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Occurrences of this Type (51)
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A fictional script invented by J.R.R. Tolkien
and used both for his fictional languages and for English. A special
feature of this system is that characters do not have fixed sound
values. Instead, a 'mode' with sound value assignments is developed
independently for every language written with the script. (Tengwar)
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A fictional writing system invented by
Japanese nationalists in the 1930s as a historical hoax in order to be
able to claim that the Japanese did not get their writing system from
the Chinese, but actually invented a writing system of their own. (Jindai Moji)
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A language spoken by 9 million people in Ghana,
for which the Bureau of Ghana languages created a common standard
Latin-based orthography of 22 characters in 1961. Of these characters
2 are not part of the traditional Latin script. (Akan)
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A little-known fictional script that was the
first to be developed according to the history of Tolkien's fictional
universe. It is very similar to the Mongolian script, and was most
likely inspired by it. (Sarati)
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A phonetic writing system intended to
be used to teach the deaf to learn spoken language. Was widely used to
teach deaf students to speak with a standard accent. (Visible Speech)
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A rune-like fictional script with clear
similarities to the Germanic runes used in Europe. (Cirth)
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A script developed by women and only used by
women, in a small area of the Chinese province Hunan. The language
written is the local dialect, but the script is an ideographic script.
It is used by women to write letters, for decoration on fans and
scarves, and for diaries. It seems quite clearly to have been a
reaction to male oppression. (Nushu)
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A script invented for writing Mandarin
Chinese as a private amusement by script enthusiast Simon Ager, based
on the sound system for Zhuyin, the Chinese syllabary. (Geyinzi)
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A script invented in 1999 in order to
replace the latin script for writing English. Designed to be phonetic
and to have some of the characteristics of featural scripts. (Camion code)
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A transliteration used to transliterate from
Russian and Bulgarian written in Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. (Slovio)
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A writing direction used in some
ancient Greek writing, where lines alternate between being written
left-to-right and right-to-left. The word comes from the way oxen turn
at the end of each row when ploughing. (Boustrophedon)
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Boustrophedon writing (with
alternating line directions), but starting at the bottom and moving
upwards. (Upwards boustrophedon)
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Chu-nôm was adapted from Chinese to write
Vietnamese, in a period when Vietnam was ruled by the Chinese and
where Chinese was the official language in the country. Chu-nôm
retained the Chinese characters with ther original meanings, but
adding a number of new specifically Vietnamese characters, although in
many cases Chinese characters for the same concepts already
existed. (Chu-nôm)
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Closely related to the Manichaean religion,
and believed to have been created by Mani himself (the founder of the
religion). The script was used to write Manichaean literature in many
different languages to spread its teachings. Most characters have only
medial and initial forms, but a few also have final forms. (Manichaean)
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Created by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen around
1890. (Dania)
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Cyrillic is essentially an adaptation of the
Greek alphabet to the Slavic lanuages by the missionary monk
St. Cyril, after whom it is named. (Cyrillic)
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Developed by the National Academy of
the Korean Language and adopted in 2000 as the official romanization
system of South Korea. Similar to McCune-Reischauer, but more
faithfully represents sound changes in consonants. (Revised Romanization of Korean)
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Developed during WWII by Samuel E. Martin
at Yale University together with colleagues for use by American
soldiers. Today it is rarely used, and primarily by linguists. (Korean Yale romanization)
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Developed in 1937 by two Americans. Was
the official romanization system in South Korea until 2000 (at which
point the revised system was adopted), but is still used in the West
and in North Korea. (McCune-Reischauer)
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Greek is the original alphabet, being
developed from the Phoenician abjad. While abjads are well suited to
Semitic languages like Phoenician they do not fit a language like
Greek, which made the Greeks add vowel symbols to the Phoenician
abjad, thus creating the first alphabet. (Greek)
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Hiragana is used to write the grammatical
parts of sentences, especially inflections, where the Chinese
characters are used to write the word stem, and the inflected ending
is then added in hiragana. The characters themselves are derived from
Chinese characters, through extraction of part of the Chinese
character. The current collection of 46 characters was fixed by a
regulation from the Ministry of Education in 1900. The hiragana (and
katakana) characters that were rejected in this reform are today known
as hentaigana. (Hiragana)
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Katakana is used to write foreign names,
loanwords, onomatopoeic words, exclamations, and some specialized
scientific terminology. The characters themselves are derived from
Chinese characters, through extraction of part of the Chinese
character. The current collection of 46 characters was fixed by a
regulation from the Ministry of Education in 1900. The katakana (and
hiragana) characters that were rejected in this reform are today known
as hentaigana. (Katakana)
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Language(s) spoken by the tribe of the
(H)iberi parts of Spain and Portugal in the two first millennia
B.C.E.. The language(s) is not Indo-European, and is not understood. (Iberian)
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Named after its inventor, Beitha Kukju
is obviously much too cumbersome to have caught on very widely. (Beitha Kukju)
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Named after the city in Albania where it
was used, Elbasan was briefly used to write Albanian, but never caught
on widely. (Elbasan)
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Newari is an important language, since it is the
oldest written language in Nepal, having been written since the 14th
