4、压码看电影学习法系列贴：（多语言入门）字母表汇总

Luwian

Quick Facts Type Logophonetic Genealogy Unrelated Location West Asia > Anatolia Time 1400 BCE to 700 BCE Direction Variable Literacy appeared during the Bronze Age in Anatolia (which corresponds to modern-day Turkey) in two very different ways. On one hand, the Cuneiform writing system of Mesopotamia was adopted to write the Hittite language. On the other hand, an indigenous writing system was invented to write the ancient Luwian language. This script was originally mislabeled as Hieroglyphic Hittite, because it was discovered in the archives of the Hittitle capital of Hattusa (modern Boğazköy), but its decipherment eventually led to the conclusion that the language recorded was not Hittite, but a related language called Luwian. Hittite and Luwian both belonged to Anatolian subgroup of the Indo-European language family. According to Hittite sources, the Luwians were their neighbors, and they formed a kingdom called Arzawa in western and southern Anatolia where Luwian hieroglyphs likely originated. The Hittites adopted both the Luwian language and script for their own use. >[? Hieroglyphic Luwian was used in the Hittite Empire between 1400 and 1200 BCE in addition to their cuneiform script. After the fall of the Empire, no evidence of Luwian existed for two hundred years. Then, at around 1000 BCE, new "Neo-Hittite" city-states appeared in Southern Anatolia and Northern Syria, and they left many Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions between 1000 and 700 BCE as the rulers of these cities were in fact ethnic Luwians but were related by blood to the Hittite aristocracy. Ultimately, the Assyrian Empire destroyed these city states and the Hieroglyphic Luwian tradition came to an end. However, the Luwian language endured, and possibly evolved into Lycian (although it is also possible that Hittite gave rise to Lycian). The signs of Hieroglyphic Luwian can be divided into two categories: syllabograms which represent sounds, and logograms which represent words and morphemes. Some of the syllabograms are illustrated in the following chart: Note that /z/ most likely stands for the affricate sound [ts]. As you can see, the script has a lot of homophonous signs, that is, signs with different appearance but sharing the same phonetic value. To distinguish homophonous signs while transcribing Hieroglyphic Luwian, diacritical marks and numeric subscripts are used. Hence, the acute and grave accents do not represent stress of any kind, but instead represent the second and third homophonous signs for a particular syllable. Subscripts start at 4 and represent the fourth and subsequent homophonous signs. For example, sa, sá, sà, sa4, sa5 and sa6 all represent the same sound. In addition to syllabograms, the Luwian script also used a set of logograms to represent words rather than sounds. These logograms are highly pictographic in that they resemble the words they represent. One peculiarity of the system that scholars invented to represent Luwian logograms is to transcribe a logogram using the Latin word of the same meaning. Therefore, for example, the word /wawis/, which means "cow" in Luwian, is transcribed in scientific papers as BOS, the Latin word meaning "cow". Three logograms are transcribed with their actual Luwian phonetic value because they have no Latin correspondence. The following is the list of Luwian logograms. Red text is the Latin transliteration, blue text is English meaning. Very often a logogram is written with a phonetic complement, which is one or more syllabograms following the logogram elucidating the pronuncation of the logogram. Also, Luwian is an inflected language like Latin and Sanskrit, where different endings attached to the "stem" or basic form of a word modifies the meaning of the "stem". Hence, the logogram represents the "stem", and phonetic complements are used to spell out inflectional endings. Some examples of phonetic complementation: But it is also perfectly possible to spell these same words without logograms but instead completely with syllabograms: The previous examples also illustrate a few spelling rules. As a syllabary, Luwian has no single-consonant signs to write consonants at the end of words or syllables. To write a single consonant, ancient Luwian scribes would use a syllabogram with the proper consonant, and by convention the vowel of the syllabogram is not "read". In transcription, parentheses are placed around the vowel to indicate that it is silent. In general, consonants not immediately preceding a vowel is written using syllabograms with muted vowels. This applies even for long sequences of consonants, such as istris above. The one exception is the consonant /n/, which is not written at all, such as the word "boundaries" which is spelled i-r(a/i)-hi-zi which should correspond to irhitsi but in reality is pronounced as in irhintsi. Luwian was also written in a cuneiform script, and sometimes in side-by-side inscriptions with its close relative, . It was used exclusively in Hattusa, and the number of texts was quite limited as compared to the hieroglyphic script. Related Links H. Craig Melchert's homepage.pre-eminent scholar of Anatolian languages. Hittite Monuments.Great photographs of Luwian and Hittite Cuneiform inscriptions.

