1.
Alphabet
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An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
2.
Somali aristocratic and court titles
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This is a list of Somali aristocratic and court titles that were historically used by the Somali peoples various sultanates, kingdoms and empires. Below is a list of the court titles historically retained by the Somali monarchies and aristocracies. Suldaan, From the Arabic for Sultan or English Chief, very common title for rulers in the pre-colonial and colonial periods, used throughout the Somali territories. The title was employed by the leaders of the influential Ajuran Sultanate. Ughaz, Authentic Somali term for Sultan, the Gadabuursi in particular is the only clan with a longstanding tradition of Sultan. The Gadabursi gave their sultan the title of Ughaz, however, in practice, it is the primus inter pares or King of Kings. The title is derived from one of the Afro-Asiatic Somali language terms for belt. According to Kobishchanow, Boqor is also related to the style Paqar, various Somali honorifics and designations have Boqor as their root. The latter include Boqortooyo, signifying monarchy, kingdom or empire, Boqornimo, meaning royalty, nobility or dignitaries, Historically, the title was mainly used by rulers in the northeastern Puntland region of Somalia. The most prominent Boqor in recent times was Osman Mahamuud, who governed the Majeerteen Sultanate during its 19th-century heyday, also used among the Gadabuursi as the law of the King and the 100 men. Gerad/Garad, Often employed interchangeably with Suldaan to denote a Sultan, etymologically signifies wisdom, mind or understanding. According to Basset, the title corresponds with the honorific Al-Jaraad, Gerad was historically employed throughout northern Somalia. Notable Gerads include Gerad Dhidhin, the founder of the Warsangali Sultanate, and Gerad Lado, imam, Denotes the Head of State. Style was used especially by rulers in the Sultanate of Adal, notable Imams include Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, also known as Ahmed Gurey or Gran, who led a military campaign during the Middle Ages known as the Conquest of Abyssinia. Emir, Used by leaders in the Adal Sultanate, also employed by commanders in the Ajuran Sultanates armed forces and navy. Prominent Emirs include Nur ibn Mujahid, the Emir of Harar who built the wall around the city. Honorific set aside for the son of the King or Sultan. Notable Princes include Ali Yusuf Kenadid, the son and heir of Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid of the Sultanate of Hobyo, ina Boqor, Alternate court style for the Prince
3.
Somalia
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Somalia, officially the Federal Republic of Somalia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, Somalia has the longest coastline on Africas mainland, and its terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands. Climatically, hot conditions prevail year-round, with monsoon winds. Somalia has an population of around 12.3 million. Around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis, who have inhabited the northern part of the country. Ethnic minorities are largely concentrated in the southern regions, the official languages of Somalia are Somali and Arabic, both of which belong to the Afroasiatic family. Most people in the country are Muslim, with the majority being Sunni, in antiquity, Somalia was an important commercial centre. It is among the most probable locations of the fabled ancient Land of Punt, during the Middle Ages, several powerful Somali empires dominated the regional trade, including the Ajuran Empire, the Adal Sultanate, the Warsangali Sultanate, and the Geledi Sultanate. The toponym Somalia was coined by the Italian explorer Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti, Italian occupation lasted until 1941, yielding to British military administration. British Somaliland would remain a protectorate, while Italian Somaliland in 1949 became a United Nations Trusteeship under Italian administration, in 1960, the two regions united to form the independent Somali Republic under a civilian government. The Supreme Revolutionary Council seized power in 1969 and established the Somali Democratic Republic, led by Mohamed Siad Barre, this government later collapsed in 1991 as the Somali Civil War broke out. Various armed factions began competing for influence in the power vacuum, during this period, due to the absence of a central government, Somalia was a failed state, and residents returned to customary and religious law in most regions. A few autonomous regions, including the Somaliland and Puntland administrations emerged in the north, the early 2000s saw the creation of fledgling interim federal administrations. The Transitional National Government was established in 2000, followed by the formation of the Transitional Federal Government in 2004, in 2006, the TFG, assisted by Ethiopian troops, assumed control of most of the nations southern conflict zones from the newly formed Islamic Courts Union. The ICU subsequently splintered into more radical groups such as Al-Shabaab, by mid-2012, the insurgents had lost most of the territory that they had seized. In 2011–2012, a political process providing benchmarks for the establishment of permanent democratic institutions was launched, within this administrative framework a new provisional constitution was passed in August 2012, which reformed Somalia as a federation. Somalia has maintained an informal economy, mainly based on livestock, remittances from Somalis working abroad, Somalia has been inhabited since at least the Paleolithic. During the Stone Age, the Doian and Hargeisan cultures flourished here, the oldest evidence of burial customs in the Horn of Africa comes from cemeteries in Somalia dating back to the 4th millennium BCE
4.
