1.
Alphabet
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
Alphabet
–
Edward Bernard 's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689.
Alphabet
–
Writing systems
Alphabet
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and
languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
Alphabet
–
Codex Zographensis in the
Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval
Bulgaria
2.
Somali language
–
Somali /səˈmɑːli, soʊ-/ is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in Greater Somalia, Somali is an official language of Somalia, a national language in Djibouti, and a working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. It is used as a language by a few neighboring ethnic minority groups. Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, as Lowland East Cushitic along with Afar, Somali is the best-documented Cushitic language, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century. Somali is spoken by Somalis in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Yemen and Kenya and it is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in these areas. Somali is the second most widely spoken Cushitic language after Oromo, as of 2006, there were approximately 16.6 million speakers of Somali, of which around 8.3 million resided in Somalia. The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of the countrys inhabitants, constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia. Somali has been a national language since January 1973, when the Supreme Revolutionary Council declared it the Somali Democratic Republics primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979, in 1972, the SRC adopted a Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian-language daily newspaper Stella dOttobre was nationalized, renamed to Xiddigta Oktoobar, the state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1943. Somali is recognized as a working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Although it is not a language of Djibouti, it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts, with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards and it is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language. As of 2013, Somali is also one of the languages available on Google Translate. Somali linguistic varieties are divided into three main groups, Northern, Benadir and Maay. Northern Somali forms the basis for Standard Somali and it is spoken by more than 60% of the entire Somali population, with its speech area stretching from northern Somalia to parts of the eastern and southwestern sections of the country. This widespread modern distribution is a result of a series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral
Somali language
–
Primary Somali speech area
Somali language
–
Somali language books on display.
Somali language
–
The
Osmanya writing script for Somali.
3.
Unicode range
–
The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
Unicode range
–
Example of fraction slash use. This
typeface (
Apple Chancery) shows the synthesized common fraction on the left and the precomposed fraction glyph on the right as a rendering the plain text string “1 1⁄4 1¼”. Depending on the text environment, the single string “1 1⁄4” might yield either result, the one on the right through substitution of the fraction sequence with the single precomposed fraction glyph.
4.
Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
Writing system
–
Writing systems
Writing system
–
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Writing system
–
Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations
Writing system
–
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia
5.
Suldaan
–
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
Suldaan
–
Mohamoud Ali Shire, the 26th Suldaan (
Sultan) of the
Warsangali Sultanate.
Suldaan
–
Amiir (
Prince)
Ali Yusuf Kenadid of the Sultanate of Hobyo.
Suldaan
–
Sheikh
Abadir Umar Ar-Rida, an early Muslim leader.
6.
Ali Yusuf Kenadid
–
Ali Yusuf Kenadid (Somali, Cali Yuusuf Keenadiid was a Somali ruler. He was the second Sultan of the Sultanate of Hobyo, Ali Yusuf was born into a Majeerteen Darod family. His father, Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid, was the founder of the Sultanate of Hobyo centered in present-day northeastern, the polity was established in the 1870s on territory carved out of the ruling Majeerteen Sultanate. Ali Yusufs brother, Osman Yusuf Kenadid, would go on to invent the Osmanya writing script for the Somali language, in an attempt to advance his own expansionist objectives, Kenadid père in late 1888 entered into a treaty with the Italians, making his realm an Italian protectorate. The terms of the agreement specified that Italy was to clear of any interference in the sultanates administration. Viewed as too much of a threat by the Italians, Sultan Kenadid was eventually exiled to Aden in Yemen and then to Eritrea, as was his son Ali Yusuf, the heir apparent to his throne. However, unlike the southern territories, the sultanates were not subject to direct rule due to the earlier treaties they had signed with the Italians. Osman Mahamuud Osman Yusuf Kenadid Mohamoud Ali Shire Warsangali Sultanate Sheik-ʻAbdi, ʻAbdi ʻAbdulqadir, the Majeerteen Sultanates The Majeerteen Sultanates
Ali Yusuf Kenadid
–
Ali Yusuf Kenadid علي يوسف كينايديض
7.
