Greek, Historical Linguistics, Writing Systems Emmett Stone Greek, Historical Linguistics, Writing Systems Emmett Stone

2538: Cypriot Syllabary Nov 24, 2021

The Republic of Cyprus is the only other country to officially use the Greek alphabet, but in the ancient world it had its own writing system for its particular dialect of Greek. Developed from the Cypro-Minoan syllabary, the Cypriot syllabary is a unique system, unrelated to the later Greek alphabet or its predecessors. The oldest known inscriptions were found from about 1500BC and other fragments indicate it was in use nearly a millennium later. Eventually, this would be replaced by foreign systems and end that particular chain of writing systems descended from Linear A.

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Writing Systems, Spelling, Greek Emmett Stone Writing Systems, Spelling, Greek Emmett Stone

2495: Greek-Based Nubian Writing Oct 11, 2021

The Greek alphabet led to the creation of numerous other writing systems around Europe, including Coptic, Gothic, Latin (via Old Italian), Cyrillic (via Glagolitic), Armenian, and Georgian. As impressive as this is, it used to be practiced more broadly and thus adapted more widely, particularly with association to Christianity. Even after the Arab invasions, those kingdoms withstood and remained Christian, maintaining a Greek-based writing system until the collapse of their kingdom to the Mamluks and later Ottomans, by which point most people were illiterate and the writing fell into terminal decline.

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Greek, Writing Systems Emmett Stone Greek, Writing Systems Emmett Stone

2486: Linear A & B Oct 2, 2021

The Greek alphabet was ultimately derived from Phoenician (a.k.a. Punic; a.k.a. Canaanite), but considering the shapes of the letters, the inclusion of vowels, and changing direction of the writing itself, this was not an immediate process. Two writing systems, known as Linear A and Linear B, emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. Linear A was used from about 1800–1450 BC with no decipherable texts to date, but was used by the Mycenaeans (Minoans): early Greeks based in the Aegean and especially Crete. Already Linear A switched to a left-to-right script, and in addition to containing symbols for old letters, there are new letters, grammatical symbols, whole syllables and a number system including fractions. In Linear B, also used by the Mycenaeans from about 1450 BC until the Bronze Age Collapse, seemingly for primarily official purposes. Like Linear A, some symbols were letters and others whole syllables—not unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs in that way—with about 200 overall signs. Ultimately, these, and other scripts used for early Greek language writing can help to show the transition of a once glyph-based system of representing words and sounds into a recognizable form of the alphabets it led to.

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Writing Systems, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Ancient Hebrew, Latin, Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) Emmett Stone Writing Systems, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, Ancient Hebrew, Latin, Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) Emmett Stone

1167: Writing Systems: An Overview Feb 18, 2018

There are many different writing systems from all over the world, used with varying frequency, but not all of these are alphabets. The most obvious example of this may be with pictographic and logographic writing systems (symbols that represent words but aren't images thereof), which aren't alphabets because little to no attempt needs to be made to convey the way that the word sounds. This is why Cantonese and Mandarin (are not mutually intelligible when spoken always, but are written in much the same way. However the list goes on, for instance with abjads, such as for Arabic, Hebrew, and also Tifinagh, Syriac, and ancient Phoenician for which consonants are represented, but not necessarily vowels; Greek and by extension Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are essentially Phoenician but written left-to-right and with the addition of vowels. There are also syllabaries—where a syllable is represented but not the individual sounds—such as for Cherokee or Katakana Japanese. Finally, there are abugidas, which represent consonant-vowel segments; this gives the vowel more prevalence than in an abjad, but not equal status to consonants, such as in an alphabet. Of course, some languages are more suited for certain writing-systems than others, which is why Inuit words look so long written in the Latin script, and but why the Cree abugida (used for some Inuit-Yupik languages) could not be used for Georgian, with its long consonant-clusters.

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