WRITING

ByIRVING S. AMBRONA

IS AN ACTIVITY WHICH IS CHARACTERIZED BY FORMING CHARACTERS, LETTERS, WORDS AND PICTURES ON THE SURFACE OF SOME MATERIALS, WITH A PENCILS, KNIFE, POINTED STICK OR OTHER INSTRUMENTS OF MEANS TO EXPRESS OR COMMUNICATE.

Writing

TOP 10 MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITING SYSTEMS

10 BRAILLE

It was invented in 1821 by a blind Frenchman, Louis Braille

Braille invented his own system using a mere six dots.

9 CYRILLIC

Invented by the Greek brothers Saint Methodius and Saint Cyril in the 9th century AD

based on the Glagolitic and Greek alphabets, ultimately became the preferred system for writing the Slavic languages.

The Glagolitic alphabet (  /ɡlæɡəˈlɪtɪk/), also known as Glagolitsa, (OCS: , Кѷрїлловица) is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" (also the origin of the Slavic name for the letter G). The verb glagoliti means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the name glagolitsa developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word glagolity, applied to adherents of the liturgy in Slavonic.

8 CUNEIFORM

It first appeared in the 34th century BC amongst the Sumerians, located in what is today southern Iraq

It was adapted to write a number of languages (including Akkadian, Hittite, and Hurrian)

Although cuneiform was used for many thousands of years, and many things have been discovered written in cuneiform, cuneiform is still not easy to read. That is because the shape of cuneiform letters, and the meanings of various cuneiform symbols, changed over time and varied by region. When archaeologists find ancient cuneiform script, they are always excited about it. But, they need time to translate it to discover if they have found a household list of repaired items, or a new poem or story. 

There is much yet to be discovered about these ancient people as archaeologists continue to translate the ancient written language of Cuneiform.

7 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SCRIPTS

Hieratic (used mainly for religious purposes)

Demotic (for most other purposes).

Ancient Egyptian’s most lasting influence was that it served as the inspiration for the first alphabet.

6 CHINESEis noteworthy for being one of the world’s oldest continuously used writing systems, having been in use from the 2nd millennium BC up to the present dayThe characters were originally pictographs (each one bore a resemblance to its meaning) and represented one monosyllabic word.

5 BRAHMIThe Brahmi script is one of the most important writing systems in the world by virtue of its time depth and influence. It represents the earliest post-Indus corpus of texts, and some of the earliest historical inscriptions found in India. Most importantly, it is the ancestor to hundreds of scripts found in South, Southeast, and East Asia.

Brahmi developed into dozens of regional scripts, which came to be associated with the languages of their respective region

Brahmi is a "syllabic alphabet", meaning that each sign can be either a simple consonant or a syllable with the consonant and the inherent vowel /a/. Other syllabic alphabets outside of South Asia include Old Persian and Meroïtic. However, unlike these two system, Brahmi (and all subsequent Brahmi-derived scripts) indicates the same consonant with a different vowel by drawing extra strokes, called matras, attached to the character. Ligatures are used to indicate consonant clusters.

4 ARABICthe Arabic alphabet is the second-most widely used alphabet in the world, found mostly in Northern Africa and Western and Central Asia

it is an abjad, a writing system in which the letters are all consonants (Arabic script does, however, have optional vowel diacritics).

The alphabet arose around 400 AD (about 200 years before Islam), but the rise of Islam and the writing of the Qur’an brought about significant changes for the writing system, such as the vowel diacritics.

By the 11th century CE, the Naskhi script appeared and gradually replaced the Kufic script as the most popular script for copying the Qu'ran as well as secular and personal writings. It is from the Naskhi script that modern Arabic script style developed.

THE FOLLOWING IS THE ARABIC ALPHABET IN THE NASKHI SCRIPT

And finally, Arabic uses a 10-base positional number system:

3 GREEK

It has existed from 800 BC through to the present day, and over its long history has been used to write Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Gaulish, and Albanian, among other languages

The alphabet’s importance has since diminished—its primary functions are now the writing system for Modern Greek and mathematical symbols—but if it were not for the Greek alphabet, much of the world’s writing would bear little resemblance to what it is today.