Sultanate of Hobyo
–
The Sultanate of Hobyo, also known as the Sultanate of Obbia, was a 19th-century Somali kingdom in present-day northeastern and central Somalia and eastern Ethiopia. It was established in 1870s by Yusuf Ali Kenadid, cousin of the Majeerteen Sultanate ruler, both sultanates also maintained written records of their activities, which still exist. Initially, Ali Yusuf Kenadids goal was to control of the neighboring Majeerteen Sultanate. However, he was unsuccessful in this endeavor, and was forced into exile in Yemen. A decade later, in the 1870s, Kenadid returned from the Arabian Peninsula with a band of Hadhrami musketeers, with their assistance, he managed to overpower the local Hawiye clans and establish the kingdom of Hobyo in 1878. In late 1888, Sultan Kenadid entered into a treaty with the Italians and his rival Boqor Osman would sign a similar agreement vis-a-vis his own Sultanate the following year. In signing the agreements, the rulers also hoped to exploit the rival objectives of the European imperial powers so as to more effectively assure the independence of their territories. The terms of each treaty specified that Italy was to clear of any interference in the sultanates respective administrations. In return for Italian arms and a subsidy, the Sultans conceded to a minimum of oversight. The Italians also agreed to dispatch a few ambassadors to both the sultanates and their own interests. Viewed as too much of a threat by the Italians, Sultan Kenadid was eventually exiled to Aden in Yemen and then to Eritrea, as was his son Ali Yusuf, the heir apparent to his throne. However, unlike the southern territories, the sultanates were not subject to direct rule due to the earlier treaties they had signed with the Italians. Though victorious against the forces, the populace had yet to accept Italian rule without a fight. Commissioner Trivulzio, assigned with administering Hobyo, reported the movement of armed men towards the borders of the sultanate before, as preparations were underway to continue the Corpo Zaptiés advance into Majeerteen, a new threat emerged. One of Sultan Ali Yusufs commanders, Omar Samatar, attacked and captured El Buur on 9 November 1925, the local populace sided with Omar, and soon enough the Italians had a full-scale revolution on their hands after Omar followed up his previous success with the capture of El-Dhere. The Corpo Zaptié tried and failed to recapture El-Bur from Omar, by 15 November the Italians had fled to Bud Bud, ambushed by partisans the whole way and rather diminished in forces and resolve. A third attempt was planned, but before it could be executed the commander of the operation, Italian morale hit rock bottom, and Hobyo seemed a lost cause as Omar stood poised to reconquer Hobyo itself. In an attempt to salvage the situation, governor De Vecchi requested two battalions from Eritrea and assumed personal command, the rebellion soon spilled over the borders into the Benadir and Western Somaliland, and Omar grew increasingly powerful
Sultanate of Hobyo
–
Flag
Sultanate of Hobyo
–
The Sultanate of Hobyo's
cavalry and fort.
Sultanate of Hobyo
–
Ali Yusuf Kenadid, the second Sultan of the Sultanate of Hobyo.
Sultanate of Hobyo
–
Official stamp used by Sultan Ali Yusuf Kenadid for correspondence with other rulers in the
Indian Ocean area and
Europe.
8.
Somalia
–
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
Somalia
–
Neolithic rock art at the
Laas Geel complex depicting a long-horned cow
Somalia
Somalia
–
The
Silk Road extending from China to southern Europe, Arabia, Somalia, Egypt, Persia, India, and Java
Somalia
–
Queen Ati, wife of King Perahu of Punt, depicted on Pharaoh
Hatshepsut 's temple at
Deir el-Bahri.
9.
Arabic alphabet
–
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjadiyah is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written right to left, in a cursive style. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points. The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters, there are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part and these dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as b and t have the basic shape, but b has one dot below, ب. Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters within a word connected to the adjacent letters. There are two main collating sequences for the Arabic alphabet, abjad and hija, in this order, letters are also used as numbers, Abjad numerals, and possess the same alphanumeric code/cipher as Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy. The hijā’ī or alifbā’ī order, used where lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries, groups letters by similarity of shape. Loss of sameḵ 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 sameḵ, the six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end. This is commonly vocalized as follows, abjad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman sa‘faṣ qarashat thakhadh ḍaẓagh, the hijā’ī order is never used as numerals. Another kind of order was used widely in the Maghreb until recently when it was replaced by the Mashriqi order. The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word, letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial, final, or isolated position. While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions, generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters can only be linked to their preceding letter. For example, أرارات has only isolated forms because each letter cannot be connected to its following one, in addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures, notably lām-alif. Notes See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various schemes, however. Also names are transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic. Regarding pronunciation, the values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic
Arabic alphabet
–
Calligraphy
Arabic alphabet
–
as the sole official script
10.
