History of Writing Systems

Origins

• Writing systems were developed independently by separate civilizations
• Writing systems start out as drawings, evolve into more abstract symbols

Evolution

• Egyptian hieroglyphs -> Phoenician alphabet -> Greek alphabet ->    Roman alphabet

Types of Writing Systems

• Alphabets
• Abjads
• Abugidas
• Syllabaries
• Semanto-phonetic

Alphabets

• Sets of letters that represent consonants and vowels
• Same letter can represent different sounds, while same sounds can be written with different combinations
• Examples:
  • ​Roman alphabet
  • Cyrillic alphabet
  • Greek alphabet
  • Georgian alphabet

Abjads

• "Consonant alphabets"
• Set of letters that only represent the consonants
• Vowels are denoted through context, or diactritics
• Examples:
  • ​Arabic script
  • Hebrew script

Abugidas

• "Syllabic alphabets"
• The syllable is the main element
• Symbols are modified to denote different vowels, ending consonants, etc.
• Examples:
  • ​Devanagari
  • Burmese
  • Inuktitut syllabics

Inuktitut syllabics

• Used in Inuit languages of north and east Canada
• Symbols are rotated to give them different vowels

Syllabaries

• The syllable is the main element
• Each syllable is denoted by a unique symbol
• Examples:
  • ​Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana)
  • Cherokee

Semanto-phonetic

• Symbols can represent both meaning and pronunciation 
• Pictograms/logograms: simplified drawings
• Ideograms: abtract ideas
• Examples
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs
  • Chinese characters

Compound characters

• Most of the Chinese characters
• Contains both a semantic element and a phonetic element

Guess the type of writing system!

Ogham (᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜)

• Used to write Old Irish, Old Welsh, Pictish, Latin
• Can be written horizontally or vertically
• 25 letters, words linked together by a solid line

Ge'ez (ግዕዝ)

• Used to write Amharic, other East African languages
• Written left to right
• The basic signs are modified in a number of different ways to indicate the various vowels

• Ethiopian name for the Ge'ez script
• Taken from four letters of the script (አቡጊዳ)

Thaana (ތާނަ‎)

• Used to write Dhivehi
• Written from right to left
• Letters represent consonants, vowels denoted with diacritics
• Derived from the Arabic script and indigenous scripts

Hangul (한글)

• Used to write Korean
• Created during the reign of King Sejong in 1444
• Written from top to bottom until the 1980s, now written from left to right
• Symbols denoting vowels and consonants are put into a symbol block representing one syllable