and this made the script easy to learn, and seafaring Phoenician merchants took the script wherever they went. Phoenician gave rise to a number of new writing systems, including the Greek alphabet and Aramaic, the Greek alphabet evolved into the modern western alphabets, such as Latin and Cyrillic, while Aramaic became the ancestor of many modern abjads and abugidas of Asia. Impure abjads have characters for vowels, optional vowel diacritics. The term pure abjad refers to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators and this practice was at first rare and limited in scope, but it became increasingly common and more developed in later times. In the 9th century BC, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script for use in their own language, the phonetic structure of the Greek language created too many ambiguities when the vowels went unrepresented, so the script was modified. They did not need letters for the sounds represented by aleph, he, heth or ayin. The letters waw and yod were also adapted into vowel signs, along with he, the major innovation of Greek was to dedicate these symbols exclusively and unambiguously to vowel sounds that could be combined arbitrarily with consonants. Abugidas developed along a different route. The basic consonantal symbol was considered to have an inherent a vowel sound, hooks or short lines attached to various parts of the basic letter modify the vowel. In this way, the South Arabian alphabet evolved into the Geez alphabet between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD, similarly, around the 3rd century BC, the Brāhmī script developed. The other major family of abugidas, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, was developed in the 1840s by missionary and linguist James Evans for the Cree. Evans used features of Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand to create his initial abugida, later in the 19th century, other missionaries adapted Evans system to other Canadian aboriginal languages
Abjad
–
Writing systems
Abjad
–
A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script containing a phrase which may mean 'to
Baalat '. The line running from the upper left to lower right reads mt l b c lt.
2.
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
3.
Old Uyghur language
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The Old Uyghur language was a Turkic language which was spoken in the Kingdom of Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries and in Gansu. The Old Uyghur language evolved from Old Turkic after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated to Gansu and Turfan and Hami in the 9th century. The Kingdom of Qocho survived as a client state of the Mongol Empire but was conquered by the Muslim Chagatai Khanate which conquered Turfan and Qomul, the Old Uyghur language then became extinct in Turfan and Qomul. According to Frederik Coene and Martina Roos, Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively southeastern and northeastern. Old Uyghur had a counting system and a copula dro. Much of Old Uyghur literature is religious texts regarding Manichaeism and Buddhism, multilingual inscriptions including Old Uyghur can be found at the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass and the Stele of Sulaiman. Old Uyghur was written in the Old Uyghur alphabet which was derived from the Sogdian alphabet, one Thousand Languages, Living, Endangered, and Lost. Review An Eastern Turki-English Dictionary by Gunnar Jarring, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, tisastvustik, ein in türkischer Sprache bearbeitetes buddhistisches Sutra. Transcription und Übersetzung von W. Radloff, bemerkungen zu den Brahmiglossen des Tisastvustik-Manuscripts von Baron A. von Stäel-Holstein Kahar Barat. The Uygur-Turkic Biography of the Seventh-Century Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim Xuanzang, Ninth and Tenth Chapters, indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Proceedings of the 38th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Kawasaki, Japan, August 7-12,1995
Old Uyghur language
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Uyghur inscription on the east interior wall of the
Cloud Platform at Juyongguan.
Old Uyghur language
–
Uyghur inscription on the west interior wall of the
Cloud Platform at Juyongguan.
4.
Western Yugur language
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Western Yugur is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, the Mongolic language spoken within the same community, traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term Yellow Uygur, from the endonym of the Yugur. There are approximately 4,600 Turkic-speaking Yugurs, neither Western nor Eastern Yugur are mutually intelligible with Uyghur. Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the part of Gansu provinces Sunan Yugur Autonomous County. A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of preaspiration, corresponding to the so-called pharyngealised or low vowels in Tuva and Tofa, examples of this phenomenon include /oʰtɯs/ thirty, /jɑʰʂ/ good, and /iʰt/ meat. The vowel harmonical system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed, voice as a distinguishing feature in plosives and affricates was replaced by aspiration, as in Chinese. West Yugur has 28 native consonants and two more only in loan words. Western Yugur has eight vowel phonemes typical of many Turkic languages, vowel harmonic class of resulting words was thus determined lexically in Western Yugur. In the initial syllable exclusively, short vowels acquire pre-aspiration of the following consonant, as in most Turkic language, initial *b was assimilated to *m in words containing nasals. Dental and velar voiceless plosives are preserved in most positions, with aspiration occurring almost exclusively in the initial position, CT *g is spirantized into ɣ and CT *d into z. CT *ñ develops into WYu y, initial CT *y- is mostly preserved, CT *h- is seemingly preserved in some words, Western Yugur is the only Turkic language that preserved the anticipating counting system, known from Old Turkic. Chinese dialects neighboring the areas where Yugur is spoken have influenced the Yugur language, personal markers in nouns as well as in verbs were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion of evidentiality has been grammaticalised, the Yugur people are descended from the Gansu Uyghur Kingdom. Slide Shows and maps of author Eric Enno Tamms visit to Lianhua and Hongwansi Western Yugur Steppe - A collection of literature and linguistic information
Western Yugur language
–
Western Yugur
5.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing, the writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, with the closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, and the script remained undeciphered throughout the medieval and early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphs would only be solved in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός, a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω, supposedly a calque of an Egyptian phrase mdw·w-nṯr gods words. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα the sacred engraved letters, the word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective. Hieroglyphs emerged from the artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing, proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems develop in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called Scorpion I recovered at Abydos in 1998. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qaab. There are around 800 hieroglyphs dating back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, by the Greco-Roman period, there are more than 5,000. However, given the lack of evidence, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Since the 1990s, and discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs, as writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic and demotic scripts. These variants were more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental, the Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule, and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors, another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
A section of the
Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
Hieroglyphs on a funerary stela in
Manchester Museum
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
The
Rosetta Stone in the
British Museum
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
Hieroglyphs typical of the Graeco-Roman period
6.
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
Proto-Sinaitic script
–
A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script containing a phrase which may mean 'to Ba'alat'. The line running from the upper left to lower right may read mt l b c lt.
Proto-Sinaitic script
–
Traces of the 16 and 12 characters of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. (Photos here and here)
7.
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
Phoenician alphabet
–
Phoenician alphabet
8.
Aramaic alphabet
–
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
Aramaic alphabet
–
Bilingual Greek and Aramaic inscription by the
Mauryan emperor
Ashoka the Great at
Kandahar,
Afghanistan, 3rd century BC
9.
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
10.
Sogdian alphabet
–
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
Sogdian alphabet
–
Sogdian text. Manichaean Letter
Sogdian alphabet
–
Sogdian script on the Bugut Inscription (585), central
Mongolia. Sogdian is the distant ancestor of the Mongolian script.
11.
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]
12.
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.
13.
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
14.