Maya

Quick Facts Type Logophonetic Genealogy Mesoamerican Location Americas > Mesoamerica Time 300 BCE to 1697 CE Direction Top to Bottom in Double Columns Once considered an unsolvable enigma, recent advances in the decipherment of the Maya writing system has not only shed light on the mechanics of the script, but also on the socio-political, artistic, and historical aspects of Maya civilization. As a whole, the Maya people created the longest lasting civilization of the New World. It became distinguishable from other early farming cultures of Mesoamerica in the middle of the first millenium BCE, when the first great Maya cities were constructed. Their culture endured through changes, wars, and disasters until it was suppressed by the Spanish conquest in the 16th and 17th centuries. The last indepedent Maya kingdom of Tayasal, fell as late as 1697. However, the Maya survived and there is estimated to be at least one million Mayas living in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras today. General Overview The Maya hieroglypic writing is arguably one of the most visually striking writing systems of the world. It is also very complex, with hundreds of unique signs or glyphs in the form of humans, animals, supernaturals, objects, and abstract designs. These signs are either logograms (to express meaning) or syllabograms (to denote sound values), and are used to write words, phrases, and sentences. In fact, the Maya can write anything that they can say. While we're on the subject of what the Maya could "say", let's talk about Maya languages. The "Maya" in general were actually not a single people but many nations with different, but related, cultures, religions, and languages. Of the many Maya languages, only two (possibly three) were written down with the hieroglyphic system. It is thought that speakers of the Ch'olan language, and possibly also those of the Tzeltalan language, were the inventors of the Maya writing system. Another group, the speakers of Yucatec, adopted the script to write their own language. However, in some places, both languages were represented on hieroglyphic inscriptions, which not only stumped archaeologists for many years but also offered tantalizing clues into how Maya languages have interacted. The visual construction of Maya glyphs is very interesting. At first inspection, the glyphs appear to be very intricate squares laid out in a gridlike pattern. In fact, each square is a glyph block that actually contain one to five glyphs, often forming a word or even a phrase. The order to read Maya glyphs is also not as straightforward as it would seem. Since glyph blocks are arranged in a grid, one would think that the reading order is either in rows or columns. In reality, Maya glyphs are read in "paired columns", meaning that the first glyph block is on the top left, the second is immediately to the right of the first, the third is under the first, the fourth under the second, and so forth. This yields a zigzagging reading order. When you arrive at the bottom of this "paired column", you will then go back up to the top and start the next paired column. In fact, scholars label glyph block horizontally with letters (A, B, C) and vertically with numbers (1, 2, 3). Hence, the reading order would be A1, B1, A2, B2, etc, until you hit the bottom. Then you start at C1, D1, C2, D2, etc. Numbers and Calendar There were several classes of glyphs in the Maya writing system. The first class is the numeric glyphs. Like us, the Maya wrote their numbers in positional notation. This mouthful of words means that the position of a "digit" dictates its actual numerical value. For example, the digit "7" means seven if its position is at the end of a number, but if it is one position before the end, then it stands for seventy. And if it is two positions before the end, then it is seven hundred. Mathematically, you will see that digit is multiplied by the "base" of 10 raised to the position of the digit: 700  =  7 x 102 70  =  7 x 101 7  =  7 x 100 Likewise, among the Maya, the position of a "digit" also determines the actual value of the digit. However, unlike our system, which is based on powers of 10, the Maya (and Mesoamericans in general) used powers of 20. Also, unlike our system, which has an individual symbol for each digit (0, 1, 2, 3, ...), the Maya only employed three basic symbols: A dot for a value of "one", a bar for a value of "five", and a shell for the value "zero". Arithmetic combinations of these yield "digits" from zero to nineteen. For example, four is represented as four dots, seven is a bar and two dots, and nineteen is three bars and four dots as 3 x 5 + 4 x 1 = 19. Numbers larger than 20 are written via positional notation, like the following example: Closely allied to the number system of the Maya is their incredibly intricate calendar system. The Maya time-keeping involved several interlocking cycles, some of which tracked astronomical events while others seemingly followed abstract time intervals. Similar to other Mesoamerican cultures, the Maya employed a 365-day solar calendar (jaab') and a 260-day ritual cycle (tzolk'in). The jaab' is divided into 18 "months" of 20 days, plus 5 "unlucky" days at the end called wayeb'. The following chart illustrates the signs of jaab' solar calendar. Like the Western calendar, the days in a month are identified by numbers, but the first day of the month is zero instead of one as in the Western calendar. So for example, the first day of the month Pop is 0 Pop, although in writing the "zero" is written with the glyph that means "seating" rather than the conch shell. Therefore, the first day of the month is metaphorically called the "seating of" the month. The second cycle, the tzolk'in, is not divided into months but contains two parallel cycles, one of 13 and the other of 20. The cycle of 13 are identified by numbers, but the cycle of 20 has days with names. And the following are the signs of the tzolk'in ritual cycle. The keeping of the tzolk'in is still practiced among modern Maya, especially by Maya nations of highland Guatemala such as the Quiché or the Kakchiquel. The practioners are called "daykeepers", are open to both genders, and they also serve functions such as diviners, midwives, and bonesetters. The Maya also combined jaab' and tzolk'in into a single 52-year cycle called the Calendar Round. By running the two cycles in parallel, a date such as 12 Chikchan 18 Sak will not be come around again for exactly 52 years. Mathematically, this can be computed by finding the least common multiple (the smallest number divisible by both 260 and 365), which happens to be 18980 days or 52 years. The Calendar Round was widespread not only among the Maya but also among other Mesoamerican cultures too like #a @aztec#, #a @mixtec#, and #a @zapotec#. At a level even greater than the Calendar Round is the Long Count, an immensely long system of five increasingly larger cycles that ultimately measures a time period of over 5,000 years. Like the modern Western calendar which uses three numbers to denote three time units (year, month, and day), the Long Count used five numbers to represent five time units. The smallest unit of the Long Count is a day, called k'in. The passage of twenty k'ins (days) makes up one winal, the next higher unit. Eighteen winals yields one tun, which is 360 days, thus roughly equal to one year. Twenty tuns makes up one k'atun, which is about 19 years and 8 months. And finally, the largest conventional unit is the baktun, which is twenty k'atuns, 400 tuns, or about 394 years and 6 months. It appears that the maximum number that the baktuns unit can arrive is thirteen. Unlike the modern calendar, the smallest number for an unit is not one (such as 1/1 or 1st of January) but zero instead. In other words, a k'in starts at 0 and increments as high as 19 before going back to 0 again. For convenience, instead of writing each number and unit name in a Long Count date, archaeologists have devised a system of writing just the numbers separated by dots starting with the largest unit. For example, 9 baktun, 3 k'atun, 17 tun, 8 winal, and 11 k'in is written as 9.3.17.8.11. The presence of the Long Count on ancient monuments has helped archaeologists date them to our calendar (which is called the Gregorian Calendar). This was made possible by the computation of the correlation between the Long Count and the Gregorian calendar. While many different correlations exist, the most accepted one states that the Long Count date 0.0.0.0.0 was the Gregorian date August 11, 3114 BCE. The Long Count is always accompanied by the Calendar Round (both tzolk'in and jaab) when identifying a date on a monument. Sometimes other astronomical cycles such as the Lunar Cycle and the Venus Cycle are also included in the block of dates. Because these dates always appear at the beginning of an inscription, together these dates are called the Initial Series. Because of the mathematical consistencies between these different cycles, often it is possible to reconstruct any missing date using the remaining ones. The following tool demonstrates conversion between the Gregorian Calendar and an Initial Series that contains the Long Count and the Calendar Round. January February March April May June July August September October November December    BCE CE baktun katun tun winal kin Syllabary The Maya writing system had an extensive set of phonetic signs that represented syllables rather than individual sounds like in alphabetic systems. The following is a subset of signs in the syllabary: Note that Roman transliteration of Maya consonants follows 16th century Spanish orthography. This means that the letter "j" is pronounced like a rough /h/. The letter "x" represents the sound /&\#x0161;/ (like the "sh" in "ship"). And the combination "tz" is the sound /ts/ like in "catsup". The consonants followed by apostrophes are the "glottalized" versions of the plain consonants. A glottalized consonant is pronounced like a normal consonant, but immediately before the vowel is pronounced, the larynx is constricted (as if to pronounce a glottal stop) to produce a somewhat explosive sound. The syllabic structure of the Maya language allows an ending consonant in a syllable. In fact, the "root" or most basic form of Maya words consists of a consonant, a vowel, and