Writing Techniques of the World From Incan to Japanese and Extra
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Studying to talk a brand new language is only one a part of turning into bilingual. You additionally must be taught to learn and write in your new language. And relying on the language, chances are you’ll even must be taught a complete new writing system!
However what’s a writing system, and what number of writing techniques are there all over the world? Take a fast journey by means of the worldwide library to be taught extra concerning the writing techniques of the world.
What’s a writing system?
A writing system is a gaggle of symbols that symbolize the sounds or ideas of a language in writing. This group of symbols is known as a script, and consists of graphemes, that are the smallest unit of writing. Graphemes might be letters (which symbolize sound) or characters (which symbolize syllables with that means).
Also called an orthography, a writing system makes use of construction techniques to interrupt advanced ideas into smaller elements. They will encompass a wide range of parts that we checklist beneath.
- sentences: a gaggle of phrases that create a whole thought, expression, command, and many others. (The canine ran dwelling.)
- phrases: a mixture of letters or characters that create that means for an object, particular person, motion, and many others. (father, leap, tree)
- syllables: a mixture of sounds (derived of letters or characters) that make up a number of elements of a phrase (com-, -tion, -ten-, syl-)
- phonemes: the smallest unit of sound in a phrase (“cat” divides into phonemes /c/ or “kuh”, /a/ or “aah”, /t/ or “tuh”)
- morphemes: the smallest unit of a phrase that has that means (“jumped” is product of morphemes “leap” and “ed”)
- grapheme: the smallest unit of writing, corresponding to a letter or character (“canine” is product of letters “d”, “o”, and “g” in English, and the character 狗 in Mandarin)
Writing techniques have to be thorough sufficient to symbolize each sound and idea in a language. Whereas they could evolve to higher match their language or change to a brand new dialect, writing techniques are typically constant over time. Scripts don’t usually add new letters or characters as soon as they’re established.
Varieties of writing techniques
Every writing system makes use of graphemes to convey that means. These graphemes embrace letters, logograms, and syllabograms.
- letters: represents one sound in a phrase (“b” “a” “t” turn into the phrase “bat”)
- logograms: represents a phrase or phrase (树 in Mandarin represents “tree”)
- syllabograms: represents whole syllables (आदमी in Hindi represents the syllables “aad-mee” or “man” in English)
Most languages use certainly one of these 5 kinds of writing techniques:
| Writing System | Kind of Grapheme | Traits | Instance Languages |
| alphabet | letters | letters symbolize single sounds | English, Greek |
| logography | logogram | characters symbolize phrases or phrases | Chinese language (Mandarin, Cantonese) |
| syllabary | syllabogram | symbols symbolize syllables | Japanese, Cherokee |
| abjad | letters | letters solely symbolize consonants (not vowels), often written proper to left | Arabic, Hebrew |
| abugida | letters | letters symbolize syllables each consonant and vowel sounds | Hindi, Tamil |
What number of writing techniques are there all over the world?
There are 293 recorded writing techniques worldwide and round half of these languages are nonetheless used immediately. The opposite half are historic scripts that exist solely in historic artifacts and paperwork. However how can these residing writing techniques symbolize all 7,184 languages spoken on the earth immediately?
Some writing techniques symbolize just one language, whereas others symbolize many alternative languages. For instance, the Armenian alphabet is simply used within the Armenian language, whereas the Cyrillic alphabet is the writing system for many Slavic languages, together with Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian.
You could be shocked to be taught that not each language has a writing system! In reality, over 3,000 languages are unwritten, that means that they’re primarily oral languages and are usually not recorded in any respect.
5 key writing techniques used all over the world
A tradition’s writing system will depend on its literary historical past and regional influences. For instance, though Vietnamese is in a distinct language household from Latin-based languages, its alphabet (the Quoc-ngu script) is predicated on Latin because of the unfold of Roman Christianity within the seventeenth century.
Whereas some languages have traits of multiple kind of writing system, most match into one main class. Check out a number of examples of writing techniques of the world grouped by the kind of writing system, and see if you could find any similarities inside every group.
1. Alphabetic writing techniques
The phrase “alphabet” comes from the Greek alphabētos, which mixes alpha and beta—the primary two letters of the Greek alphabet. Alphabets use letters that symbolize one sound, corresponding to how the letter “b” makes a “buh” sound within the English alphabet.