Turpan
–
Turpan, also known as Turfan or Tulufan, is a prefecture-level city located in the east of Xinjiang, Peoples Republic of China. It has an area of 69,324 square kilometres and a population of 570,000, Turpan has long been the centre of a fertile oasis and an important trade centre. It was historically located along the Silk Road, at that time other kingdoms of the region included Korla, the name Turfan itself however was not used until the end of the Middle Ages - its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. The center of the region has shifted a number of times, from Yar-Khoto to Qocho, historically, many settlements in the region have been given a number of different names, some of which refer to more than one place – Turpan/Turfan/Tulufan is one such example. Others include Jushi/Gushi, Gaochang/Qocho/Karakhoja, and Jiaohe/Yarkhoto, Korla, Kucha, and Turfan were inhabited by Tocharians. The peoples of the Kingdoms of Nearer and Further Jushi were closely related and it was originally one kingdom called Gushi, which the Chinese conquered in 107 BC. It was subdivided into two kingdoms by the Chinese in 60 BC, during the Han era the city changed hands several times between the Xiongnu and the Han, interspersed with short periods of independence. Nearer Jushi has been linked to the Turpan Oasis, while Further Jushi to the north of the mountains near modern Jimasa, after the fall of the Han dynasty in 220, the region was virtually independent but tributary to various dynasties. Until the 5th century AD, the capital of this kingdom was Jiaohe, many Han Chinese along with Sogdians settled in Turfan during the post Han dynasty era. The Chinese character dominated Turfan in the eyes of the Sogdians, kuchean-speakers made up the original inhabitants before the Chinese and Sogdian influx. The oldest evidence of Chinese characters were found in Turfan from a document dated to 273 AD, from 487 to 541 AD, Turpan was an independent Kingdom ruled by a Turkic tribe known to the Chinese as the Tiele. The Rouran Khaganate defeated the Tiele and subjugated Turpan, but soon afterwards the Rouran were destroyed by the Göktürks. The Tang dynasty had reconquered the Tarim Basin by the 7th century AD, Sogdians and Chinese engaged in extensive commercial activities with each other under Tang rule. The Sogdians were mostly Mazdaist at this time, in Astana, a contract written in Sogdian detailing the sale of a Sogdian girl to a Chinese man was discovered dated to 639 AD. Individual slaves were common among silk route houses, early documents recorded an increase in the selling of slaves in Turpan, twenty-one 7th-century marriage contracts were found that showed, where one Sogdian spouse was present, for 18 of them their partner was a Sogdian. The only Sogdian men who married Chinese women were highly eminent officials. Several commercial interactions were recorded, for example a camel was sold priced at 14 silk bolts in 673, five men swore that the girl was never free before enslavement, since the Tang Code forbade commoners to be sold as slaves. The Tang dynasty became weakened due to the An Lushan Rebellion, and the Tibetans took the opportunity to expand into Gansu
Turpan
–
Emin Minaret in Turpan, Turpan
Turpan
–
Buddhist Uyghur king from Turpan attended by servants. Depicted in
Dunhuang Mogao Caves,
Western Xia Dynasty.
Turpan
–
"
Mughal embassy", seen by the Dutch visitors in Beijing in 1656. According to Lach & Kley (1993), modern historians (namely,
Luciano Petech) think that the emissaries portrayed had come from Turpan, rather than all the way from the Moghul India.
Turpan
–
A model of the
Turpan water system in Turpan Water Museum: Water is collected from mountains and channeled underground to agriculture fields
15.
Kingdom of Qocho
–
The Kingdom of Qocho, also called the Idiqut state, was a Uyghur state created during 856–866 and centered in Qocho, Jimsar County, Hami City, and Kucha. Qocho served as its winter capital with Beshbaliq its summer capital and this Uyghur Kingdom played a vital role in the Turkification of Xinjiang. The Yenisei Kirghiz had driven the people of the Uyghur Khaganate into Turfan, mainly Turkic and Tocharian, but also Chinese and Iranian peoples such as the Sogdians were assimilated into the Uyghur Kingdom of Qocho. Chinese were among the population of Qocho, the Uyghurs of Qocho continued to produce the Chinese Qieyun rime dictionary and developed their own pronunciations of Chinese characters, left over from the Tang influence over the area. Professor James A. Buddhist Uyghurs created the Bezeklik murals, besides the jihad against Yutian, the Uygur Karakhoja Kingdom was also subjected to Jihad in which Buddhist temples were razed and Islam spread by the Karakhanid ruler Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan. The Compendium of the Turkic Dialects by Kashgari, included among the infidels, the identities of Buddhist and Uyghur were intertwined with each other. The Buddhist Uighurs were subjected to an attack by the Muslim Turks, Mahmud Kaşgaris works contained poetry stanzas and verses which described fighting between Buddhist Uighurs and Muslim Karakahnids. Qatun Sini, at the hands of the Tangut Khan, Mahmud Kashgari insulted the Uyghur Buddhists as Uighur dogs and called them Tats, which referred to the Uighur infidels according to the Tuxsi and Taghma, while other Turks called Persians tat. Buddhist origin words like toyin and Burxān or Furxan had negative connotations to Muslim Turks, the wars against the Buddhist, Shamanist, and Manichean Uighurs were considered a Jihad by the Kara-Khanids. Islam was the enemy of the Christian and Buddhist Turfan Uyghur Kingdom, the Imams and soldiers who died in the battles against the Uyghur Buddhists and Khotan Buddhist Kingdom during the Tarim Basins Islamification at the hands of the Karakhanids are revered as saints. It was possible the Muslims drove some Uighur Buddhist monks towards taking asylum in the Western Xia dynasty, the kingdom was a Buddhist state, with both state-sponsored Mahayana Buddhism and Manichaeism, and was a center of Uyghur culture. The Uyghurs sponsored the construction of many of the temple-caves in what is now Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves and they abandoned the Old Turkic alphabet and adopted and modified the Sogdian alphabet, which later came to be known as the Old Uyghur alphabet. The Idiquts ruled independently until they become a state of the Qara Khitai. In 1209, the Kara-Khoja ruler Baurchuk Art Tekin declared his allegiance to the Mongols under Genghis Khan, after submitting to the Mongols, the Uyghurs went into the service of the Mongol rulers as bureaucrats, providing the expertise that the initially illiterate nomads lacked. Qocho continued exist as a vassal to the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty, a hybrid court was used when Han Chinese and Uighurs were in involved in legal issues. The Buddhist Uyghurs of the Kingdom of Qocho and Turfan were converted to Islam by conquest during a ghazat at the hands of the Muslim Chagatai Khanate ruler Khizr Khoja, Qocho and Turfan were viewed as part of Khitay, which was a name for China. The 1390s war by Kizir Khojas against the Uigurs of Qoco is also considered a Jihad, as a consequence of the Jihad, the religion of Islam was forced on Qocho and this resulted in the city of Jiaohe being abandoned. The mujahideen of the Islamic Chagatai Khanate conquered the Uyghur and Hami was purged of the Buddhist religion which was replaced with Islam, the Islamic conversion forced on the Buddhist Hami state was the final event in the Islamization
Kingdom of Qocho
Kingdom of Qocho
–
History of the Turkic peoples Pre-14th century
Kingdom of Qocho
–
Uygur Khan Successor (8th and 9th century wall painting)
Kingdom of Qocho
16.
Old Turkic alphabet
–
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 and 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, and it has cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan. Words were usually written from right to left, another explanation of the scripts origin aside from derivation from tamgas, an alternate possible derivation from Chinese characters was suggested by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893. 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 identical with or very similar to the letters of the Turkic Orkhon script. Contemporary Chinese sources conflict as to whether the Turks had a language by the 6th century. The Book of Zhou, dating to the 7th century, mentions that the Turks had a 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 about two hundred inscriptions, plus a number of manuscripts. The texts are mostly epitaphs, but there are also graffiti, 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 slightly earlier and these inscriptions relate in epic language the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge. They include Irk Bitig, 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, 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, and followed by Gabain, Malov, synharmonic sets Other consonantal signs A word separator, is sometimes used. A reading example, transliterated t²ṅr²i, this spells the name of the Turkic sky god, variants of the script were found from Mongolia and Xinjiang in the east to the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 8th and 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 divided into five related alphabets, Achiktash
Old Turkic alphabet
–
Inscription in
Kyzyl using Orkhon script
Old Turkic alphabet
–
A copy of
Bilge Kağan's stele in
Ankara,
Turkey.
Old Turkic alphabet
–
Transcription of part of Bilge Kağan's inscription (lines 36-40)
Old Turkic alphabet
–
Location of the Orkhon Valley.
