Crazy About Language Learning

Crazy About Language Learning

Language learning for the fun of it

Language learning for the fun of it !
  • Blog
  • Drawings
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Français
  • English

Alphabets of the world but also syllabaries and logographies

  Olga  —    January 18th, 2019

Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on vk
Vk
Share on email
Email
Share on yummly
Yummly
Share on pinterest
Pinterest

A single drawing being worth a thousand words, please look intensely at the one below. Thank you very much …

Alphabets, yes, but also syllabaries and logographies !

Alphabets

Alphabets are composed of letters representing the simplest sounds possible. Although the letters of the Arabic alphabet you can see a sample of above have little names, they really are only the little names of the letters. The letters themselves represent the simplest sounds as do the letters of the English alphabet for example.

Please note that all alphabets descend from only one ancestor, the Phoenician alphabet, from around the years -1,300 !

Syllabaries

Syllabaries are made up of syllables, not of letters. A written sign refers to a group of sounds, usually to a consonant and a vowel.

You can find here a good list of syllabaries. I let you go take a look. (Yes, you need to come back !)

Logographies

Logographies are composed of characters representing words or meaningful components of words (called ‘morphemes').

At the beginning, logographies' characters represented things or ideas. They looked more like drawings than abstract constructs. Look for example at the transformation of some Chinese characters over time.

Chinese characters over time

“Chinese characters over time
© Ashley Van Haeften / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.0

Still curious ? This website lists quite a few logographic writing systems just for you to go take a look at …

Writings of our times

In the magic world of written records, in our present times (yes, around the 2,000s), the most common scripts are the following :

#1. the Latin alphabet
#2. the Chinese logography
#3. the Arabic alphabet
#4. the Devanagari alphabet (adopted by the Hindi language among others)
#5. the Cyrillic alphabet (adopted by the Russian language among others)
#6. the Kana syllabary (adopted by the Japanese language among others)

In a coming article, I'll tell you about the beautiful but not very practical ideographic scripts. Their characters didn't represent little letters, nor syllables, nor even words, but whole ideas such as the ones expressed on our present-day traffic signs. You know those signs we only have a vague sense of what they mean even though we look at them every day …

You can copy this page's content if you don't modify and/or commercialize it.
You should also mention “This article was first published on Crazy About Language Learning“
Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

REVIEWS AND TIPS

  • My Arabic handwriting beginnings Learn Arabic writing it down
  • A polyglot problem To learn and speak several languages
  • Blank conjugation sheet Free blank conjugation sheet ready to download

Follow me on …

Gab Gab
Minds Minds
Pinterest Pinterest
Bloglovin Bloglovin
RSS RSS

MOST WANTED PAGES

First writings
First writings
 
The hardest language to learn
The hardest language to learn

Search the website

DISCOVER THE WORLD THROUGH LANGUAGES

  • LANGUAGE LEARNING
  • LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
  • WRITINGS OF THE WORLD
  • HISTORY OF LANGUAGES

LINGUISTIC POT-POURRI

aliens talking, animals talking, borders and languages, computers talking, dead languages, gesture languages, grammars, invented tongues, language families, language learning methods and tips, language motivation, language sciences, old writings

Legal stuff

© 2020 crazy-about-language-learning.com
All rights reserved for brands and logos
Creative Commons for texts and images


Prehistory of Crazy : about me
Privacy policy
Terms of use