Somali Latin alphabet
–
The Somali Latin alphabet is an official writing script in the Federal Republic of Somalia and its constituent Federal Member States. It was developed by the Somali linguist Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, the Somali Latin alphabet uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except p, v and z. There are no diacritics or other characters, although it includes three consonant digraphs, DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked and a glottal stop is also not shown. Capital letters are used for names and at the beginning of a sentence, the Somali Latin alphabet is largely phonemic, with consonants having a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel, however, the distinction between tense and lax vowels is not represented. Diphthongs are represented using Y or W as the second element, as there is no central regulation of the language, there is some variation in orthography, the endings -ay and -ey being particularly interchangeable. The Somali Latin alphabet, which follows an Arabic-based order, is, B, T, J, X, KH, D, R, S, SH, DH, C, G, F, Q, K, L, M, N, W, H, Y, A, E, I, O, U. The letters names are spelt out thus, ba, ta, jeem, xa, kha, deel, ra, siin, shiin, dha, cayn, gayn, fa, qaff, kaaf, laan, miim, nun, waw, ha, ya, a, e, i, o, u. The Somali alphabet lacks equivalents of the Arabic letters thā’, dhal, zāy, ṣād, ḍād, politics, language, and thought, the Somali experience. Osmanya, Borama, Wadaads writing and the Somali language
Somali Latin alphabet
–
Sign including instructions written with the Somali alphabet.
11.
Linguist
–
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning, phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential sub-sets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology, morphology, modern theories that deal with the principles of grammar are largely based within Noam Chomskys ideological school of generative grammar. In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance in his theory of transformative or generative grammar. According to Chomsky, competence is an innate capacity and potential for language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used by individuals, groups. The study of parole is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline that comprises the study of a system of linguistic facets within a certain speech community. Discourse analysis further examines the structure of texts and conversations emerging out of a speech communitys usage of language, Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of scripts in language. Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language, through which linguistic, research on language through the sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics also focus on how languages change and grow, particularly over an extended period of time. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages, lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective, specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education, related areas of study also includes the disciplines of semiotics, literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology. Before the 20th century, the philology, first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the science of language
Linguist
–
Ancient
Tamil inscription at
Thanjavur
Linguist
–
Topics and terminology
12.
Latin alphabet
–
The classical Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is a writing system originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet was used for writing Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin, as well as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and these Latin alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case and it is generally believed that the Romans adopted the Cumae alphabet, a variant of the Greek alphabet, in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in Southern Italy. The Ancient Greek alphabet was in turn based upon the Phoenician abjad, from then on, ⟨G⟩ represented the voiced plosive /ɡ/, while ⟨C⟩ was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/. The letter ⟨K⟩ was used rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae. After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters ⟨Y⟩ and ⟨Z⟩ to write Greek loanwords, an attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was during the classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters, ⟨Z⟩ was given its Greek name, zeta. This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, for the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation, for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet. Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the commonest being the apex used to long vowels. However, in place of taking an apex, the i was written taller. For example, what is today transcribed Lūciī a fīliī was written ⟨lv́ciꟾ·a·fꟾliꟾ⟩ in the inscription at right, the primary mark of punctuation was the interpunct, which was used as a word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 AD. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals and it was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to Uncial, a script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin. This script evolved into the medieval scripts known as Merovingian and Carolingian minuscule, prior to that, the former had been merely allographs of the latter. With the fragmentation of power, the style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages. The languages that use the Latin script today generally use letters to begin paragraphs and sentences. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization. g, alle Schwestern der alten Stadt hatten die Vögel gesehen. The Latin alphabet spread, along with the Latin language, from the Italian Peninsula to the surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire
Latin alphabet
–
The
Duenos inscription, dated to the 6th century BC, shows the earliest known forms of the
Old Latin alphabet.