17.
Buddhism
–
Buddhism is a religion and dharma that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices largely based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. Buddhism originated in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, from where it spread through much of Asia, two major extant branches of Buddhism are generally recognized by scholars, Theravada and Mahayana. Buddhism is the worlds fourth-largest religion, with over 500 million followers or 7% of the global population, Buddhist schools vary on the exact nature of the path to liberation, the importance and canonicity of various teachings and scriptures, and especially their respective practices. In Theravada the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of Nirvana, achieved by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, thus escaping what is seen as a cycle of suffering. Theravada has a following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Shingon, rather than Nirvana, Mahayana instead aspires to Buddhahood via the bodhisattva path, a state wherein one remains in the cycle of rebirth to help other beings reach awakening. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian siddhas, may be viewed as a branch or merely a part of Mahayana. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth century India, is practiced in regions surrounding the Himalayas, Tibetan Buddhism aspires to Buddhahood or rainbow body. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of Buddha, the details of Buddhas life are mentioned in many early Buddhist texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother queen Maya, and he was born in Lumbini gardens. Some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, Buddha was moved by the innate suffering of humanity. He meditated on this alone for a period of time, in various ways including asceticism, on the nature of suffering. He famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He reached enlightenment, discovering what Buddhists call the Middle Way, as an enlightened being, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his teaching the Dharma he had discovered. Dukkha is a concept of Buddhism and part of its Four Noble Truths doctrine. It can be translated as incapable of satisfying, the unsatisfactory nature, the Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism, we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which is dukkha, incapable of satisfying and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the cycle of repeated rebirth, dukkha
Buddhism
–
Standing Buddha statue at the
Tokyo National Museum. One of the earliest known representations of the
Buddha, 1st–2nd century CE.
Buddhism
–
The Dharmachakra
Buddhism
–
Relic depicting Gautama leaving home. The Great Departure, c.1–2nd century. (
Musée Guimet)
Buddhism
–
Ascetic
Gautama with his five companions, who later comprised the first
Sangha. (Painting in
Laotian temple)
18.
Manichaeism
–
Manichaeism was a major religious movement that was founded by the Iranian prophet Mani in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism taught a dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process which takes place in history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian gnostic and religious movements, Manichaeism was quickly successful and spread far through the Aramaic-Syriac speaking regions. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world, Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity in the competition to replace classical paganism, while most of Manichaeisms original writings have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived. An adherent of Manichaeism is called, especially in older sources, Mani, an Arsacid Persian by birth, was born 216 AD in Mesopotamia, which was ruled by Persia, then within the Sassanid Empire province of Asuristan. According to the Cologne Mani-Codex, Manis parents were members of the Jewish Christian Gnostic sect known as the Elcesaites, Mani composed seven writings, six of which were written in Syriac Aramaic. The seventh, the Shabuhragan, was written by Mani in Middle Persian and presented by him to the contemporary King of Sassanid Persia, Shapur I, in the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. Although there is no proof Shapur I was a Manichaean, he tolerated the spread of Manichaeism, while Manichaeism was spreading, existing religions such as Zoroastrianism were still popular and Christianity was gaining social and political influence. Although having fewer adherents, Manichaeism won the support of many high-ranking political figures, with the assistance of the Persian Empire, Mani began missionary expeditions. The date of his death is estimated at AD 276–277, Mani believed that the teachings of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus were incomplete, and that his revelations were for the entire world, calling his teachings the Religion of Light. Manichaean writings indicate that Mani received revelations when he was 12 and again when he was 24, with the discovery of the Mani-Codex, it also became clear that he was raised in a Jewish-Christian baptism sect, the Elcesaites, and was influenced by their writings as well. It taught him truths which he developed into a religion and his divine Twin or true Self brought Mani to self-realization. He claimed to be the Paraclete of the Truth, as promised in the New Testament, Manichaeisms views on Jesus are described by historians, Jesus in Manichaeism possessed three separate identities, Jesus the Luminous, Jesus the Messiah and Jesus patibilis. Jesus the Messiah was a historical being who was the prophet of the Jews, however, the Manichaeans believed he was wholly divine. He never experienced human birth as notions of physical conception and birth filled the Manichaeans with horror, since he was the light of the world, where was this light, they asked, when he was in the womb of the Virgin. Jesus the Messiah was truly born at his baptism as it was on occasion that the Father openly acknowledged his sonship
Manichaeism
–
Manichaean priests, writing at their desks. Manuscript from
Gaochang (Khocho),
Tarim Basin, China.
Manichaeism
–
10th century Manichaean Electae in
Gaochang (Khocho), China.
Manichaeism
–
The spread of Manichaeism (a.d. 300–500). World History Atlas, Dorling Kindersly.
19.
Christianity
–
Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers, or 33% of the global population, Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news. The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization. Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds. They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome. Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin
Christianity
–
An
Eastern Christian icon depicting
Emperor Constantine and the Fathers of the
First Council of Nicaea (325) as holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381
Christianity
–
Various
depictions of Jesus
Christianity
–
Crucifixion, representing the death of
Jesus on the
Cross, painting by
Diego Velázquez, 17th century
20.
Mongolian script
–
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
Mongolian script
–
A
KFC in Hohhot, the capital of
Inner Mongolia, China, with a bilingual sign in
Chinese and
Mongolian
Mongolian script
–
Example text
21.
Manchu alphabet
–
It is written vertically from top to bottom, with columns proceeding from left to right. According to the Veritable Records, in 1599 the Manchu leader Nurhaci decided to convert the Mongolian alphabet to make it suitable for the Manchu people, overriding the objections of two advisors named Erdeni and Gagai, he is credited with adapting the Mongolian script to Manchu. The resulting script was known as tongki fuka akū hergen and this revision created the Standard script, known as tongki fuka sindaha hergen. As a result, the Manchu alphabet contains little ambiguity, recently discovered manuscripts from the 1620s make clear, however, that the addition of dots and circles to Manchu script began before their supposed introduction by Dahai. Dahai also added ten graphemes, to allow Manchu to be used to write Chinese, Sanskrit, previously, these words contained sounds that did not have corresponding letters in Manchu. Sounds that were transliterated included the aspirated sounds k, k, x, ts, ts, sy, dz, cy, jy, and ž. By the middle of the century, there were three styles of writing Manchu in use, standard script, semi-cursive script, and cursive script. Semicursive script had less spacing between the letters, and cursive script had rounded tails, the Manchu alphabet was also used to write Chinese. Manchu, a textbook for reading documents, by Gertraude Roth Li, contains a list comparing a romanization of Chinese syllables written in Manchu compared to pinyin, using the Manchu script to transliterate Chinese words is a source of loanwords for the Xibe language. Also existing as a transliteration was the Manchu version of the Hong Loumeng, in the Imperial Liao-Jin-Yuan Three Histories National Language Explanation commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor, the Manchu alphabet is used to write Evenki words. In the Pentaglot Dictionary, also commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor, despite the alphabetic nature of its script, Manchu was traditionally taught as a syllabary. When learning the language, Manchus were taught at once to say la, lo, etc. instead of saying I, a---la, I, o---lo, etc. As a result, the contained in their syllabary do not contain all possible combinations that can be formed with their letters. 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, while in the West it is treated like an alphabet. The alphabetic approach is used mainly by foreigners who want to learn the language, the Manchu alphabet has two kinds of punctuation, two dots, analogous to a period, and one dot, analogous to a comma. However, with the exception of lists of nouns being reliably punctuated by single dots, punctuation in Manchu is inconsistent, the equivalent of the question mark in Manchu script consists of some special particles, written at the end of the question. The Jurchens of a millennium ago became the ancestors of the Manchus when Nurhaci united the Jianzhou Jurchens, throughout this period, the Jurchen language evolved into what we know as the Manchu language. Its script has no relation to the Manchu alphabet, however, as their script was derived from the Khitan script, transliterations of Manchu Abkai — Unicode Manchu/Sibe/Daur Fonts and Keyboards Manchu alphabet Manchu script generator ManchuFont — an OpenType font for Manchu writing Jurchen Script
Manchu alphabet
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Manchu script
Manchu alphabet
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Chinese (left) and Manchu (right) writing in the
Forbidden City
Manchu alphabet
–
()
Manchu alphabet
22.