a consonant (CVC). In order to "spell" a word of this form, the Maya scribes used two syllabic signs. The first sign contains the beginning consonant and the vowel of the syllable. The second sign represents the ending consonant, and the vowel of this second sign is omitted by convention during reading. Most frequently the vowel of the second sign is equal to the vowel of the first sign. This is called the rule of synharmony by epigraphers. In Maya languages, vowels can also be complex, meaning that they can be long, glottalized (followed a glottal stop), or aspirated (followed by the /h/ sound). To represent these complex vowels, the rule of disharmony is applied where the second sign representing the ending consonant contains a vowel that is dissimilar to the vowel in the first sign. For example, the word baak ('captive') is spelled as ba-ki where the "i" is omitted from the reading but tells us that the "a" in ba is complex. In the following example, the top row illustrates the principle of synharmony, whereas the bottom row illustrates the principle of disharmony. Logograms In addition to syllabic signs, the Maya script also has a large number of logograms, signs that represent words or morphemes (basic units of meaning) in the language instead of sounds. The following are a few of the logograms. With such a rich inventory of signs, both logographic and syllabic, the ancient Maya scribe combined them in bewildering ways for both functional and aesthetic purposes. Scribes could and did write the same word in multiple ways. Sometimes only logograms were used. Other times just phonetic signs were employed. And sometimes logograms are accompanied by phonetic complements, phonetic signs that serve to clarify the reading of the logogram by either spelling out the beginning or ending sound of the word. In the following example, you see two words, namely pakal 'shield' and witz 'mountain' spelled in several different ways, purely logographic, logographic with phonetic complements, and purely phonetic. Also notice how the phonetic complements can occur before the logogram (such as wi-WITZ) and after it (as in PAKAL-l(a)). One reason for the use of phonetic complements is that a sign can have multiple functions, a phenomenon called polyvalency. For example, there were two words for 'jaguar' in Maya, namely balam and jix, but the same logogram is used for both. To remove ambiguity, when the logogram is meant to be read as balam, either the phonetic sign ba is placed in front of it or ma is placed after it. In contrast, ji is placed before the logogram if it is meant to be read as jix. It is also possible that a glyph can function as both logogram and phonetic sign. For instance, the phonetic sign ku is also the logogram TUUN and the calendrical sign for the tzolk'in day Kawak. In this case, the logogram TUUN is usually followed by the phonetic complement ni to indicate its reading. The Kawak sign would also be easily distinguished because of numeric sign before it and its location in a Calendar Round or Long Count block. Also note that the rules of synharmony and disharmony also apply to phonetic complements. If the logogram's vowel is short, then the rule of synharmony is used (such as BALAM-m(a)), but if the vowel is long or aspirated, then the rule of disharmony is used (as in TUUN-n(i)). Phonetic signs are also combined with logograms to write prefixes and suffixes that conjugate or derive new words from the original roots represented by logograms. Most often suffixes are used with verbs to denote different persons, numbers, tenses, and other verbal aspects. Of course, verbs can also be written completely phonetically, as illustrated in the following example: In essence, the number of ways signs can be combined in Maya writing is absolutely staggering, which ancient scribes exploited for aesthetics and personal whim as much as tradition and convention. Origin of Maya Writing The prevalent thought about the origin of Maya writing is that it grew out of an even more ancient writing system developed by the Olmecs as early as 1000 BCE, at a time period called the Preclassic by archaeologists. Only fragmentary evidence for this writing system existed until the announcement in 2006 of the existence of the Cascajal block, a small rectangular tablet inscribed with 62 symbols resembling symbols found in Olmec art but otherwise undecipherable. You can read more about it at National Geographic or Mesoweb. However, the writing system of the Cascajal block is very different from that of the Maya, and it is impossible to say if it had any influence on Maya writing at all. Regardless of when the Maya started to write, the earliest examples of Maya writing date from the Late Preclassic period (300 BCE to 300 CE). In the past, many of these early texts were found on portable objects that have been looted from their archaeological context, and therefore they cannot be dated using radiocarbon dating or other types of physical dating technique. Instead, their age were hypothesized purely on comparing the artistic style of the objects to archaeologically excavated artefacts. This situation changed recently by major