writing system

Writing SystemWriting form of communication

HISTORY OF WRITING

3.200 Before Christ Summerians

600 Before Christ Mesoamerica

1.200 Before Christ China

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.

Abjads / Consonant Alphabets Alphabets Syllabic Alphabets / Abugidas Syllabaries Semanto-phonetic writing systems Undeciphered writing systems

Abjads / Consonant Alphabets

Abjads, or consonant alphabets, have independent letters for consonants and may indicate vowels using some of the consonant letters and/or with diacritics. In Abjads such as Arabic and Hebrew full vowel indication (vocalization) is only used in specific contexts, such as in religious books and children's books.

most words have roots made up of three consonants, e.g. k-t-b (كتب)

Many of the ancient alphabets used in West Asia and North Africa were abjads, as are the Arabic and Hebrew scripts.

Alphabets

Alphabets, or phonemic alphabets, are sets of letters that represent consonants and vowels. In some languages, such as Czech, each letter or combination of letters represents one sound, while in others, such as English, letters might represent a variety of sounds, or the same sounds can be written in different ways.

Syllabic Alphabets / Abugidas

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 most complex writing system in all the world…

Devanāgarī (देवनागरी लि�पि )

First emerged during the 8th century. Type of writing system: alphasyllabary / abugida. Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines. Vowels can be written as independent letters, or

by using a variety of diacritical marks. This feature is common to most of the alphabets of South and South East Asia.

When consonants occur together in clusters, special conjunct letters are used.

The order of the letters is based on articulatory phonetics.

Devanāgarī alphabet

Consonants

Syllabaries

A syllabary is a phonetic writing system consisting of symbols representing syllables. A syllable is often made up of a consonant plus a vowel or a single vowel.

Semanto-phonetic writing systemsThe 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.

Undeciphered writing systems

Writing systems that have yet to be deciphered or have only been partially deciphered.

Writing system is related with rules such as conventions of spelling and punctuation. Also includes grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound).

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography uses a set of rules that governs how speech is represented in writing.

Is perhaps the most problematic area for non-native speakers:

Most sound in English can be spelled in more than one way and many spellings can be pronounced in more tan one way.

English only uses the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet. For this reason, a one to one correspondence between character and sound is not possible to denote all the complex sounds. This means that the letters have to multi-task!

The same letters may indicate different sounds in English. For example, the digraph ‘ch’ represents the first syllable in ‘church’ and ‘cheese’, but when used in the words ‘character’ and ‘chorus’ the ‘ch’ diagraph is pronounced differently (a hard ‘c’ or ‘k’ sound).

The English language has quite a weak connection between the written form of a word and the spoken form of that word. For example, the letter combination ‘ough’ can be pronounced in many different ways depending on the rest of the letters surrounding it. The words ‘bough’, ‘trough’, through’, thorough’, ‘enough’ all contain the letters ‘ough’ yet have a different pronunciation. This can seem very confusing and illogical to ESL learners!