Latin alphabet
–
This map shows the countries in the world that use a Latin alphabet as the sole official (or de facto official) national script in dark green. The lighter green indicates the countries that use Latin as a co-official script at the national level.
Latin alphabet
–
The apices in this first-century inscription are very light. (There is one over the ó in the first line.) The vowel I is written taller rather than taking an apex. The interpuncts are comma-shaped, an elaboration of a more typical triangular shape.
Latin alphabet
–
Jeton from
Nuremberg, ca. 1553
13.
Mohamed Siad Barre
–
Mohamed Siad Barre was the President of the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969–91. During his rule, he styled himself as Jaalle Siyaad, the Barre-led military junta that came to power after a coup détat in 1969 said it would adapt scientific socialism to the needs of Somalia. Volunteer labour harvested and planted crops, and built roads, hospitals, almost all industry, banks and businesses were nationalised, and cooperative farms were promoted. A new writing system for the Somali language was also adopted, although his government forbade clanism and stressed loyalty to the central authorities, the government was commonly referred to by the code name MOD. This acronym stood for Marehan, Ogaden, and Dhulbahante and these were the three clans whose members formed the governments inner circle. Later, President Siad Barre incited and inflamed clan rivalries to divert the attention of the public away from his increasingly unpopular regime, by the time his regime collapsed in 1991 the Somali society had begun to witness an unprecedented outbreak of inter- and intra- clan conflicts. After 21 years of rule, Barres Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was eventually forced from power in the early 1990s by a coalition of armed opposition groups. He died in exile in 1995, but was returned to Somalia for burial in his home region. Mohamed Siad Barre was born as a member of the Marehan Darod clan near Shilavo in the Ogaden and his parents died when he was ten years old. After receiving his education in the town of Luuq in southern Somalia, Barre moved to Mogadishu. Claiming to have born in Garbahaareey in order to qualify. He later joined the police force during the British military administration of Somalia. In 1950, shortly after Italian Somaliland became a United Nations Trust Territory under Italian administration, upon his return to Somalia, he remained with the military and eventually became Vice Commander of Somalias Army when the country gained its independence in 1960. After spending time with Soviet officers in joint training exercises in the early 1960s and he believed in a socialist government, and a stronger sense of nationalism. In 1969, following the assassination of Somalias second president, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, the military staged a coup on October 21, the Supreme Revolutionary Council that assumed power was led by Major General Barre, Lieutenant Colonel Salaad Gabeyre Kediye and Chief of Police Jama Korshel. Kediye officially held the title of Father of the Revolution, styled the Victorious Leader, Siad Barre fostered the growth of a personality cult. Portraits of him in the company of Marx and Lenin lined the streets on public occasions and he advocated a form of scientific socialism based on the Quran and Marx, with heavy influences of Somali nationalism. That same year, Barre also served as chairman of the Organization of African Unity, in July 1976, Barres SRC disbanded itself and established in its place the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, a one-party government based on scientific socialism and Islamic tenets
Mohamed Siad Barre
–
Military portrait of
Major General Mohamed Siad Barre.
Mohamed Siad Barre
–
Barre with
Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1976
14.
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]
15.
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
16.
Somali orthography
–
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
Somali orthography
–
The
Osmanya alphabet, the most popular indigenous Somali script
Somali orthography
–
Recycling sign in
Minneapolis which includes instructions written with the
Somali Latin alphabet.
Somali orthography
–
14th century
stone tablet in
Wadaad's writing.
17.
University of London
–
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
University of London
University of London
–
University of London
Coat of Arms The file above's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for
deletion. Consult image description page for details.
University of London
University of London
18.
List of writing systems
–
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
–
A
Palaung manuscript written in a Brahmic abugida
19.
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
–
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
–
Middle Babylonian legal tablet from Alalah in its envelope
History of writing
–
Sequence of ten Indus signs discovered near the northern gate of the Indus site
Dholavira
20.
Grapheme
–
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
–
Writing systems
21.
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
–
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
–
Ox scapula inscribed with three records of divinations in the reign of
Wu Ding of the Chinese
Shang dynasty, c. 1200 BC
22.
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.
23.
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
24.
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
25.
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
26.
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
27.
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
28.
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.
29.
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)
30.
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)
