Writing System

Ideographic scripts (in which graphemes are ideograms representing concepts or ideas rather than a specific word in a language) and pictographic scripts (in which the graphemes are iconic pictures) 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. Essentially, they postulate that no full writing system can be completely pictographic or ideographic; it must be able to refer directly to a language in order to have the full expressive capacity of a language. Unger disputes claims made on behalf of Blissymbols in his 2004 book Ideogram.

writing system

These systems have not been deciphered. In some cases, such as Meroitic, the sound values of the glyphs are known, but the texts still cannot be read because the language is not understood. Several of these systems, such as Epi-Olmec and Indus, are claimed to have been deciphered, but these claims have not been confirmed by independent researchers. In many cases it is doubtful that they are actually writing. The Vinča symbols appear to be proto-writing, and quipu may have recorded only numerical information. There are doubts that Indus is writing, and the Phaistos Disc has so little content or context that its nature is undetermined.

Writing systems can be divided into two main types: those that represent consonants and vowels (alphabets), and those which represent syllables (syllabaries), though some do both. There are a number of subdivisions of each type, and there are different classifications of writing systems in different sources.

Writing systems: Abjads Alphabets Abugidas Syllabaries Semanto-phonetic scripts Undeciphered scripts Alternative scripts Constructed scripts Fictional scripts Magical scripts Index (A-Z) Index (by direction) Index (by language) Index (by continent) What is writing? Types of writing system Differences between writing and speech Language and Writing Statistics Languages

In Semitic languages like these most words have roots made up of three consonants, e.g. k-t-b (كتب) is the root for words related to marking, inscribing or writing in Arabic. Adding vowels and other consonants to such roots creates different words such as كاتب (katib - writer), كتاب (kitab - book), مكتب (maktab - office) and مكتبة (maktaba - library).

Syllabic alphabets, alphasyllabaries or abugidas are writing systems in which the main element is the syllable. Syllables are built up of consonants, each of which has an inherent vowel, e.g. ka, kha, ga, gha. Diacritic symbols are used to change or mute the inherent vowel, and separate vowel letters may be used when vowels occur at the beginning of a syllable or on their own.

The symbols used in semanto-phonetic writing systems often represent both sound and meaning. As a result, such scripts generally include a large number of symbols: anything from several hundred to tens of thousands. In fact there is no theoretical upper limit to the number of symbols in some scripts, such as Chinese. These scripts could also be called logophonetic, morphophonemic, logographic or logosyllabic.

Modern Persian is a continuation of the pre-Islamic Pahlavi language that has incorporated many Arabic and Islamic terms. Other writing scripts have also been used for modern Persian. In medieval Persia among Persian-Jewish communities, the Judeo-Persian language, which combines Persian with Hebrew and Aramaic terms, was written using the Hebrew script. In Central Asia during the late Czarist Russian period, a region subsequently controlled by the Soviet Union, the Persian-speaking populations used both the Latin and Cyrillic (modified Russian) script that has since resulted in the modern Tajik-Persian script.

A writing system (also called a script) is a system of symbols used to represent language.[1][2] There are different kinds of writing systems, with symbols that represent different things. For example, English uses an alphabet (the Latin alphabet).

The fundamental principle is that symbols stand for sound, but there is more to it than that. The term "writing system" includes more than just (for example) an alphabet. Alphabets are part of a "graphic inventory" which includes punctuation, diacritics, ideograms (e.g. numbers) and logograms (standing for specific words such as $, & etc).

There are many different types of writing systems. Each grapheme, or symbol, can mean different things in different writing systems. Depending on what an individual symbol means, such as a whole word or a sound, each writing system is categorized as a different type.

A logography is a writing system with symbols that mean whole words or symbols that represent ideas. These symbols are called "logograms" or "logographs". Examples of logographies are Chinese characters (used in Chinese) and hieroglyphs.

A syllabary is a writing system with symbols that each mean a syllable. Examples of syllabaries are hiragana and katakana (used in Japanese) and the Cherokee syllabary (used in Cherokee).

A true alphabet is a writing system with symbols that mean both consonants and vowels. Examples of alphabetic writing systems are the Latin alphabet, (used in large parts of the world), the Greek alphabet (used in Greek), and the Cyrillic alphabet (used in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where Russia had a major influence during the days of the Soviet Union).

Abugidas are alphabets where consonants are written as a symbol, and vowels are written as diacritics. Examples of abugidas are many writing systems of India and Southeast Asia, such as Devanagari (used in Hindi and Sanskrit).

Ancient Chinese writing is the oldest Asian script among the other East Asian scripts, i.e., Japanese and Korean. Ancient Chinese refers to the language writings of the past. Ancient Chinese writing first appeared in North-Central China during the second half of the second millennium before the common era (B.C.E.). Other East Asian scripts, such as Korean, takes the outward form of Chinese scripts even though they are considered unrelated. This means the other East Asian scripts are not the actual descendants of the Chinese orthography (standard spelling system of a language). Such scripts are collectively known as Siniform.

The development of the Chinese writing system was during China's first historical civilization period. This was during a political and cultural entity called the Shang dynasty. This dynasty is also historically referred to as the Yin dynasty.

The earliest Chinese writings are dated from about 1200 B.C.E. to the end of the Shang State, i.e., 150 years later. They were discovered on the northern border of Henan province, near modern Anyang. The writings were inscribed on the scapula of an ox and the turtle plastrons. These writings are referred to as oracle bone inscriptions or Jiaguwen since they act as a record of royal divinations carried out in Shang court to predict the future. They were recognized as the first true Chinese writings system.

Additionally, some Chinese archeologists have discovered some neolithic pottery fragments with some marks incised on them, supposedly said to be the earliest Chinese writing. These fragments are estimated to date around 4800 B.C.E. or during the Ban Po settlement. However, the writing on these fragments has not been successfully identified with Shang or Chinese writings, but is referred to as proto-writings.

The first step of the Chinese writing system involved drawing realistic pictures of commonly seen objects or ideas, and letting the picture stand for the said objector idea. For instance, a woman was represented by drawing a human figure, kneeling, and crossing their arms in front. Then, what is Chinese writing called? This type of Chinese writing is called pictographic language.

How did the Chinese language develop? Writing in China first appeared during the Shang dynasty. During this period, the Chinese writing style was logographic (Shang writing system), thus one of the ancient Chinese writing systems. Logographic involved a single word that was represented by one character. Therefore, each character was referred to as a logogram.

Chinese writing language kept evolving with new rising dynasties. For instance, during the Qin dynasty, the Chinese characters that were so diverse in styles and regions were simplified and standardized. This resulted in creating a single script that was utilized across China. On the other hand, Chinese characters' representation using pictures became insignificant during the Han dynasty.

Since Chinese writing was the first to develop in East Asia, its characters were also borrowed to establish the writing of other languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. This led to the modification and emergence of new writing styles.

Ancient Chinese language was mainly written on bones. This form of language was in the form of pictures where each symbol represented a specific idea or object. However, this form of writing was complicated to construct a complete sentence. Therefore, characters were introduced that represented ideas and also unseen concepts. Therefore, constructing sentences using characters was more straightforward than using pictures/images. In addition, the crack/sounds of bones tossed on fire during divination were also used to indicate a yes or a no. Therefore, the ancient Chinese language did not utilize ancient Chinese alphabets, but used characters and sounds. 041b061a72