Latin alphabet
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The Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the script of the English language and is often referred to simply as the alphabet in English. It is an alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, the phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters, due to classicism, modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts. The Latin alphabet started out as uppercase serifed letters known as roman square capitals, the lowercase letters evolved through cursive styles that developed to adapt the formerly inscribed alphabet to being written with a pen. Throughout the ages, many stylistic variations of each letter have evolved that are still identified as being the same letter. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived, the Latins ultimately adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. Gaius Julius Hyginus, who recorded much Roman mythology, mentions in Fab, the Parcae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos invented seven Greek letters — A B H T I Y. Others say that Mercury invented them from the flight of cranes, which, palamedes, too, son of Nauplius, invented eleven letters, Simonides, too, invented four letters — Ó E Z PH, Epicharmus of Sicily, two — P and PS. The Greek letters Mercury is said to have brought to Egypt, Cadmus in exile from Arcadia, took them to Italy, and his mother Carmenta changed them to Latin to the number of 15. Apollo on the added the rest. The original Latin alphabet was, The oldest Latin inscriptions do not distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, representing both by C, K and Q according to position, K was used before A, Q was used before O or V, C was used elsewhere. This is explained by the fact that the Etruscan language did not make this distinction, C originated as a turned form of Greek Gamma and Q from Greek Koppa. In later Latin, K survived only in a few such as Kalendae, Q survived only before V. G was later invented to distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, it was simply a C with an additional diacritic. C stood for /ɡ/ I stood for both /i/ and /j/, V stood for both /u/ and /w/. K was marginalized in favour of C, which stood for both /ɡ/ and /k/
5.
Somali alphabets
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A number of writing systems have been used over the years to transcribe the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet is the most widely used and it has been the official writing script in Somalia since the Supreme Revolutionary Council formally introduced it in October 1972, and was disseminated through a nationwide rural literacy campaign. Prior to the century, the Arabic script was used for writing Somali. An extensive literary and administrative corpus exists in Arabic script and it was the main script historically used by the various Somali Sultans to keep records. Writing systems developed locally in the century include the Osmanya, Borama. The Somali Latin script, or Somali Latin alphabet, was developed by the Somali linguist Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for the Somali language and it uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z, and has 21 consonants and 5 vowels. There are no diacritics or other characters, except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop. Additionally, there are three consonant digraphs, DH, KH and SH, tone is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished. Capital letters are used at the beginning of a sentence and for proper names, a number of attempts had been made from the 1920s onwards to standardize the language using a number of different alphabets. Starting from 1960, debate about which writing system to use for transcribing the Somali language dragged on for nine years, no fewer than a dozen linguists were tasked with developing a workable script. Eventually, Shire Jama Ahmeds refined Somali Latin script was adopted, pamphlets explaining the new standardization were released to the public in a soccer stadium in Mogadishu on October 10,1972. It contains 32 letters,10 of which are vowels, according to Bogumil Andrezewski, this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems, recitations, among these texts are the Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic. The Osmanya alphabet, also known as Far Soomaali, is a script created to transcribe the Somali language. It was invented between 1920 and 1922 by Osman Yusuf Kenadid of the Majeerteen Darod clan, the nephew of Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid of the Sultanate of Hobyo. A phonetically sophisticated alphabet, Kenadid devised the script at the start of the campaign to settle on a standard orthography for Somali. The Borama alphabet was devised around 1933 by Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur of the Gadabuursi clan, though not as widely known as Osmanya, it produced a notable body of literature mainly consisting of qasidas
6.