discoveries at the site of San Bartolo, which yielded exquisitely painted murals as well as some of the earliest Maya texts found in their archaeological context. The texts associated with the famous murals date to about 100 BCE, whereas another piece of text, found in another part of the city, date to 300 BCE, making it the oldest securely dated Maya text and one of the earliest texts in Mesoamerica in general. The 300 BCE text can be seen here. The San Bartolo texts cannot be read because they are quite different from later Maya glyphs (after 250 CE). This is true in general for all Preclassic Maya writing. Even though it is most certainly the same writing system, many of the signs look different and not even the most experienced epigrapher can make much sense of them. Like later monuments, the theme of this mask is political power. While no dates are inscribed, and most of the glyphs undeciphered, what can be interpreted suggests that the mask records the accession of a ruler by the name of Chan Muan, which is most prominently inscribed to the right of the ruler's figure. These two same glyphs appear again in the text cells C2 and D2, and also conflagrated or merged into a single glyph in cell B6. The glyph in A5 appears to be the lower body and thighs of a sitting man, which in later Maya writing signified "enthronement". So, taking together, the phrase consisting of A5, B5, A6, and B6 together appears to approximately the ascension of Chan Muan to kingship in an unidentified city. You can also find more information about the beginning of Maya writing in #a @ma_ws#. The Decipherment of Maya Hieroglyphs The story really started with Bishop Diego de Landa, who avidly committed to destroy every Maya book that he could find. Ironically, though, when he was composing his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, he included a very sketchy and rather erroneous "summary" of Maya hieroglyphics. Apparently, he assumed that Mayas wrote with an alphabet, and so he asked his native informants on how to write "a", "b", "c", and so forth, in Maya. The Mayas, on the other hand, heard the syllables "ah", "beh", "seh" (as "a", "b" and "c" would be pronounced in Spanish), and so forth, and naturally gave the glyphs with these phonetic values. So, in a sense, Landa recorded a very small section of the Maya syllabary, and the Mayanist equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. In a sense, for all Landa did to destroy any traces of Maya writing, he also unwittingly preserved for us the key to rediscovery and decipherment. He, therefore, defeated himself. One point for knowledge and zero for ignorance. The next step came really when the Maya civilization was rediscovered by John Lloyd Stephens and his talented artist companion Frederick Catherwood in the mid 19th century. Not only were their books bestsellers but also the drawings in them were (and still are) extremely accurate. No doubt Sir Eric Thompson is one of the greatest Mayanist ever lived. Among his greatest contribution to the field was a systematic catalog of all Maya hieroglyphs. He divided the glyphs into three sets, affixes, main signs, and portraits. The affixes are usually the little squished glyphs while the main signs are usually somewhat square in shape. The portraits are usually heads of humans, gods, or animals, and usually can appear as either affixes or main signs. Thompson gave each one a number, the lowest number going to the most frequent glyph to appear on texts, and higher numbers for less frequent signs. Affixes start at 1 and stops at 500. Main signs go from 501 to 999. And Portraits from 1000 up. You can take a lot at this cataloging by going to Maya Epigraphic Database. However, Thompson was set in his mind that Maya hieroglyphs were "ideographic", which literally means that each glyph expresses an abstract idea in the human mind. These ideograms were, according to him, the main signs, while the affixes were modifiers of the ideogram (like numbers, verbal endings, plurals, etc). As for phoneticism, he thought that rebus was the major way for the Maya to "spell" something. He considered the Landa's "alphabet" completely wrong. On the other side of the coin was Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, who advocated phoneticisms, and saw the key in Landa's work. He was not the first to advocate a phonetic approach to Maya glyphs, though. The great linguist Benjamin Whorf had also tried to "read" Maya glyphs earlier without success, because he took Landa's alphabet as if it really was an alphabet. What set Knorozov apart was that he realized Landa's alphabet was really part of the Maya syllabary, and he succeeded in identifying many of the syllabic glyphs. As for the content of the texts, Thompson strongly argued for esoteric knowledge like astrology and pointless mathematics. This view was derived from his opinion that the Maya were peaceful astronomy priests. However, evidence soon emerged that the texts recorded something other than Maya science. The German-Mexican Heinrich Berlin identified a set of glyphs with similar affixes but different main signs. Each of these glyphs appear most frequently