2 LATIN

it is the most widely used alphabet in existence. Derived from a variant of the Greek alphabet around 700 BC

It became widely adopted and adapted, both among languages using other writing systems and languages that had previously had none.

THIS IS ONE VERSION OF THE ANCIENT LATIN ALPHABET. MANY OF THE LETTERS HAVE SERVERAL DIFFERENT SHAPES IN DIFFERENT INSCRIPTIONS AND TEXTS.

It was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BC. The letters Y and Z were taken from the Greek alphabet to write Greek loan words. Other letters were added from time to time as the Latin alphabet was adapted for other languages.

Notable features Type of writing system: alphabet Direction of writing: right to left, boustrophedon or left to

right Used to write: Latin

OTHER VERSIONS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET

Roman alphabet for LatinThe Romans used just 23 letters to write Latin:

MODERN LATIN ALPHABET

The modern Latin alphabet consists of 52 letters, including both upper and lower case, plus 10 numerals, punctuation marks and a variety of other symbols such as &, % and @. Many languages add a variety of accents to the basic letters, and a few also use extra letters and ligatures.

The lowercase letters developed from cursive versions of the uppercase letters.

UppercaseA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Lowercasea b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

1 PROTO-SINAITIC AND PHOENICIAN SCRIPTS

was the first alphabet, and therefore the parent of nearly all the alphabetic writing systems to have existed since its emergence. It arose in Egypt and Sinai around 1900 BC

PROTO-SINAITIC, ALSO KNOWN AS PROTO-CANAANITE, WAS THE FIRST CONSONANTAL ALPHABET. EVEN A QUICK AND CURSORY GLANCE AT ITS INVENTORY OF SIGNS MAKES IT VERY APPARENT OF THIS SCRIPT'S EGYPTIAN ORIGIN.

The following is a comparison between Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, and Greek alphabets.

1 The Greek letter that resembles F was called digamma and actually represented the sound /w/. It existed in archaic Greek scripts except the Ionian variant, which supplanted other archaic scripts.

2 The Greek letter that looks like M was the letter san. It appeared in scripts from Corinth and Argos, and represented an alternative to sigma.

3 The letter Q actually existed in Greek for a little while, and it was adopted by the Etruscans before it disappeared due to its extraneous existence.As you might have noticed, the continuity of the scripts appears quite consistent. For a lengthier treatment on all alphabets, you can go to Alphabet.

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

1. Picture writing .

It may be inferred that perhaps this is the earliest form of writing

This is inscribing lines and pictures representing objects or ideas on surface of the walls of the cave dwellings of primitive people.

Pictograms communicate to us every day. There are many contexts in which regular writing would be out of place.

This might be where: a quick understanding and response is

required - think of road signs or traffic lights

there is limited space for communication - take a look at the labels inside your clothes, or at the symbols on food packaging.

it is necessary to communicate to people of many different languages and reading abilities - think of signs in airports, on toilet doors or smiley faces on emails

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

2. Hieroglypics This is a kind or style of writing the early egyptians invented and used.

The word was derived frpm the Greek words HIEROS meaning sacred and GLYPHO meaning curve.

Hieroglyphic signs are divided into four categories:

1. Alphabetic signs represent a single sound. Unfortunately the Egyptians took most vowels for granted and did not represent such as 'e' or 'v'. So we may never know how the words were formed.

2. Syllabic signs represent a combination of two or three consonants.

3. Word-signs are pictures of objects used as the words for those objects. they are followed by an upright stroke, to indicate that the word is complete in one sign.

4. A determinative is a picture of an object which helps the reader. For example; if a word expressed an abstract idea, a picture of a roll of papyrus tied up and sealed was included to show that the meaning of the word could be expressed in writing although not pictorially.

Numerals: By combining the following glyphs, any number could be constructed. The higher value signs were always written in front of the lower value ones.

SAMPLE TEXTS

Transliteration: iw wnm msh nsw, this means "The crocodile eats the king".

