Explanation of writing system

1. Writing System
Writing form of communication

2. HISTORY OF WRITING
3.200 Before Christ Summerians
 600 Before Christ Mesoamerica
1.200 Before Christ China

3. Writing systems can be divided into two main
types: those that represent consonants and
vowels (alphabets), and those which represent
syllables (syllabaries), though some do both.
There are a number of subdivisions of each type,
and there are different classifications of writing
systems in different sources.

4. Abjads / Consonant Alphabets
Alphabets
Syllabic Alphabets / Abugidas
Syllabaries
Semanto-phonetic writing systems
Undeciphered writing systems

5. Abjads / Consonant Alphabets
Abjads, or consonant alphabets, have
independent letters for consonants and may
indicate vowels using some of the consonant
letters and/or with diacritics. In Abjads such as
Arabic and Hebrew full vowel indication
(vocalization) is only used in specific contexts,
such as in religious books and children's books.

6. most words have roots made up of three consonants,
e.g. k-t-b (‫)كتب‬
Many of the ancient alphabets used in West Asia and
North Africa were abjads, as are
the Arabic and Hebrew scripts.

7. Alphabets
Alphabets, or phonemic alphabets, are sets of
letters that represent consonants and vowels. In
some languages, such as Czech, each letter or
combination of letters represents one sound,
while in others, such as English, letters might
represent a variety of sounds, or the same
sounds can be written in different ways.

9. Syllabic Alphabets / Abugidas
Syllabic alphabets, alphasyllabaries or abugidas are
writing systems in which the main element is the
syllable. Syllables are built up of consonants, each
of which has an inherent vowel, e.g. ka, kha, ga,
gha. Diacritic symbols are used to change or mute
the inherent vowel, and separate vowel letters may
be used when vowels occur at the beginning of a
syllable or on their own.

10. The most complex writing system in all the
world…

11. Devanāgarī (देवनागरी लिपि)

12. First emerged during the 8th century.
Type of writing system: alphasyllabary / abugida.
Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
Vowels can be written as independent letters, or by
using a variety of diacritical marks. This feature is
common to most of the alphabets of South and South
East Asia.
When consonants occur together in clusters, special
conjunct letters are used.
The order of the letters is based on articulatory
phonetics.

13. Devanāgarī alphabet

14. Consonants

16. Syllabaries
A syllabary is a phonetic writing system
consisting of symbols representing syllables. A
syllable is often made up of a consonant plus a
vowel or a single vowel.

17. Semanto-phonetic writing systems
The symbols used in semanto-phonetic writing
systems often represent both sound and meaning.
As a result, such scripts generally include a large
number of symbols: anything from several hundred
to tens of thousands. In fact there is no theoretical
upper limit to the number of symbols in some
scripts, such as Chinese. These scripts could also be
called logophonetic, morphophonemic,
logographic or logosyllabic.

19. Undeciphered writing systems
Writing systems that have yet to be deciphered
or have only been partially deciphered.

20. Writing system is related with rules such as
conventions of spelling and punctuation. Also
includes grapheme-phoneme (letter-sound).
English orthography is the alphabetic spelling
system used by the English language. English
orthography uses a set of rules that governs how
speech is represented in writing.

21. Is perhaps the most problematic area for non-
native speakers:
Most sound in English can be spelled in more
than one way and many spellings can be
pronounced in more tan one way.

22. English only uses the twenty-six letters of the
Latin alphabet. For this reason, a one to one
correspondence between character and sound
is not possible to denote all the complex
sounds. This means that the letters have to
multi-task!

23. The same letters may indicate different sounds
in English. For example, the digraph ‘ch’
represents the first syllable in ‘church’ and
‘cheese’, but when used in the words
‘character’ and ‘chorus’ the ‘ch’ diagraph is
pronounced differently (a hard ‘c’ or ‘k’
sound).

24. The English language has quite a weak
connection between the written form of
a word and the spoken form of that word. For
example, the letter combination ‘ough’ can be
pronounced in many different ways
depending on the rest of the letters
surrounding it. The words ‘bough’, ‘trough’,
through’, thorough’, ‘enough’ all contain the
letters ‘ough’ yet have a
different pronunciation. This can seem very
confusing and illogical to ESL learners!