century. It is the language of the Newars, the earliest settlers of the
Kathmandu valley. (Newari)
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Not all scripts have a definite writing
directions, and so each writer chooses what direction to use. For
some scripts there is no standard at all, while for others the writer
can choose between a limited number of directions. (Variable)
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Pahawh Hmong is an unusual script for
several reasons. Typologically it is something of an oddity, being
abugida-like, but with vowels as the primary symbols, rather than the
consonants. Historically, it has been associated with a messianic
movement among the Hmong people. (Pahawh Hmong)
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Previously the most-used transliteration
from Chinese to latin script, Wade-Giles has now largely been
superseded by Pinyin. (Wade-Giles)
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Primarily used by the semitic writing systems,
but also by other writing systems. Many scripts using this direction
write numbers left-to-right. Mixing right-to-left and left-to-right
text produces bidirectional text, which is hard to read. (Right to left)
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The American Library Association/Library of
Congress transliteration for Arabic. (ALA-LC Arabic romanization)
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The Oromo script is an independent invention
based on the model of the Amharic script. Its inspiration seems to be
the difficulty of writing Oromo with scripts designed for other
languages, as well as nationalistic aspirations. The writing of Oromo
was banned by Ethiopian authorities until the accession of Mengistu's
regime in 1974. Today Oromo is written in the Latin script. (Oromo script)
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The internationally recognised transliteration
system accepted by the German Oriental Society (Deutsche
Morgenländische Gesellschaft, or DMG). Proposed in 1935 in the famous
"Denkschrift" to the International Congress of Orientalists. (ISO 233)
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The language of an ancient, possibly
Celtic, people that lived in northern Spain in the last few centuries
BC. The language is known from a small number of partially-understood
inscriptions in the Roman alphabet, and in Iberian syllabic script,
from c.300-100 BC. (Celtiberian)
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The oldest Indian script, excepting the
Indus script; almost certainly derived from Aramaic. It was developed
in much the same way as Greek: in adapting an abjad to a non-Semitic
language, a mechanism to indicate vowels was added. In Greek separate
vowel symbols were added, but in Kharoshthi vowels are indicated
through systematic modifications to the consonant symbols. (Kharoshthi)
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The origin of the Futhark is uncertain. It may
have been Latin, but it may also have been one of the other Italic
scripts. The Futhark was first used in Denmark and Northern Germany
and spread from there into Scandinavia and to the British Isles. (Futhark)
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The script is partly alphabetic and
partly syllabic, and its ancestry is unknown, though clearly Greek or
Semitic. It is older than North Iberian, which may have been derived
from it, and also more sparsely attested. (South Iberian)
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The writing direction used on this page, and the
most common writing direction for scripts today. (Left to right)
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This direction uses columns where one starts
to read on the upper left and proceeds downwards to the bottom of the
page. At the bottom of the page reading continues at the top of the
next column to the right. (Top to bottom, left to right)
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This direction uses columns where one starts
to read on the upper right and proceeds downwards to the bottom of the
page. At the bottom of the page reading continues at the top of the
next column to the left. (Top to bottom, right to left)
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This direction uses columns where one starts to
read on the lower left and proceeds upwards to the top of the page. At
the top of the page reading continues at the bottom of the next column
to the right. (Bottom up, left to right)
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This direction uses columns where one starts to
read on the lower right and proceeds upwards to the top of the page. At
the top of the page reading continues at the bottom of the next column
to the left. (Bottom up, right to left)
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This is a topic map with information
about languages and the scripts used to write them. It has been
authored by hand by Lars Marius Garshol. (Scripts and languages)
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This is the script you are reading right now,
the script used for English, and by far the most widespread script in
the world today. The rise of printing and later computing made Latin
even more important. (Latin script)
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This script is not well understood, but from
what is known of it the claim that it is an abugida seems
well-founded. (Meroitic)
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This script seems to have been derived
from the South Iberian script, although this is not known for certain.
It is partly alphabetic and partly syllabic. It is relatively sparsely
attested. (Northeast Iberian)
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Undeciphered script known only
from 10 inscriptions found in the city of Byblos during excavations
1928-32. Several attempts at undeciphering have been made, but none
accepted, as the material is too limited. It's believed to be a
syllabary derived from Egyptian hieratic, used to write some
semitic language. (Byblos syllabary)
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Used by the Cretan civilization up to its
conquest by mainland Greeks, Linear A is still undeciphered, and it is not
known what language it was used to write. It is thought to be syllabic
and ideographic (Linear A)
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Used by the Newars to write Newari, as well as in
Tibet for parts of translations from Sanskrit to Tibetan. (Ranjana)
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Used in southern and eastern Sierra
Leone, originally primarily for translations of the Quran. The first
42 characters of the script work as an abugida, but the remaining 150+
form a syllabary. Tuchscherer reports that it is still in use by
about 100 people. (Mende Kikakui)
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When the Japanese started using the
Chinese characters to write their language, they needed to be able to
write not just complete words, but also sounds (particularly for
inflections). For this purpose they used a set of Chinese characters
which were used for their sound, rather than for their meaning. This
set of characters is the man'yoogana. (Man'yoogana)
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