The Latin alphabet is essentially the most extensively used alphabet on the earth. English, Spanish, French, and plenty of different languages within the Indo-European language household use tailored variations of the Latin alphabet.
The Cyrillic writing system is one other generally used alphabet with 50 languages utilizing the Cyrillic alphabet or a modified model of it. And whereas the Greek alphabet solely represents the Greek language, it has influenced many different alphabets all through historical past, together with each the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets.
| Language | Alphabet | “Good morning” |
| Armenian | Armenian | Բարի լույս |
| English | Latin | Good morning |
| Georgian | Georgian | დილა მშვიდობისა |
| Greek | Greek | Καλημέρα |
| Korean | Hangul | 좋은 아침이에요 |
| Mongolian | Cyrillic | Өглөөний мэнд |
| Polish | Latin | Dzień dobry |
| Russian | Cyrillic | Доброе утро |
| Spanish | Latin | Buenos días |
| Ukrainian | Cyrillic | доброго ранку |
| Vietnamese | Quoc-ngu | Chào buổi sáng |
| Yiddish | Ktav Ashuri | גוט מאָרגן |
You could discover that Yiddish, a Germanic language that makes use of the Hebrew script Ktav Ashuri, is written from proper to left. Nevertheless, in contrast to Hebrew, Yiddish makes use of an alphabetic writing system that features vowels, moderately than an abjad that solely represents consonants.
2. Logographic writing techniques
The phrase “logography” comes from the Greek logographikós, that means “phrase that’s drawn.” Logographies are made up of logograms, that are characters that symbolize a complete phrase or phrase. The Mandarin logogram 天, for instance, means “sky,” which is a complete phrase.
Cuneiform, the world’s oldest type of writing, was a logography utilized by many historic cultures within the Center East, together with the Sumerians and Hittites. Egyptian hieroglyphics are one other instance of an historic logographic writing system.
Logograms are much like pictographs, that are characters that symbolize an thought with an image that appears like the concept. However logograms don’t often appear to be the phrase they’re representing, and readers need to memorize every logogram to its distinctive that means.
| Language | Script | “Good morning” |
| Cantonese | Hanzi | 早晨 |
| Japanese | Kanji | おはよう |
| Mandarin | Hanzi | 早上好 |
Word that the written examples are a lot shorter than the alphabet examples, though they share the identical that means. Every logogram represents one phrase of the phrase “good morning.”
3. Syllabic writing techniques
Whereas letters in an alphabet symbolize one sound, symbols in a syllabary symbolize a syllable block with a consonant and a vowel (and generally one other consonant). For instance, the English letter “b” represents the sound “buh,” however the Cherokee image Ꮖ represents the syllable “qua,” moderately than one particular person sound.
Linear B, an historic syllabary utilized by the Macenean Greeks, is named the oldest Greek dialect. Historians have even traced parts of Linear B in Homer’s poetry, making it a linguistically important writing system for the Greek language, which went on to affect many different languages on the earth.
| Language | Syllabary | “Good morning” |
| Cherokee | Cherokee | ᎣᏍᏓ ᏌᎾᎴᎢ |
| Japanese | Hiragana, Katakana | おはよう |
| Korean | Hangul | 좋은 아침이에요 |
Korean is included on the checklist of syllabaries in addition to alphabets as a result of it shares parts of each. It’s also known as a “featural writing system,” that means that its letters and symbols present how audio system ought to place their mouth when announcing every phrase (which is one motive why it’s the language with essentially the most phrases)
Japanese can also be thought-about to be two kinds of writing techniques (logographies and syllabaries). That’s as a result of there are three scripts within the Japanese writing system: kanji, that are logographic characters, hiragana, and katakana, that are syllabic characters.
4. Abjads
Abjads are sometimes known as “consonant alphabets” as a result of like alphabets, they encompass letters that symbolize single sounds. However in contrast to alphabets, they solely have letters that symbolize consonants, leaving readers to deduce which vowel sound they need to use in every phrase.
The phrase abjad comes from the primary 4 letters in Arabic (comparable to the English “a,” “b,” “j,” and “d”). Abjads are often written proper to left in cursive, and the form of every letter will depend on its positioning within the phrase.
