2661: Japanese Semaphore Mar 31, 2022

Things like semaphore and morse code word for alphabetic systems like the Latin alphabet, but it might not be obvious how Japanese writing might be adapted for it. Japanese semaphore for instance had to rethink the concept since there are about twice the number of characters compared to the Latin alphabet, and it is a syllabary. Instead, with a red flag in the right hand and white in the left, they had the semaphore signals roughly match the trajectory of how the strokes look in the characters but this would usually take two or more different motions complete. Semaphore already rotated the flags like the hands of a clock to sign letters and numbers with the same displays, owing to its clock-like mechanical origins, but Japanese semaphore had a different system for numbers to its letters.

2539: Cypro-Minoan Syllabary: Linear C Nov 25, 2021

Early forms of Greek used their own early forms of writing known as Linear A and Linear B. At one point the term "Linear C" was in use, though that has now basically been usurped by "Cypro-Minoan syllabary". This was, too, used for what has been deduced as an early variety of Greek, with most inscriptions in this writing system found on the island of Cyprus with others found one location of the Syrian coast. This was brought by Minoan settlers from Crete. Although this early writing had existed in its evolved forms for at least 14 centuries from the creation of Linear A to the decline of its final descendants, these characters did not survive.

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.

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.

2490: How נ Became Short Oct 6, 2021

Hebrew, effectively has 3 ways of scripts, hand writing, printed, and liturgical script. These are mostly the same, and the reasons for the evolution of each helps to elucidate the differences in each. For instance the letter נ—pronounced /nun/ and an ancestor to N—(except as it appears word-final) is the same length as other letters standardly in print and new liturgical writing, but at the end of the word it goes low (ן). In hand-written script though, it is long both times and is distinguished by being straight at the end of a word, and curved otherwise. However, before a few centuries ago both forms were long in formal holy writing; the reason being that in the beginning/middle of a word, its base juts out and causes the concern of interfering with the following letter.

2487: Cuneiform and Linear A Oct 3, 2021

Cuneiform, arguably the first writing system, was based in wedges pressed into clay from the corners of a stylus, hence the triangular formation, and was used for many languages, both Semitic and otherwise. These two factors help to explain why there is such a volume of known texts—hundreds of thousands of tablets—to survive. In the transition to other writing systems, such as Linear A, named because its lines were cut or pulled, like with a pen, as opposed to pressed that it would allow for more flexibility of writing overall. Cuneiform was not the only pressed form of writing, as this practice is also found from Ugaritic alphabet (technically an abjad), and despite how widespread this was, being used across the whole of the Middle East from Anatolia to Persia, it was not as easy, nor useful for non-clay media, and was eventually replaced having once been the replacement for drawn glyphs too.

2102: Paleo-Hebrew (Abjad) Sep 16, 2020

The writing system used for Hebrew is certainly ancient, but it is not the original written form for Hebrew. The paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the Israelite kingdoms until the Babylonian conquest. All texts, including the Bible, were written in that script at the time, such as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The current Hebrew abjad, known as Jewish Square Script is actually from the Assyrians. The Samaritans still use a script based off the paleo-Hebrew writing system.

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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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