Writing

Linguistics 203
Languages of the World
 Writing and Language
• Many people associate ‘language’ with writing

• Writing is not a primary aspect of language

– most languages of past had no writing system
– first known writing systems arose 5-6,000 years
ago
– language is learned without explicit instruction;
writing is only learned with explicit instruction
Pre-exercise
Examine the writing
systems to the right. Try
to discover how they are
set up (i.e. what each
symbol corresponds to).

For Scripts A-C, the top

line contains the
graphemes, and the
middle line contains the
phonetic transcription.
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Pictograms are precursors of writing systems.
– pictogram: an image that represents an object and
resembles it
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Pictograms become standardized, and their
meanings get extended to related concepts (but
not specific words). Thus, they become
ideograms.
1. the sun

 2.
3.
4.
warmth
light
daytime
...
• Both pictograms and ideograms exist alongside
other writing systems in modern societies.
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Ideograms eventually become associated with
specific words. Thus, they become
logograms.
• Logograms often become associated with
homophonous words in a language.
• Logograms can become associated with a
syllable, thus becoming syllabic writing.
 (Brief) History of Writing
• First known writing system, cuneiform, began around
3500 BCE in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq)
– cuneiform: ‘in the shape of a wedge’

• Created by Sumerians and Akkadians

• Writing system began as pictographs, later becoming

ideographs, logographs and then syllable characters.

• At the end, cuneiform was a combination of

logographic and syllabic writing.
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Cuneiform continued to change over time
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Around 3000 BCE, Egyptians develop writing system
called hieroglyphics (possibly influenced by Sumerians
and Akkadians)

• Pictograms → ideograms → logograms → syllabic

• In addition to different symbols, the ‘syllabic’ quality of

cuneiform and hieroglyphics was distinct.
– In cuneiform, one symbol = both vowel and consonant
portions of syllable (V or CV)
– Hieroglyphs represented only the consonants in a syllable,
not the vowels. They could represent 1, 2 or 3 consonants.
 (Brief) History of Writing
Hieroglyphs

Source: http://www.shahkala.com/images/egypt/hieroglyph.jpg
 (Brief) History of Writing
• Around 2000 BCE, Chinese begin using pictograms as
symbols for words (=logograms), rather than concepts

• Some ideograms were combined to represent abstract

ideas.

• Many words are actually represented by multiple

logograms.

• Most modern Chinese symbols bear little resemblance

to original ideograms
 (Brief) History of Writing
Chinese
The characters on the
right show the
evolution of Chinese
from the Shang
Dynasty to several
modern variants.

source: http://blogdjh.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
 (Brief) History of Writing
Greek alphabet
• Phoenicians develop West Semitic Syllabary by 1500 BCE;
only consonants were represented.
– influenced by hieroglyphics

• Greeks borrowed Semitic syllabary around 900 BCE

(probably from Phonecians)

• Unneeded symbols came to represent vowels.

• Greek alphabet is first alphabet to represent consonants

and vowels separately.
 (Brief) History of Writing
Roman alphabet
• Romans borrowed Greek alphabet around 600
BCE
• Some symbols dropped, some changed in
form, some came to represent different
sounds
 (Brief) History of Writing
Evolution of some common alphabets

For complete example, see: http://www.alphabetandletter.com/egyptian.html

 (Brief) History of Writing
Cyrillic alphabet
• Also borrowed independently from Greek
• Similar changes as Roman alphabet, with the
addition of new symbols
 (Brief) History of Writing
Cyrillic alphabet, 10th century

source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cyrillic.htm
 Precursors to Writing Systems
• pictogram: symbol that resembles an object
which it signifies

• ideogram: symbol that represents a concept,

without resembling it

• Neither pictograms nor ideograms are directly

related to sounds or words.
 Writing Systems
• logographic
• phonographic
– syllabary
– alphabet
– abjad
– abugida
 Writing Systems
• logogram (logographic): a symbol which
represents a specific word
– no relation to sounds, just to words
– language-specific
 Logographic
Chinese
The characters on the
right show the
evolution of Chinese
from the Shang
Dynasty to present.

source: http://blogdjh.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
 Writing Systems
• Phonographic: a system where a symbol
represents a sound or sounds
– syllabary: all symbols represent a syllable
– alphabet: all symbols represent a phoneme (ideally)
– abjad: all symbols represent a consonant, vowels
are not represented or optional
– abugida: a writing system based on consonants,
but in which vowels must be marked
Japanese uses a
Japanese Writing
combination of hiragana
and kanji (Chinese
characters) for native
words; it uses katakana for
loanwords.

Kanji, being Chinese

characters, means that
Japanese uses both
syllabic graphemes and
logograms. Japanese also
uses the Roman alphabet
occasionally, and of course
Arabic numerals.

Modern Japanese is
written left to right going
downward, or top to
bottom going leftward.
Like other
syllabaries, those
in Japanese were
derived from
logograms.
Katakana
graphemes are
shown on the
left, and their
source logogram
is on the right.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Katakana_origine.svg
 The Cherokee syllabary
Cherokee Indian called Sequoya developed a syllabary for Cherokee in
19th century; it used characters from the Roman alphabet, but to
mark syllables rather than phonemes.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cherokee_Syllabary.svg
 The Vai syllabary
Vai is an ethnic group in
western Liberia, developed
this syllabary in the early
19th century. It has around
200 graphemes.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vai.gif
 Runic
Each symbol is called a
rune, these were used by
various Germanic groups.

Source:
http://www.alphabetandletter.com/gifs/runiccharacters.gif
 Ogham
An interesting alphabet used by Celts in Britain and Ireland, the
symbols could be written vertically (as depicted below) or
horizontally (symbols turned 90o clockwise from below).

Source:
http://www.ballybegvillage.com/images/Ogham_letters.gif
 Arabic abjad (sample)
• Written right to left,
the shape of a letter
depends on its
position relative to
other letters.

• Diacritics can
optionally mark
vowels, or various
other things (e.g.
gemination)

http://wiki.verbix.com/Category/ArabicScript
 Devanagari abugida (sample)
• Consonants
symbols must
carry vowel
symbols.

• When
consonant
clusters occur,
the symbols
are combined
into conjuncts.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm
 Exercise
공 [koŋ] ‘ball’
What type of
말 [mal] ‘language’
writing system is 아무 [amu] ‘any’
this? 덕분 [təkpun] ‘favor’
박 [pak] ‘Park’ (name)
누님 [nunim] ‘older sister’
Three symbols 로 [ro] ‘to’
have two 번 [pən] ‘time’
pronunciations/ 삼 [sam] ‘three’
functions. What 식사 [ʃiksa] ‘meal’
are they? 눈 [nun] ‘snow’
우리 [uri] ‘we’
일상 [ilsaŋ] ‘daily’
맏 [mat] ‘first’
 Alphabets
Korean alphabet (Hangeul)
• Developed in mid-15th century under King
Sejong
• Previously, Chinese writing had been used
• Designed to be easy to learn
• Letters based on phonetics
• Letters are combined into syllables
Letters in Hangeul