Most trendy abjads are based mostly on the Arabic writing system, as are many historic abjads (together with Aramaic and Phoenician). The vast majority of languages represented by abjads are within the Semitic language household.
| Language | Script | “Good morning” |
| Arabic | Arabic | صباح الخي |
| Hebrew | Ktav Ashuri | בוקר טוב |
| Pashto | Arabic Naskh | سهار مو پخیر |
| Persian (Farsi) | Perso-Arabic | صبح بخیر |
| Urdu | Nastaliq | صبح بخیر |
Though Ktav Ashuri was talked about above as an alphabet for Yiddish, it’s thought-about an abjad when representing the Hebrew language. Not like Yiddish, Hebrew doesn’t embrace vowels in its alphabet.
5. Abugidas
The phrase abugida comes from the primary 4 letters of the Geʽez script (ä, bu, gi, da)
Abugidas are much like syllabaries as a result of their symbols symbolize syllables with each a consonant and vowel sound. Nevertheless, symbols in abugidas resemble one another once they share a consonant, whereas symbols in syllabaries haven’t any relation to one another.
Characters and phrases in abugidas additionally observe the identical sequence as Semitic languages like Arabic or Hebrew. The commonest abugida writing system is Devanagari, utilized in South Asian languages corresponding to Hindi and Marathi.
| Language | Script | “Good morning” |
| Amharic | Geʽez | ን صباح ሰላም |
| Bengali | Bengali-Assamese | সুপ্রভাত |
| Cree | Cree | ᒥᔪ ᑮᑭᓭᐹᔮᐤ |
| Gujarati | Gujarati | શુભ સવાર |
| Hindi | Devanagari | शुभ प्रभात |
| Marathi | Devanagari | शुभ सकाळ |
| Punjabi | Gurmukhi | ਸ਼ੁਭ ਸਵੇਰ |
| Sinhalese | Sinhala | සුභ උදෑසනක්hello |
| Tamil | Tamil | காலை வணக்கம் |
| Telugu | Telugu | శుభోదయం |
Cree, a language spoken by some indigenous folks in North America, primarily makes use of the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics in its writing system. Some Cree audio system additionally use the Latin alphabet to speak in Cree, however its fundamental syllable construction places this script within the abugida class.
What are the most typical writing techniques?
The commonest writing techniques used on the earth symbolize a number of trendy languages you in all probability already converse or encounter usually. They correspond with the mostly spoken languages, which have billions of audio system everywhere in the globe.
- Latin alphabet: The Latin alphabet and its modified kinds are utilized by nearly 70% of the world’s inhabitants, together with English, Spanish, French, German, and Vietnamese audio system.
- Chinese language hanzi: Chinese language characters are utilized by the vast majority of East Asian languages, together with Mandarin and Japanese, that are spoken by almost 1.4 billion folks.
- Arabic abjad: Practically 660 million folks use the Arabic abjad and its variations, together with Perso-Arabic and Arabic Naskh.
Other forms of writing techniques
Not all languages are represented by the 5 fundamental kinds of writing techniques. Learn how different cultures talk within the written phrase—or with out writing a phrase in any respect.
Rongorongo glyphs
Relationship again to the fifteenth century, the hieroglyphic Rongorongo script was found on Easter Island (Rupi Nui) by European explorers. Not like different scripts from the identical time interval, Rongorongo doesn’t resemble European alphabets or letters, suggesting that residents of Rupi Nui independently invented the writing system. Because it has no comparable scripts, Rongorongo can’t be translated, and nobody is bound which class it ought to go into.
Mongolian script
Trendy-day Mongolian makes use of the Cyrillic alphabet, however previous to the twentieth century, it used a writing system that was written vertically and left to proper. Many medieval non secular texts had been translated into Mongolian utilizing this script, generally known as Hudum Mongol Bichig. Mongolian script continues to be in use in some conventional Mongolian communities immediately.
Inca knot language
The Incan empire writing system isn’t a writing system in any respect. This South American system of recording communication concerned tying knots on cords, generally known as quipus. Frequent messages discovered on historic quipu are census data, calendars, and different data involving numbers.
Ideographic writing techniques
Ideograms, which symbolize concepts, are one other means for languages to speak within the written phrase. Not like logograms that symbolize phrases or concepts, ideograms don’t often lengthen to full languages.
Emoji in texting vocabularies is an efficient instance of ideographic writing techniques, as they stand for concepts (like “blissful” or “chilly”) however not the phrase itself. Many writing techniques that use Chinese language characters, together with Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, embrace some ideograms of their scripts.