University of London
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The University of London is a collegiate research university located in London, England, consisting of 18 constituent colleges, nine research institutes and a number of central bodies. The university moved to a structure in 1900. The specialist colleges of the university include the London Business School, Imperial College London was formerly a member before leaving the university in 2007. City is the most recent constituent college, having joined on 1 September 2016, in post-nominals, the University of London is commonly abbreviated as Lond. or, more rarely, Londin. From the Latin Universitas Londiniensis, after its degree abbreviations, University College London was founded under the name London University in 1826 as a secular alternative to the religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In response to the controversy surrounding such educational establishment, Kings College London was founded and was the first to be granted a royal charter. Yet to receive a charter, UCL in 1834 renewed its application for a royal charter as a university. In response to this, opposition to exclusive rights grew among the London medical schools, the idea of a general degree awarding body for the schools was discussed in the medical press. And in evidence taken by the Select Committee on Medical Education, in 1835, the government announced the response to UCLs petition for a charter. Following the issuing of its charter on 28 November 1836, the university started drawing up regulations for degrees in March 1837. The death of William IV in June, however, resulted in a problem – the charter had been granted during our Royal will and pleasure, queen Victoria issued a second charter on 5 December 1837, reincorporating the university. The university awarded its first degrees in 1839, all to students from UCL, the university established by the charters of 1836 and 1837 was essentially an examining board with the right to award degrees in arts, laws and medicine. However, the university did not have the authority to grant degrees in theology, in medicine, the university was given the right to determine which medical schools provided sufficient medical training. Beyond the right to students for examination, there was no other connection between the affiliated colleges and the university. In 1849 the university held its first graduation ceremony at Somerset House following a petition to the senate from the graduates, about 250 students graduated at this ceremony. The London academic robes of this period were distinguished by their rich velvet facings, the list of affiliated colleges grew by 1858 to include over 50 institutions, including all other British universities. In that year, a new charter effectively abolished the affiliated colleges system by opening up the examinations to everyone whether they attended a college or not. The expanded role meant the university needed more space, particularly with the number of students at the provincial university colleges
7.
History of writing
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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
8.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
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Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing, the writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, with the closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, and the script remained undeciphered throughout the medieval and early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphs would only be solved in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός, a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω, supposedly a calque of an Egyptian phrase mdw·w-nṯr gods words. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα the sacred engraved letters, the word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective. Hieroglyphs emerged from the artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing, proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems develop in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called Scorpion I recovered at Abydos in 1998. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qaab. There are around 800 hieroglyphs dating back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, by the Greco-Roman period, there are more than 5,000. However, given the lack of evidence, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Since the 1990s, and discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs, as writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic and demotic scripts. These variants were more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental, the Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule, and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors, another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally
9.
Hebrew alphabet
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Historically, there have been two separate abjad scripts to write Hebrew. In the remainder of this article, the term Hebrew alphabet refers to the Jewish square script unless otherwise indicated, the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case, but five letters have different forms used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. There is a trend in modern Modern Hebrew toward the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, the paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, after the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants and it has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. Also, a system of points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using letters, either with or without niqqud-diacritics, except for Hebrew words. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization, one of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study. The Tiberian system also includes a set of marks, called trope. These are shown below the normal form in the following table, although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right
10.
