In most of the alphabets of the Mid-East, only consonants are indicated, or vowels may be indicated with optional diacritics. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree, are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called “syllabics”. In most of the alphabets of India and Southeast Asia, vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable. Such systems are called abjads. These are called abugidas
Another category, ideographic , has never been developed sufficiently to represent language. A sixth category, pictographic, is insufficient to represent language on its own, but often forms the core of logographies. The major writing systems – methods of inscription – broadly fall into four categories: logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, and featural
In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language. An alphabet is a small set of symbols, each of which roughly represents or historically represented a phoneme of the language
The main logographic system in use today is Chinese characters, used with some modification for various languages of China, Japanese, and, to a lesser extent, Korean in South Korea. Another is the classical Yi script
For example, in Mayan, the glyph for “fin”, pronounced “ka’”, was also used to represent the syllable “ka” whenever the pronunciation of a logogram needed to be indicated, or when there was no logogram. However, the efficiency of reading logographic writing once it is learned is a major advantage. No writing system is wholly logographic: all have phonetic components as well as logograms , and many have an ideographic component . A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme. The vast number of logograms needed to write language, and the many years required to learn them, are the major disadvantage of the logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, such phonetic elements complement the logographic elements, rather than vice versa. In Chinese, about 90% of characters are compounds of a semantic element called a radical with an existing character to indicate the pronunciation, called a phonetic
It has been said that a monkey, randomly typing away on a typewriter could re-create Shakespeare– but only if it lived long enough . Writing is also a distinctly human activity. The fact is that the only known writing is human writing. Such writing has been speculatively designated as coincidental. It is also speculated that extra-terrestrial beings exist who may possess knowledge of writing
It also refers to the creation of meaning and the information thereby generated. In that regard, linguistics distinguishes between the written language and the spoken language. Writing, more particularly, refers to two things: writing as a noun, the thing that is written; and writing as a verb, which designates the activity of writing. It refers to the inscription of characters on a medium, thereby forming words, and larger units of language, known as texts. For example, while public speaking and poetry reading are both types of speech, the former is governed by the rules of rhetoric and the latter by poetics. The significance of the medium by which meaning and information is conveyed is indicated by the distinction made in the arts and sciences
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as magnetic tape audio
Writing began as a consequence of the burgeoning needs of accounting. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form
The command of the priest or king and his seal could go far beyond his sight and voice and could survive his death” . It made the growth of states larger than the old city states possible. Wells argues that writing has the ability to “put agreements, laws, commandments on record
Sometimes the term “alphabet” is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet. Because of this use, Greek is often considered to be the first alphabet
A person who transcribes, translates or produces text to deliver a message authored by another person is known as a scribe, typist or typesetter. However, more specific designations exist which are dictated by the particular nature of the text such as that of poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, journalist, and more. A person who composes a message or story in the form of text is generally known as a writer or an author. A person who produces text with emphasis on the aesthetics of glyphs is known as a calligrapher or graphic designer
Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee; Ndjuka, an English-based creole language of Surinam; and the Vai script of Liberia. Ethiopic, though technically an alphabet, has fused consonants and vowels together to the point that it’s learned as if it were a syllabary. Most logographic systems have a strong syllabic component. Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables. For instance, the syllable “ka” may look nothing like the syllable “ki”, nor will syllables with the same vowels be similar. A glyph in a syllabary typically represents a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, though in some scripts more complex syllables may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically related syllables are not so indicated in the script