Writing Systems of the World

This week, I’ve got a slightly different post for you. As I’ve mentioned on my Instagram, I’m fascinated by how we write languages down. This fascination is what led me to take a GCSE in Russian and learn Arabic at university because I loved the idea of ‘decoding’ a different alphabet. I found that the ‘alphabets’ (we’ll explore why that term does not apply to all languages later) were actually fairly easy to learn and wondered if I could learn more. Fast forward to last week. I just randomly posited to my husband that I would like to learn all the writing systems of the world. He laughed and said that he thought that would be very difficult and I thought ‘challenge accepted’. So I have set myself the task of learning as many writing systems as I can across my life. I already know the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet and the Arabic abjad and last weekend, I started learning the Tifinagh abjad, which is used for the Berber languages of Northern Africa. I decided I wanted to share my journey with you all (I secretly wish someone would pick up on this and commission me to write an accessible book on writing systems haha). So you can expect more posts like this in the future!

For this first post about writing systems, I thought it would be interesting to explore what writing systems actually are and what the different types of writing system that exist in the world are.

What are writing systems?
A writing system, also referred to as a script or an orthography, is a visual representation of a language, using a set of visible marks, forms or structures called characters or graphs that are related to some structure in the linguistic system.[1] In layman’s terms, it is a series of pictures or symbols that represent the sounds, words, ideas or concepts of a language. It has its own set of rules to convey the language. There are a variety of types of writing systems (they are not all ‘alphabets’) depending on the genesis of writing in the area where the language is spoken.

How many types of writing systems are there?
Writing systems can be roughly broken down into two main types: those that represent consonants and vowels (alphabets) and those that represent syllables (syllabaries), though some do both.[2] There are several subdivisions within these.

Alphabets
This is probably the most common writing system (particularly as it is so familiar to those in the West). An alphabet is a writing system in which each grapheme (written symbol) represents one phoneme (sound).[3] Alphabets represent all phonemes, both vowels and consonants. The most widely-used alphabets are the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet.[4]

Abjads
Abjads differ from alphabets as only consonants are marked primarily, and vowels are secondary.[5] True abjads have no written representation of vowels, but most abjads are ‘impure’; meaning that they can represent vowels when needed (Arabic is an example of this, where the Quran and texts for learners are vocalised, but day-to-day writing is not).

Syllabic Alphabets/Abugidas
An abugida is a writing system that prioritises syllables. So each grapheme represents a consonant with a default vowel and other vowels are denoted by diacritics.[6] An example of this is Devanagari, which is used to write Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and many other languages.[7]

Syllabaries
A syllabary is a writing system based on written symbols that represent the syllables of the words of a language.[8]  Examples of languages that use syllabaries either wholly or in part are Japanese and Cherokee.

Semanto-phonetic writing systems
Semanto-phonetic scripts consist of symbols that often represent both sound and meaning. This means that these writing systems often contain a larger number of symbols than other languages. Examples of these are Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Chinese. The symbols themselves can be broken down into pictograms and logograms, and ideograms.[9]

Pictograms and logograms
Pictograms or pictographs look like the things they represent.[10] A logogram or logograph is a symbol that is used to represent an entire word.[11]

Ideograms
Ideograms are graphemes that represent abstract ideas.[12]

So that’s a basic guide to the writing systems of the world. I will be back in a few weeks to let you know how I’m getting on with learning the Tifinagh abjad, but in two weeks, I will have another post for you on my work routines. If you’re interested in my work morning routine, you can check out my blog post on it here.

If you need a translation from the Arabic abjad to the English alphabet, I’d be happy to help. Please contact me on verity.roat@googlemail.com. And if you’ve got a burning desire to learn a writing system, then let me know in the comments!

[1] Britannica, Writing, https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/Types-of-writing-systems [accessed 18 January 2021]

[2] Omniglot, Types of writing system, https://omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#semphon [accessed 18 January 2021]

[3] Aaron Ralby, The Arabic “Alphabet” – What is an Abjad?, https://linguisticator.com/blog/19729/the-arabic-alphabet-what-is-an-abjad [accessed 18 January 2021]

[4] Omniglot, Types of writing system, https://omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#semphon [accessed 18 January 2021]

[5] Aaron Ralby, The Arabic “Alphabet” – What is an Abjad?, https://linguisticator.com/blog/19729/the-arabic-alphabet-what-is-an-abjad [accessed 18 January 2021]

[6] Chenchen Ding, Masao Utiyama, Eiichiro Sumita, Simplified Abugidas, https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P18-2078/ [accessed 18 January 2021]

[7] Omniglot, Types of writing system, https://omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#semphon [accessed 18 January 2021]

[8] Britannica, Syllabary, https://www.britannica.com/topic/syllabary [accessed 18 January 2021]

[9] Omniglot, Types of writing system, https://omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#semphon [accessed 18 January 2021]

[10] Ibid.

[11] New World Encyclopedia, Logogram, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/logogram [accessed 18 January]

[12] Omniglot, Types of writing system, https://omniglot.com/writing/types.htm#semphon [accessed 18 January 2021]