Yuan dynasty
–
The Yuan dynasty, officially the Great Yuan, was the empire or ruling dynasty of China established by Kublai Khan, leader of the Mongolian Borjigin clan. His realm was, by point, isolated from the other khanates and controlled most of present-day China and its surrounding areas. Some of the Mongolian Emperors of the Yuan mastered the Chinese language, while others used their native language. The Yuan dynasty is considered both a successor to the Mongol Empire and an imperial Chinese dynasty and it was the khanate ruled by the successors of Möngke Khan after the division of the Mongol Empire. In official Chinese histories, the Yuan dynasty bore the Mandate of Heaven, following the Song dynasty, the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, yet he placed his grandfather Genghis Khan on the imperial records as the official founder of the dynasty as Taizu. In addition to Emperor of China, Kublai Khan also claimed the title of Great Khan, supreme over the other khanates, the Chagatai, the Golden Horde. As such, the Yuan was also referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan. However, while the claim of supremacy by the Yuan emperors was at times recognized by the khans, their subservience was nominal. In 1271, Kublai Khan imposed the name Great Yuan, establishing the Yuan dynasty, dà Yuán is from the clause 大哉乾元 in the Commentaries on the Classic of Changes section regarding Qián. The counterpart in Mongolian language was Dai Ön Ulus, also rendered as Ikh Yuan Üls or Yekhe Yuan Ulus, in Mongolian, Dai Ön is often used in conjunction with the Yeke Mongghul Ulus, resulting in Dai Ön Yeke Mongghul Ulus, meaning Great Mongol State. Nevertheless, both terms can refer to the khanate within the Mongol Empire directly ruled by Great Khans before the actual establishment of the Yuan dynasty by Kublai Khan in 1271. Genghis Khan united the Mongol and Turkic tribes of the steppes and he and his successors expanded the Mongol empire across Asia. Under the reign of Genghis third son, Ögedei Khan, the Mongols destroyed the weakened Jin dynasty in 1234, Ögedei offered his nephew Kublai a position in Xingzhou, Hebei. Kublai was unable to read Chinese but had several Han Chinese teachers attached to him since his early years by his mother Sorghaghtani and he sought the counsel of Chinese Buddhist and Confucian advisers. Möngke Khan succeeded Ögedeis son, Güyük, as Great Khan in 1251 and he granted his brother Kublai control over Mongol held territories in China. Kublai built schools for Confucian scholars, issued paper money, revived Chinese rituals and he adopted as his capital city Kaiping in Inner Mongolia, later renamed Shangdu. Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin, two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima, and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan, Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols
Yuan dynasty
–
History of China
Yuan dynasty
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Yuan dynasty circa 1294
Yuan dynasty
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Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty
Yuan dynasty
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Painting of a 14th-century Yuan dynasty
junk
23.
Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass
–
Although the structure looks like a gateway, it was originally the base for three white dagobas or stupas, with a passage through it, a type of structure known as a crossing street tower. The platform is renowned for its Buddhist carvings and for its Buddhist inscriptions in six languages. The Cloud Platform was the 98th site included in the first batch of 180 Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level as designated by the State Council of China in April 1961. The platform was built between 1342 and 1345, during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Yuan Dynasty, by imperial command and it was part of the Buddhist Yongming Baoxiang Temple, which was situated at the Juyongguan Pass northwest of the capital, Dadu. The road from the capital to the capital, Shangdu, in the north went through this pass. The temple had a gate and a south gate. The passageway underneath the dagobas was wide enough to allow pedestrians, however, the inscriptions referred to here are probably not the inscriptions on the Cloud Platform, and so modern scholarship dates the construction of the Cloud Platform to 1342 or 1343. By the early Ming Dynasty two of the three dagobas on the platform had collapsed or had been dismantled. By the reign of the Zhengtong Emperor no dagobas remained, a project to restore the platform was carried out between 1443 and 1450. When the platform was surveyed by a Japanese expedition in 1943 a stele commemorating the restoration, the restoration involved building a five-roomed wooden Buddhist hall, called the Taian Temple, on top of the platform, in place of the original dagobas. In 1702, in the 41st year of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor there was a fire, the platform was not restored again, and by the time it was surveyed by a Japanese expedition in 1943 it was in a state of neglect and disrepair. In 1961 the platform was repaired, and the balustrades around the top were restored, the platform is now surrounded by a carpark. Several hundred meters from the Cloud Platform in adjoining carparks are sections of the Great Wall going up both sides of the Valley, often crowded with tourists climbing up to panoramic views. Most are not aware of the Cloud Platform, which is easy to miss both the ground and the viewpoints up the mountains. The Cloud Platform is a structure, with sloping walls clad in white marble. The dimensions of the structure are 28.84 m ×17.57 m at the base and 24.04 m ×14.73 m at the top, and the structure is 9.5 m in height. A passageway runs through the platform in an orientation, with a semi-octagonal arch,6.32 m wide and 7.27 m high. Both the north and the arch have the same symmetrical decoration
Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass
–
View of the Cloud Platform from the north
Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass
–
Semi-octagonal arch on the south side of the Cloud Platform
Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass
–
Stupa on top of an arch ("crossing street tower") that used to stand in the
Fahai Temple in Beijing
Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass
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Deva King of the East on the east wall of the Cloud Platform
24.
Uyghur alphabets
–
Uyghur is a Turkic language with a long literary tradition spoken in Xinjiang, China by the Uyghurs. The Old Uyghur language and Modern Uyghur are distinct Turkic languages and are not different stages of the same language, the Old Uyghur language is ancestral to Western Yugur, while modern Uyghur is descended from one of the Karluk languages. In the 5th century Old Uyghur was written for the first time using the Sogdian alphabet and this fell out of use during the 10th century, when it evolved into the Old Uyghur alphabet, although it was taken into use again between the 15th and 16th century. While the Sogdian alphabet was still in use, it was written with the Old Turkic alphabet from the 6th-9th centuries, the Old Uyghur language evolved into the modern Western Yugur, and remained in use until the 18th century among the Yugur. An Arabic alphabet introduced along with Islam in the 10th century to the Karluk Kara Khanids, the Chagatai alphabet was known as Ⱪona Yeziⱪ. The Syriac alphabet has also used for writing Old Uyghur at some time between the 5th century and 19th century. The writing of Uyghur saw many changes during the 20th century mostly to do political decisions, in 1982 Uyghur new script was abolished, the Arabic alphabet was reinstated in a modified form as the Uyghur Arabic alphabet. However, due to the importance of information technology, there have been requests for a Latin alphabet. This resulted in five conferences between 2000 and 2001, where a Latin-derived auxiliary alphabet was devised known as the Uyghur Latin alphabet, today the Uyghur language is being written using four different alphabets. It is only grouped by phonemic proximity, each alphabet has its own sort order, some letter forms used for words borrowed from other languages, or kept occasionally from older orthographic conventions, are shown between parentheses. As it can be seen, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet, Uyghur New Script, some words may still use the Cyrillic soft sign. Also, loanwords of Russian origin are spelled as they are in Russian. Another notable feature of the Uyghur New Script was the use of the letter ⟨ƣ⟩ to represent /ʁ/ and this letter has erroneously been named LATIN LETTER OI in Unicode, although it is correctly referred to as gha and replaced by the digraph ⟨gh⟩ in the newer Uyghur Latin alphabet. In the Uyghur Latin alphabet, only the Basic Latin base alphabet is needed, with the common diaeresis being the only diacritic added above vowels, and supported in many fonts and encoding standards. The /ʒ/ may be represented in two ways, either as ⟨zh⟩ or as ⟨j⟩, although the latter is also used for /dʒ/. In the Arabic and Cyrillic orthographies, the distinction of /dʒ/ is only seen as a variant of /ʒ/. This variation is due to several opposing arguments, and therefore it was accepted that both are acceptable, as long as no semantic distinction is necessary, one of the major differences among the four alphabets is the rules of when the glottal stop /ʔ/ is written. In Uyghur Arabic alphabet it is written, using the hamza on a tooth ⟨ﺋ⟩
Uyghur alphabets
–
Comparative current alphabets: Arabic-Script Uyghur, Latin-Script Uyghur; Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi, Uyghur Latin alphabet sëlishturma ëlipbesi.
