2. Writing
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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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)
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 6 CHINESE
is 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 day
The characters were originally
pictographs (each one bore a
resemblance to its meaning)
and represented one
monosyllabic word.
10. 5 BRAHMI
The 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.
11. Brahmi developed
into dozens of
regional scripts,
which came to be
associated with the
languages of their
respective region
12. 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.
13. 4 ARABIC
the 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.
14. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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
THIS IS ONE VERSION OF THE ANCIENT LATIN ALPHABET. MANY OF THE LETTERS HAVE
SERVERAL DIFFERENT SHAPES IN DIFFERENT INSCRIPTIONS AND TEXTS.
20. OTHER VERSIONS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET
Roman alphabet for Latin
The Romans used just 23 letters to write Latin:
21. 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.
Uppercase
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lowercase
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
22. 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
23. 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.
24.
25. 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.
26. 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
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
32. Translation
All 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)
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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
The sign looked that it looked and the way that it
like this: was used changed in many ways.
One of the last ever appearances
of the barley sign is on this tablet
from A.D. 61.
36. 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.
37. 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.
38. An ideographic writing system is
a writing method that uses
DEVELOPMENT OF graphic symbols to represent
WRITING objects or ideas. This system
maintains a single written form
5. Ideographic Writing 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.
39. 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.'"
40. 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
41. 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]'
42. 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]'
43. 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'
44. 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
45. 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.).