in one site, so it is quite possible to assume that each glyph identifies a site. He called these "Emblem Glyphs". But perhaps the greatest advance was made by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, who took a logical approach to monuments and texts on them. She noticed that stelas come in groups. Many of the recorded dates in a group do not seem to apply to any religious or astronomical events. In fact, the dates on these monuments fit with that of a person's life time. Proskouriakoff therefore theorized that at least some of Classic Maya texts recorded the lifetime of a ruler. Once the historical approach is opened, myriad of glyphs were identified with events in life, such as birth, accession, death, and so on. In the early seventies, it became possible for the first time to work out dynastic lists of rulers in particular sites. From around the same time, Knorozov's phoneticism became more widely accepted, and further advances in deciphering syllabic signs continued. With these major tools of decipherment in hand, Maya texts started to come to light for the past 20 years. New discoveries continue to come to light, and any paper published six months ago might already be obsolete. Related Links Maya Decipherment. blog by prominent Maya scholars about the Maya script Foundation for Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Mesoweb. Proyecto San Bartolo. Mesoamerican Photo Archives.

Sumerian

Quick Facts Type Logophonetic Genealogy Cuneiform Location West Asia > Mesopotamia Time 3300 BCE to 100 CE Direction Variable The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago. They developed a writing system whose wedge-shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts in the same geographical area for the next 3000 years. Eventually, all of these diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform. It is actually possible to trace the long road of the invention of the Sumerian writing system. For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the clay tokens securely together (to prevent loss, theft, etc), so they started putting multiple clay tokens into a large, hollow clay container which they then sealed up. However, once sealed, the problem of remembering how many tokens were inside the container arose. To solve this problem, the Mesopotamians started impressing pictures of the clay tokens on the surface of the clay container with a stylus. Also, if there were five clay tokens inside, they would impress the picture of the token five times, and so problem of what and how many inside the container was solved. Subsequently, the ancient Mesopotamians stopped using clay tokens altogether, and simply impressed the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also added other symbols that were more pictographic in nature, i.e. they resemble the natural object they represent. Moreover, instead of repeating the same picture over and over again to represent multiple objects of the same type, they used diferent kinds of small marks to "count" the number of objects, thus adding a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols. Examples of this early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE, such as the one below. You can read more about the previous example at www.metmuseum.org. The Sumerian writing system during the early periods was constantly in flux. The original direction of writing was from top to bottom, but for reasons unknown, it changed to left-to-right very early on (perhaps around 3000 BCE). This also affected the orientation of the signs by rotating all of them 90° counterclockwise. Another change in this early system involved the "style" of the signs. The early signs were more "linear" in that the strokes making up the signs were lines and curves. But starting after 3000 BCE these strokes started to evolve into wedges, thus changing the visual style of the signs from linear to "cuneiform". By 2800 BCE the writing system started to exhibit use of phonetic elements. As the Sumerian language had a high number of monosyllabic words, there was a high degree of homophony, meaning that there is a large number of words that sound alike or identical. This presented the possibility of rebus writing, where sign for one word is used to represent another word that has a similar or identical sound. One example is ti "arrow", which is similar to til "life". So, to write "life", the ancient Sumerians wrote the sign for "arrow". Eventually, the logogram for "arrow" became a syllabogram to represent the sound /ti/. Similarly, other logograms also became syllabograms. On the flip side, if different similar-sounding words all have different signs, then there could have been multiple ways of writing the same sound. This is the case with the syllable /gu/, as there are fourteen symbols that all represent the sound /gu/, of which four are shown below. Note: When transcribing Sumerian syllabic signs into English, archaeologists use subscripts to mark different signs that have the same phonetic value. So in the previous example, gu is "flax", gu2 is "neck", gu3 is "voice", and so forth. And as you will see later, when transcribing