Uyghur alphabets
–
A monument in
Niya (Minfeng) with inscriptions in Chinese and Romanized Uyghur
25.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
International Standard Book Number
–
A 13-digit ISBN, 978-3-16-148410-0, as represented by an
EAN-13 bar code
26.
List of writing systems
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This is a list of writing systems, classified according to some common distinguishing features. There are at least 3866 writing systems, the usual name of the script is given first, the name of the language in which the script is written follows, particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying annotations for the script may also be provided, ideographic scripts, and pictographic scripts are not thought to be able to express all that can be communicated by language, as argued by the linguists John DeFrancis and J. Marshall Unger. Unger disputes claims made on behalf of Blissymbols in his 2004 book Ideogram, Although a few pictographic or ideographic scripts exist today, there is no single way to read them, because there is no one-to-one correspondence between symbol and language. Hieroglyphs were commonly thought to be ideographic before they were translated, in some cases of ideographic scripts, only the author of a text can read it with any certainty, and it may be said that they are interpreted rather than read. Such scripts often work best as mnemonic aids for oral texts, aztec – Nahuatl – Although some proper nouns have phonetic components. Mixtec – Mixtec Dongba – Naxi – Although this is supplemented with syllabic Geba script. Ersu Shābā – Ersu Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing – Míkmaq – Does have phonetic components, nsibidi – Ekoi, Efik/Ibibio, Igbo Testerian – used for missionary work in Mexico Other Mesoamerican writing systems with the exception of Maya Hieroglyphs. There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language, some of these are Blissymbols – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative Communication. IConji – A constructed ideographic script used primarily in social networking Isotype Sona language A wide variety of notations Linear B, in logographic writing systems, glyphs represent words or morphemes, rather than phonetic elements. Note that no logographic script is composed solely of logograms, all contain graphemes that represent phonetic elements as well. These phonetic elements may be used on their own, or may serve as phonetic complements to a logogram, in the case of Old Persian, all vowels were written regardless, so it was effectively a true alphabet despite its syllabic component. In Japanese a similar system plays a role in foreign borrowings, for example, is written +. Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries behaved as a syllabary for the consonants and as an alphabet for the rest of consonants. The Tartessian or Southwestern script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic full semi-syllabaries, Although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet, zhuyin is semi-syllabic in a different sense, it transcribes half syllables. That is, it has letters for syllable onsets and rimes rather than for consonants, eskayan – Bohol, Philippines Bamum script – Bamum A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes of a language. Note that there need not be a one-to-one correspondence between the graphemes of the script and the phonemes of a language, Linear alphabets are composed of lines on a surface, such as ink on paper
List of writing systems
–
Writing systems
List of writing systems
List of writing systems
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A
Palaung manuscript written in a Brahmic abugida
27.
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
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Writing systems
Writing system
–
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Writing system
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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
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A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia
28.
History of writing
–
The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by letters or other marks and also the study and description of these developments. One of the earliest forms of expression is cuneiform. Writing numbers for the purpose of record keeping began long before the writing of language, see History of writing ancient numbers for how the writing of numbers began. It is generally agreed that true writing of language was conceived and developed in at least two places and possibly more. Egyptian script is dissimilar from Mesopotamian cuneiform, but similarities in concepts, similar debate surrounds the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization in Ancient India. In addition, the script is still undeciphered and there is debate whether the script is true writing at all. An additional possibility is the undeciphered Rongorongo script of Easter Island and it is debated whether this is true writing, and if it is, whether it is another case of cultural diffusion of writing. The oldest example is from 1851,139 years after their first contact with Europeans, one explanation is that the script was inspired by Spains written annexation proclamation in 1770. Recent examples are the Cherokee syllabary, invented by Sequoyah, symbolic communication systems are distinguished from writing systems in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, symbolic systems such as signs, painting, maps. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate, however the development of writing systems, and their partial supplantation of traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems on the change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Writing allows societies to transmit information and share knowledge, scholars make a reasonable distinction between prehistory and history of early writing, but have disagreed concerning when prehistory becomes history and when proto-writing became true writing. Writing, in its most general terms, is a method of recording information and is composed of graphemes, the emergence of writing in a given area is usually followed by several centuries of fragmentary inscriptions. Historians mark the historicity of a culture by the presence of coherent texts in the writing system. The invention of writing was not an event, but a gradual process initiated by the appearance of symbols. A conventional proto-writing to true writing system follows a series of developmental stages, Picture writing system. Transitional system, graphemes refer not only to the object or idea which it represents, phonetic system, graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings
History of writing
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Writing systems
History of writing
–
Sumer, an ancient civilization of southern
Mesopotamia, is believed to be the place where
written language was first invented around 3200 BC
History of writing
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Middle Babylonian legal tablet from Alalah in its envelope
History of writing
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Sequence of ten Indus signs discovered near the northern gate of the Indus site
Dholavira
29.
Grapheme
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In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest unit of a writing system of any given language. An individual grapheme may or may not carry meaning by itself, graphemes include alphabetic letters, typographic ligatures, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and other individual symbols. The word grapheme, coined in analogy with phoneme, is derived from Greek γράφω, meaning write, the study of graphemes is called graphemics. The concept of graphemes is an one and similar to the notion in computing of a character. By comparison, a shape that represents any particular grapheme in a specific typeface is called a glyph. For example, the corresponding to the abstract concept of the Arabic numeral one has two distinct glyphs in the fonts Times New Roman and Helvetica. Graphemes are often notated within angle brackets, as ⟨a⟩, ⟨B⟩ and this is analogous to the slash notation used for phonemes, and the square bracket notation used for phonetic transcriptions. Hence a grapheme can be regarded as an abstraction of a collection of glyphs that are all semantically equivalent, for example, in written English, there are many different physical representations of the lowercase letter a, such as a, ɑ, etc. But because the substitution of any of these for any other cannot change the meaning of a word, they are considered to be allographs of the same grapheme, italic and bold face are also allographic. There is some disagreement as to whether capital and lower-case letters are allographs or distinct graphemes, some linguists consider digraphs like the ⟨sh⟩ in ship to be distinct graphemes, but these are generally analyzed as sequences of graphemes. Ligatures, however, such as ⟨æ⟩, are distinct graphemes, as are letters with distinctive diacritics. For a full discussion of the different types, see Writing system § Functional classification, there are additional graphemic components used in writing, such as punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, word dividers such as the space, and other typographic symbols. As mentioned in the section, in languages that use alphabetic writing systems. In practice, however, the orthographies of such languages entail at least an amount of deviation from the ideal of exact grapheme–phoneme correspondence. A phoneme may be represented by a multigraph, as the digraph sh represents a sound in English. Multigraphs representing a single phoneme are normally treated as combinations of separate letters, for more examples, see Alphabetical order § Language-specific conventions. Conversion of scripts Character Grapheme–color synesthesia Grapheme–color ideasthesia Sign
Grapheme
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Writing systems
30.