Tifinagh
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Tifinagh is an abjad used to write the Berber languages. A modern alphabetical derivate of the script, known as Neo-Tifinagh, was introduced in the 20th century. Tifinagh is believed to have descended from the ancient Libyan or Libyco-Berber script, the latter writing system was widely used in antiquity by speakers of Berber languages throughout Africa and on the Canary Islands. It is attested from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, the scripts origin is uncertain, with some scholars suggesting it is related to the Punic alphabet or the Phoenician alphabet. There are two variants, eastern and western. The eastern variant was used in what is now Constantine, the Aures region and it is the best-deciphered variant, due to the discovery of several Numidian bilingual inscriptions in Libyan and Punic. 22 letters out of the 24 were deciphered, the western variant was more primitive. It was used along the Mediterranean coast from Kabylie to the Canary Islands, the Libyco-Berber script was a pure abjad, it had no vowels. The writing was usually from the bottom to the top, although right-to-left, the letters would take different forms when written vertically than when they were written horizontally. The Libyco-Berber script is used in the form of Tifinagh to write the Tuareg languages. Early uses of the script have been found on rock art, among these are the 1,500 year old tomb of the Tuareg matriarch Tin hinan, where vestiges of a Tifinagh inscription have been found on one of its walls. Occasionally, the script has been used to other neighboring languages such as Tagdal Songhay. Common forms of the letters are illustrated at left, including various ligatures of t and n, gemination, though phonemic, is not indicated in Tifinagh. The letter t, +, is combined with a preceding letter to form a ligature. Most of the letters have more than one form, including mirror-images of the forms shown here. When the letters l and n are adjacent to themselves or to each other, for example, since the letter l is a double line, ||, and n a single line, |, the sequence nn may be written |/ to differentiate it from l. Similarly, ln is ||/, nl |//, ll ||//, nnn |/|, traditionally, the Tifinagh script does not indicate vowels except word-finally, where a single dot stands for any vowel. In some areas, Arabic vowel diacritics are combined with Tifinagh letters to transcribe vowels, Neo-Tifinagh is the modern fully alphabetic script developed from earlier forms of Tifinagh
11.
Pahlavi scripts
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Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script, the Pahlavi script, Pahlavi compositions have been found for the dialects/ethnolects of Parthia, Persis, Sogdiana, Scythia, and Khotan. Independent of the variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, Pahlavi is then an admixture of written Imperial Aramaic, from which Pahlavi derives its script, logograms, and some of its vocabulary. Spoken Middle Iranian, from which Pahlavi derives its terminations, symbol rules, Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the characteristics of a language, but is not one. It is a written system, but much Pahlavi literature remains essentially an oral literature committed to writing. If this etymology is correct, Parthav presumably became pahlaw through a semivowel glide rt change to l, the term has been traced back further to Avestan pərəthu- broad, also evident in Sanskrit pŗthvi- earth and parthivi of the earth. Common to all Indo-Iranian languages is a connotation of mighty, the earliest attested use of Pahlavi dates to the reign of Arsaces I of Parthia in early Parthian coins with Pahlavi scripts. There are also several Pahlavi texts written during the reign of Mithridates I, such fragments, as also the rock inscriptions of Sassanid kings, which are datable to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, do not, however, qualify as a significant literary corpus. It is in an archaic script than Book Pahlavi. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Pahlavi script was replaced by the Arabic script, except in Zoroastrian sacred literature, the replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirids in 9th century Khurasan. In the present-day, Pahlavi is frequently identified with the dialect of south-west Iran, formerly and properly called Pārsi. This practice can be dated to the immediately following the Islamic conquest. Tables showing the letters and their names or pronunciations are available on line, the Pahlavi script is one of the two essential characteristics of the Pahlavi system. Its origin and development occurred independently of the various Middle Iranian languages for which it was used, the Pahlavi script is derived from the Aramaic script as it was used under the Achaemenids, with modifications to support the phonology of the Iranian languages. It is essentially a typical abjad, where, in general, only vowels are marked with matres lectionis. In addition to this, during much of its later history, similarly, certain words continued to be spelt with postvocalic ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ even after the consonants had been debuccalized to ⟨h⟩ in the living language. The Pahlavi script consisted of two widely used forms, Inscriptional Pahlavi and Book Pahlavi, a third form, Psalter Pahlavi, is not widely attested
12.
Writing system
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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