TranslationAll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

3. CUNEIFORM This system or style of writing was invented by the Sumerians about 2000 BC

Derived from the Latin word CUNEUS meaning wedge

Consisted of wedge shaped characters which were pressed into soft clay baked under the scorching heat of the sun.

Cuneiform was also used to write stories, myths, and personal letters.

The cuneiform script was used to write different languages. In Mesopotamia it was used to write both Sumerian and Akkadian. It was also used to write other languages like Elamite, Hittite and, as carved here in stone, Urartian.

The sign looked like this:

Cuneiform script was used by other peoples because they needed to be able to record information but they did not have their own systems for writing down their languages.

The barley sign was used for over three thousand years. The way that it looked and the way that it was used changed in many ways.

One of the last ever appearances of the barley sign is on this tablet from A.D. 61.

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

4. Logographic Writing

This pertains to or using logograms- conventional, abbreviated symbol for a frequently recurring word or phrase.

A symbols represented by words were called logoraphs

Originated in near east China and in Maya inscriptions.

Most languages make use of some logograms: a selection of widely used graphemes is given below. Note that these signs, which are familiar to many modern Westerners, mean the same thing in any language. In the same way Chinese characters mean the same thing whether they are read in a variety of Chinese "dialects", or even in Japanese, a language which is as unlike Chinese in its internal structure as it is possible for a language to be.

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

5. Ideographic Writing

An ideographic writing system is a writing method that uses graphic symbols to represent objects or ideas. This system maintains a single written form for morphemes or lexical items.

Here are some examples of ideographic writing:

Chinese Japanese (some

forms)  IDEOGRAPHIC WRITING,

the representation of language by means of “ideograms,” i.e. symbols representing “ideas,” rather than (or usually side by side with) symbols which represent sounds.

An ideogram for "go that way" or "in this direction" or "over there“

“[T]he picture [of a finger pointing] is an ideogram; it does not represent a sequence of sounds, but rather a concept that can be expressed in English in various ways: 'go that way' or 'in this direction' or 'over there' or, combined with words or other ideograms, such notions as 'the stairs are to the right' or 'pick up your luggage at that place.' Ideograms are not necessarily pictures of objects; the arithmetic 'minus sign' is an ideogram that depicts not an object but a concept that can be translated as 'minus' or 'subtract the following from the preceding' or 'negative.'"

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

6. Phonetic Writing This type of writing assigns a symbol for phonetic sound called phonogram or phonograph. These phonograms are usually associated with syllables instead of words, and the symbols representing sounds are called syllabaries

Phonetics is a subsection of linguistics. It is the study of sounds in human speech. There are many ways to write down sounds. Here are some examples:

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet): This is a system of writing sounds primarily based on the latin alphabet. There are over one hundred symbols denoting all the sounds from human speech. It is mainly used in some British dictionaries to write the pronunciation of a word, and also by classical singers, singing in an other language, again to help sing with the right pronunciation. It is also used a lot by linguists. It is merely another way of writing the same sounds.

Example: 'This is my cat Fluffy.' IPA: '[ðis] [iz] [maɪ] [kat] [fləfi]'

SAMPA (Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet): This is basically a different version of IPA but with computers. Most of the IPA characters are special characters and writing a big text in IPA on a computer can take a long time. SAMPA swaps some difficult characters with ones easily made on the keyboard.

Example: 'This is my cat Fluffy.' SAMPA: '[Dis] [iz] [mAI] [kAt'] [fl@fi]'

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation): This system was founded in the 1950's and it's use was for war. It is a system of spelling out words on the phone or radio through long distances. Some of the letters sounded the same, such as 'P' and 'B'. With this, each letter is known because none of the words sound the same. One word replaces every letter in the normal alphabet. This system varies from language to language and it even varied through history. At first, the method didn't seem practical, but as time went on, some words changed and got replaced with easier words to remember. It also varies from region to region, some places even changing words to their liking.

Example: 'Cat' NATO: 'Charlie Alpha Tango'

DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

7. Alphabet Writing

The alphabet system of writing probably developed about 1800 BC when Semitic-speaking people took the Egyptian syllabary of 24 characters and substituted these into consonant symbols

alphabet, set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence (e.g., A, B, C, etc.).