List of languages by first written accounts
–
This is a list of languages arranged by the approximate dates of the oldest existing texts recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered scripts, though there are various claims without wide acceptance and it also does not include inscriptions consisting of isolated words or names from a language. An oral tradition of poetry may typically bridge a few centuries. An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda, the earliest parts of text may date to c.1500 BC, while the oldest known manuscript dates to the 11th century AD. Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, because of the way languages change gradually, it is usually impossible to pinpoint when a given language began to be spoken. In many cases, some form of the language had already been considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here. For languages that have developed out of a predecessor, dates provided here are subject to conventional terminology. For example, Old French developed gradually out of Vulgar Latin, similarly, Danish and Swedish separated from common Old East Norse in the 12th century, while Norwegian separated from Old West Norse around 1300. Writing first appeared in the Near East at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, in East Asia towards the end of the second millennium BC, the Sino-Tibetan family was represented by Old Chinese. In the Early Iron Age, alphabetic writing spread across the Near East, with the emergence of the Brahmic family of scripts, languages of India are attested from after about 300 BC. There is only evidence for languages such as Iberian, Tartessian, Galatian, Thracian and Messapian. The North Picene language of the Novilara Stele from c.600 BC has not been deciphered, the earliest examples of the Central American Isthmian script date from c.500 BC, but a proposed decipherment remains controversial. From Late Antiquity, we have for the first time languages with earliest records in manuscript tradition, thus, Old Armenian is first attested in the Armenian Bible translation. The Vimose inscriptions in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet appear to record Proto-Norse names, some scholars interpret the Negau helmet inscription as a Germanic fragment. The Cambridge History of Ancient China, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 124–231, baldi, Philip, The Foundations of Latin, Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 978-3-11-017208-9. The Shang, Chinas first historical dynasty, in Loewe, Michael, Shaughnessy, the Cambridge History of Ancient China, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 232–291, ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8. Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju, The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge University Press, cretan Writing in the Second Millennium B. C. Pollock, Sheldon, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, Sanskrit, Culture, Language in ancient Europe, an introduction, in Woodard, Roger D
List of languages by first written accounts
–
Seal impression from the tomb of
Seth-Peribsen, containing the oldest known complete sentence in
Egyptian, c. 2690 BC
List of languages by first written accounts
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Letter in
Sumerian cuneiform sent by the high-priest Lu'enna, informing him the king of
Lagash of his son's death in battle, c. 2400 BC
List of languages by first written accounts
–
Greek
Linear B tablet from
Pylos, recording the distribution of hides, c. 1200 BC
List of languages by first written accounts
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Ox scapula inscribed with three records of divinations in the reign of
Wu Ding of the Chinese
Shang dynasty, c. 1200 BC
31.
Abjad numerals
–
The Abjad numerals are a decimal numeral system in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. They have been used in the Arabic-speaking world since before the century when Arabic numerals were adopted. In modern Arabic, the word abjadīyah means alphabet in general, in the Abjad system, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, alif, is used to represent 1, the second letter, bāʾ, is used to represent 2, etc. Individual letters also represent 10s and 100s, yāʾ for 10, kāf for 20, qāf for 100, the word abjad itself derives from the first four letters in the Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet and other scripts for Semitic languages. These older alphabets contained only 22 letters, stopping at taw, the Arabic Abjad system continues at this point with letters not found in other alphabets, ṯāʾ=500, etc. The Abjad order of the Arabic alphabet has two different variants. Loss of samekh was compensated for by the split of shin ש into two independent Arabic letters, ش and ﺱ, which moved up to take the place of samekh. The most common Abjad sequence, read right to left, is, This is commonly vocalized as follows. Before the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the numbers were used for all mathematical purposes. In modern Arabic, they are used for numbering outlines, items in lists. In English, points of information are sometimes referred to as A, B, and C, the abjad numbers are also used to assign numerical values to Arabic words for purposes of numerology. The common Islamic phrase بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm has a value of 786. The name Allāh الله by itself has the value 66, a few of the numerical values are different in the alternative Abjad order. For four Persian letters these values are used, The Abjad numerals are equivalent to the earlier Hebrew numerals up to 400, the Hebrew numeral system is known as Gematria and is used in Kabbalistic texts and numerology. Like the Abjad order, it is used in times for numbering outlines and points of information. The Greek numerals differ in a number of ways from the Abjad ones, the Greek language system of letters-as-numbers is called isopsephy
Abjad numerals
–
Numeral systems
32.
Hatran alphabet
–
Many of the contemporary ruins were destroyed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in early 2015. It was encoded in the Unicode Standard 8.0 with support from UC Berkeleys Script Encoding Initiative, the script is written from right to left, as is typical of Aramaic scripts and of most abjads. Numerals are also written from right to left, and there are two known punctuation marks as well, some common ligatures also exist, and they dont appear to be necessary, and are rather just a shorthand form of writing. Some 600 texts are known to exist, Hatran script was added to the Unicode Standard in June,2015 with the release of version 8.0. The Unicode block for Hatran is U+108E0–U+108FF
Hatran alphabet
–
Hatran script Hatran Aramaic script
33.
Arabic script
–
The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, dialects of Mandinka, Central Kurdish, Luri, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and others. Until the 16th century, it was used to write some texts in Spanish. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by the number of countries using it, the Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, the script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼān, the holy book of Islam. It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy, the Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology, the modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. In the cases of Bosnian, Kurdish, Kashmiri, and Uyghur writing systems, the Arabic script can therefore be used in both abugida and abjad, although it is often strongly, erroneously connected to the latter. Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, to a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb. Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language, the term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for foreign, has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages. There is evidence that writing Arabic in this set of letters influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant, Kazakh in China Kurdish in Northern Iraq and Northwest Iran. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes, arwi language is the language of Tamil Nadu Muslims. Malayalam language represented by Arabic script variant is known as Arabi Malayalam, the script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is used in madrasas of the South Indian state of Kerala. It is similar to Chittagonian language in neighboring Bangladesh and sometimes using the Roman script. Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi, in some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops or market stalls. In addition, some television programming uses Jawi, such as announcements, advertisements, news, social programs, Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin, West Africa Zarma language of the Songhay family
Arabic script
–
Basic Arabic alphabet
Arabic script
–
Calligraphy
34.
Pitman shorthand
–
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman, who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a system, the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds. As of 1996, Pitman shorthand was the most popular shorthand system used in the United Kingdom, doing this requires a writing instrument responsive to the users drawing pressure, specialist fountain pens were originally used, but pencils are now more commonly used. Pitman shorthand uses straight strokes and quarter-circle strokes, in various orientations, the predominant way of indicating vowels is to use light or heavy dots, dashes, or other special marks drawn close to the consonant. Vowels are drawn before the stroke if the vowel is pronounced ahead of the consonant and this is often enough to distinguish words with similar consonant patterns. Another method of vowel indication is to choose from among a selection of different strokes for the same consonant, for example, the sound R has two kinds of strokes, round, or straight-line, depending on whether there is a vowel sound before or after the R. There have been versions of Pitmans shorthand since 1837. The original Pitmans shorthand had an alphabet of consonants, which was later modified, additional modifications and rules were added to successive versions. Pitman New Era had the most developed set of rules and abbreviation lists, Pitman 2000 introduced some simplifications and drastically reduced the list of abbreviations to reduce the memory load, officially reduced to a list of 144 short forms. The later versions dropped certain symbols and introduced other simplifications to earlier versions, for example, strokes rer and kway are present in Pitmans New Era, but not in Pitmans 2000. Pitman was asked to create a system of his own in 1837. He had used Samuel Taylors system for seven years, but his symbols bear greater similarity to the older Byrom system, the first phonetician to invent a system of shorthand, Pitman used similar-looking symbols for phonetically related sounds. For example, the dental and alveolar consonants are upright, ⟨|⟩ = /t/, ⟨|⟩ = /d/, ⟨)⟩ = /s/, ⟨)⟩ = /z/, ⟨ There are two strokes for r, ar and ray. The former assumes the form of the top quarter of a circle, whereas the latter is like chay ⟨/⟩. There are rules governing when to use each of these forms, the long vowels in Pitmans shorthand are, /ɑː/, /eɪ/, /iː/, /ɔː/, /oʊ/, and /uː/. The short vowels are /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ɒ/, /ʌ/, the long vowels may be remembered by the sentence, Pa, may we all go too. /pɑː | meɪ wiː ɔːl ɡoʊ tuː/, and the vowels may be remembered by the sentence. A vowel is represented by a dot or a dash, which can be written either lightly or heavily depending on the vowel needed
Pitman shorthand
–
Pitman shorthand
35.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Historically, there have been two separate abjad scripts to write Hebrew. In the remainder of this article, the term Hebrew alphabet refers to the Jewish square script unless otherwise indicated, the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case, but five letters have different forms used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. There is a trend in modern Modern Hebrew toward the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, the paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, after the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants and it has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. Also, a system of points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using letters, either with or without niqqud-diacritics, except for Hebrew words. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization, one of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study. The Tiberian system also includes a set of marks, called trope. These are shown below the normal form in the following table, although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right
Hebrew alphabet
–
A Jewish stele near the archeological excavations of the early medieval walls of
Serdica
Hebrew alphabet
–
Aleppo Codex: 10th-Century-AD
Hebrew Bible with
Masoretic pointing. Text of
Joshua 1:1
Hebrew alphabet
–
A replica of the Gezer Calendar in the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Hebrew script on the
bustier of
Jan van Scorel 's
Maria Magdalena, 1530.
36.
Ashuri alphabet
–
The Ashuri script, translated either as Assyrian alphabet or beautiful alphabet, is a traditional calligraphic form of the alphabet shared between Hebrew and Aramaic. Also sometimes called the script, the term is used to distinguish the Ashuri script from the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. There are many rules concerning the formation of letters if the written text is to be valid for religious purposes. Generally, while each tradition favors their own style, none consider the other traditions passul for Torah scrolls or any other ritually used scroll or parchment. Samaritans maintain a tradition different from the Ashuri script, using instead the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet they employ for their scriptures
Ashuri alphabet
–
This is a sample of the Ashuri alphabet written according to the Ashkenaz scribal custom on parchment (klaf)
37.
Cursive Hebrew
–
Cursive Hebrew is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century. This is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish and it was preceded by a Sephardi cursive script, known as Solitreo that is still used for Ladino and by Jewish communities in Africa. As with all handwriting, cursive Hebrew displays considerable individual variation, the forms in the table below are representative of those in present-day use. Note, Final forms are to the left of the initial/medial forms and this table shows the development of cursive Hebrew from the 7th through the 19th centuries. This is discussed in the section, which makes reference to the columns in the table. Column, Incantation upon Babylonian dish Egyptian, 12th century, eleazer of Worms, copied at Rome in 1515 by Elias Levita Ashkenazi, 19th century. The brief inscriptions daubed in red ink upon the walls of the catacombs of Venosa are probably the oldest examples of cursive script, still longer texts in a cursive alphabet are furnished by the clay bowls found in Babylonia and bearing exorcisms against magical influences and evil spirits. These bowls date from the 7th or 8th century, and some of the letters are written in a form that is very antiquated, somewhat less of a cursive nature is the manuscript, which dates from the 8th century. Columns 2–14 exhibit cursive scripts of various countries and centuries, the differences visible in the square alphabets are much more apparent. For instance, the Sephardi rounds off still more, and, as in Arabic, there is a tendency to run the lines to the left. Instead of the little ornaments at the ends of the stems. For the rest the cursive of the Codices remains fairly true to the square text, the last two columns of Figure 3 exhibit the Ashkenazi cursive script of a later date. The next to the last is taken from a manuscript of Elias Levita, the accompanying specimen presents Sephardi script. In this flowing cursive alphabet the ligatures appear more often and they occur especially in letters which have a sharp turn to the left, and above all in נ, whose great open bow offers ample space for another letter. The following are the stages in the development of each letter. By the turn of the 20th century, Ashkenazi cursive had these two elements separated, thus ׀c, and the angle was rounded. It received also an abbreviated form connected with the favorite old ligature, in writing Bet, the lower part necessitated an interruption, and to overcome this obstacle it was made, and, with the total omission of the whole lower line
Cursive Hebrew
Cursive Hebrew
–
Figure 2: "Specimen of Modern Sephardic Script" (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906)
38.
Rashi script
–
Rashi script is a semi-cursive typeface for the Hebrew alphabet. It is named for Rashi, an author of rabbinic commentary on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, the typeface is based on 15th century Sephardic semi-cursive handwriting. It was taken as a model by early Hebrew typographers such as Abraham Garton, the Soncino family and Daniel Bomberg, the purpose was to distinguish the rabbinic commentary from the text itself for which a proper square typeface was used. The Rashi typeface is also used for printed Judaeo-Spanish. The initial development of typefaces for the press was often anchored in a pre-existing manuscript culture. In the case of the Hebrew press, Ashkenazi tradition prevailed and square or block letters were cast for Biblical, secondary religious text, such as rabbinic commentaries, was, however, commonly set with a semi-cursive form of Sephardic origin, ultimately normalised as the Rashi typeface. A corresponding but distinctive semicursive typeface was used for printing Yiddish and it was termed vaybertaytsh, the Yiddish word vayber meaning women and taytsh being an archaic word for Yiddish. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Singer, Isidore. New York, Funk & Wagnalls Company
Rashi script
–
The complete Hebrew alphabet in Rashi script [right to left].
39.
Solitreo
–
Solitreo is a cursive form of the Hebrew alphabet. Traditionally a Sephardi script, it is the predecessor of the modern Ashkenazi Cursive Hebrew currently used for handwriting in modern Israel, the two forms differ from each other primarily in that Solitreo uses far more typographic ligatures than the Ashkenazi script, creating a more flowing style resembling Arabic. Historically, Solitreo was used in two parallel ways, in Judaeo-Spanish of the Balkans and Turkey, it served as the standard handwritten form that complemented the Rashi script character set used for printing. In Sephardi communities in the Maghreb and the Levant, it was used for documents in Hebrew. While both the Balkan and Maghrebine-Levantine forms are called Solitreo, they are distinctive, and readers familiar with one type may find the other difficult to read. With the decline of Ladino and the dispersion of Sephardic population centers, a guide to the Ladino language LadinoType - A Ladino Transliteration System for Solitreo, Meruba, and Rashi
Solitreo
–
"Specimen of Modern Sephardic Script" (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901-1906)
40.
Tifinagh
–
Tifinagh is an abjad used to write the Berber languages. A modern alphabetical derivate of the script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century. Tifinagh is believed to have descended from the ancient Libyan or Libyco-Berber script, the latter writing system was widely used in antiquity by speakers of Berber languages throughout Africa and on the Canary Islands. It is attested from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, the scripts origin is uncertain, with some scholars suggesting it is related to the Punic alphabet or the Phoenician alphabet. There are two variants, eastern and western. The eastern variant was used in what is now Constantine, the Aures region and it is the best-deciphered variant, due to the discovery of several Numidian bilingual inscriptions in Libyan and Punic. 22 letters out of the 24 were deciphered, the western variant was more primitive. It was used along the Mediterranean coast from Kabylie to the Canary Islands, the Libyco-Berber script was a pure abjad, it had no vowels. The writing was usually from the bottom to the top, although right-to-left, the letters would take different forms when written vertically than when they were written horizontally. The Libyco-Berber script is used in the form of Tifinagh to write the Tuareg languages. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art, among these are the 1,500 year old tomb of the Tuareg matriarch Tin hinan, where vestiges of a Tifinagh inscription have been found on one of its walls. Occasionally, the script has been used to other neighboring languages such as Tagdal Songhay. Common forms of the letters are illustrated at left, including various ligatures of t and n, gemination, though phonemic, is not indicated in Tifinagh. The letter t, +, is combined with a preceding letter to form a ligature. Most of the letters have more than one form, including mirror-images of the forms shown here. When the letters l and n are adjacent to themselves or to each other, for example, since the letter l is a double line, ||, and n a single line, |, the sequence nn may be written |/ to differentiate it from l. Similarly, ln is ||/, nl |//, ll ||//, nnn |/|, traditionally, the Tifinagh script does not indicate vowels except word-finally, where a single dot stands for any vowel. In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh letters to transcribe vowels, Neo-Tifinagh is the modern fully alphabetic script developed from earlier forms of Tifinagh
Tifinagh
–
Arabic, Neo-Tifinagh, and French at a store in Morocco.
Tifinagh
–
Libyco-Berber
Tifinagh
–
Tifinagh
Tifinagh
–
Neo-Tifinagh
41.
Manichaean alphabet
–
Unlike Pahlavi, Manichaean script reveals influences from Sogdian script, which in turn descends from the Syriac branch of Aramaic. Manichaean script is so named because Manichaean texts attribute its design to Mani himself, Middle Persian is written with this alphabet. Older Manichaean texts appear in a script and language that is identifiable as Syriac-Aramaic. Later texts using Manichaean script are attested in the literature of three Middle Iranian language ethnolects, the dialect of Sogdiana in the east, which had a large Manichean population, the dialect of Parthia in the northeast, which is indistinguishable from Medean of the northwest. The dialect of Parsa in southwest Iran, formerly and properly known as Parsi, Manichaean script was not the only script used to render Manichaean manuscripts. When writing in Sogdian, which was frequently the case, Manichaean scribes frequently used Sogdian script, likewise, outside Manichaeism, the dialect of Parsa was also recorded in other systems, including Pahlavi script and Avestan script. As Manichaeism was persecuted around Mesopotamia and the regions of the Sasanian Empire, its origins, it became well-established in Central Asia, in the 19th century, German expeditions discovered a number of Manichaean manuscripts at Bulayiq on the Silk Road, near Turpan in north-west China. Many of these manuscripts are preserved in Berlin. Like most abjads, Manichaean is written right to left. There are obligatory conjuncts for certain combinations involving n and y, the numbers are built from units of 1,5,10,20, and 100 and can be visually identifiable. There are also some forms of certain characters. The Manichaean alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0, photos of the original texts written in manichaean script discovered at Turpan Initial Iranian conference proposing Unicode for Manichaean Script
Manichaean alphabet
–
Table of letters from Manichaean script, with their Latin transliterations.
42.
Nabataean alphabet
–
The Nabataean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet that was used by the Nabataeans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra, Jordan, and Sinai, the alphabet is descended from the Syriac alphabet, which was itself descended from the Aramaic alphabet. As compared to other Aramaic-derived scripts, Nabataean developed more loops and ligatures, the ligatures seem to have not been standardized and vary across time and space. There were no spaces between words, numerals in Nabataean script were built from characters of 1,2,3,4,5,10,20, and 100. Note that the Syriac and Arabic alphabets are always cursive and that some of their letters look different in medial or initial position, see Aramaic alphabet § Letters for a more detailed comparison of letterforms. The Nabataean alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0
Nabataean alphabet
43.
Pahlavi scripts
–
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
–
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
44.
Pegon alphabet
–
Pegon is an Arabic alphabet used to write the Javanese and Sundanese languages, as an alternative to the Roman alphabet or the Javanese script and the old Sundanese script. In particular, it was used for writing and poetry from the fifteenth century. The word Pegon originated from a Javanese word pégo, which means deviate, due to the practice of writing Javanese language with Arabic script, the main difference between Jawi and Pegon is that the latter is almost always written with vocal signs. This is because the Javanese language contains more variations of aksara swara than their Malay counterpart resulting in vocal signs needing to be written to avoid phonetic confusion, if written without vocal signs, as in Jawi, the script is called Gundhul. Pegon includes symbols for sounds that are not present in standard Arabic, one of the earliest dated examples of the usage of Pegon may be Masail al-talim, a work on Islamic law written in Arabic with interlinear translation and marginal commentary in Javanese. The manuscript is dated 1623 and written on dluwang, a made from the bark of the mulberry tree
Pegon alphabet
–
Pegon consonants. Letters not present in the Arabic alphabet are marked with a yellow circle.
Pegon alphabet
–
Pegon vowels
45.
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
–
The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, also spelt Palaeo-Hebrew alphabet, is a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. Like the Phoenician alphabet, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are consonants, the term was coined by Solomon Birnbaum in 1954, he wrote, To apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable. Still, the script is nearly identical to the Phoenician script, archeological evidence of the use of the script by the Israelites for writing the Hebrew language dates to around the 10th century BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet began to fall out of use by the Jews in the 5th century BCE, the present Jewish square-script Hebrew alphabet evolved from the Aramaic alphabet. The Samaritans, now fewer than 1000 people, have continued to use a derivative of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, the chart below compares the letters of the Phoenician script with those of the Paleo-Hebrew and the present Hebrew alphabet, with names traditionally used in English. According to contemporary scholars, the Paleo-Hebrew script developed alongside others in the region during the course of the late second and it is closely related to the Phoenician script. The earliest known inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew script was the Zayit Stone discovered on a wall at Tel Zayit, the 22 letters were carved on one side of the 38 lb stone - which resembles a bowl on the other. The find is attributed to the mid-10th century BCE, the script of the Gezer calendar, dated to the late 10th century BCE, bears strong resemblance to contemporaneous Phoenician script from inscriptions at Byblos. Clear Hebrew features are visible in the scripts of the Moabite inscriptions of the Mesha Stele, in 1855 a Phoenician inscription in 22 lines was found among the ruins of Sidon. Each line contained about 40 or 50 characters, a facsimile copy of the writing was published in United States Magazine in July 1855. The inscription was on the lid of a stone sarcophagus carved in fine Egyptian style. The writing was primarily a history of a king of Sidon buried in the sarcophagus. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was in use in the ancient Israelite kingdoms of Israel. Following the exile of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, in the Babylonian exile, Jews began using a form of the Assyrian script, the Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. After the fall of the Persian Empire, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form, for a limited time thereafter, the use of the Paleo-Hebrew script among Jews was retained only to write the Tetragrammaton. The independent Hebrew script evolved by developing numerous cursive features, the features of the Phoenician alphabet being ever less pronounced with the passage of time. The aversion of the script may indicate that the custom of erecting stelae by the kings. Even the engraved inscriptions from the 8th century exhibit elements of the style, such as the shading
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
–
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
–
Drawing of inscription on the Zayit Stone.
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
–
Photograph of section of Zayit Stone: 10th cent. letters (right-to-left) waw, he, het, zayin, tet
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
–
Illustration of script on a
Ketef Hinnom amulet, circa 700 BCE—the "Silver Scroll"
46.
Punic 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
Punic alphabet
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Phoenician alphabet