logograms, capital letters are used, such as MUSHEN for "bird". Another peculiarity of the writing system is polyphony, where many words that have similar meaning but vastly different sounds are written with the same sign. For example, the word zu "tooth", ka "mouth", and gu "voice" are all written with the sign for gu3 "voice". In addition to use of phonetic signs to spell out new words, new signs were created by adding graphic elements to an existing sign or combining two existing signs. The additional graphic element could be geometric patterns without any meaning, or could be another cuneiform sign. As the system grew more complex, it became hard to tell if a sign was being used as a logogram or a syllabogram (or even which one of the potential sound values the syllabogram can have). To help with the ambiguity, several logograms were overloaded to become "determinatives". They would precede or follow a group of signs that make up a word, and gives a hint to meaning of the word by marking the broad category of objects or ideas the word belongs to. Note: When transcribing a determinative, archaeologists use small, superscript capital letters to write the Sumerian word that the determinative means, such as GISH for "wood". Another way to disambiguate the reading of a sign is to use "phonetic complements" placed before or after (or both ways) a sign that gives part of the word's pronunciation. For example, the word uga means 'raven' in Sumerian, and there is a logogram UGA for 'raven'. However, the same logogram can also be NAGA ('soap'), ERESH (name of a city), or NISABA (the patron goddess of Eresh). To explicitly spell out the word uga, not one but two phonetic complements were used, one placed before the logogram and one after. And to top it off, they put the determinative for bird, MUSHEN, after the group of signs to make it absolutely clear that this is a raven. Another interesting fact about Sumerian (and later cuneiform systems as well) is that the numeric system is both decimal (base-10) and sexagesimal (base-60). This means that there are unique symbols for each of the bases, as well as combinations and powers of the bases. So for example, the number nine would be represented by nine copies of the "1" sign, but the number ten would be represented only by the "10" sign. The number sixty would be represented only by the "60" sign, and the number seventy would be the "60" sign followed by the "10" sign. The sexagesimal part of this system survives in the modern era in units of time (seconds and minutes) and of trigonometry (360 degrees). Later Mesopotamian people (Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, etc) adopted this system but modified it so that it became positional (like ours). This reduced the system to only two symbols (the "1" and "10" signs) and the position a sign occur within a number changes its quanity, just like "1" in the number "100" is different from the "1" in the number "10,000" in our modern system. The Sumerian writing system was adopted and modified by other contemporaneous Mesopotamian people such as the Akkadians and the Babylonians. As a spoken language, Sumerian died out around the 18th century BCE, but continued as a "learned" written language (much like Latin was during the Middle Ages in Europe). In this way, Sumerian was used continually until the 1st century CE, making it one of the longest used writing system in history. Related Links Sumerian Language Page.

Zapotec

Quick Facts Type Logophonetic (?) Genealogy Mesoamerican Location Americas > Mesoamerica Time 500 BCE to 1000 CE Direction Variable (usually Top to Bottom) The Mexican state of Oaxaca was the heartland of one of the oldest and most enduring Mesoamerican polities. Between 300 BC and 700 AD, the ancient Zapotec state, centered at its capital of Monte Albán, flourished. In its long history, it not only fought and conquered many of its neighbors, but also engaged in diplomacy with the famous city of Teotihuacan. It is in these contexts that Zapotec writing is found. Compared to other major Mesoamerican writing systems, Zapotec is still poorly understood. First of all, the underlying language itself presents a problem. The first European record of the Zapotec language dates from no earlier than the 16th century, and the ancient form of Zapotec from a thousand years earlier is not documented at all. Efforts are underway to reconstruct this "proto-Zapotec" language from the modern Zapotec languages, but such tasks take years to refine. Another factor contributing to the lack of progress in Zapotec decipherment is the relatively meager number of texts available to researchers. On top of this problem, the known texts are usually very short, no more than 10 glyphs, making it difficult to discover grammatical structures like sentences. Mathematics and Calendrics What we do know about Zapotec derive mostly from comparing with similar features in other Mesoamerican writing systems. Like other Mesoamerican scripts, Zapotec used the bar-and-dot notation to represent numbers. In terms of time-keeping, the Zapotecs employed the 365-day solar calendar (called yza) and the 260-day sacred calendar (called piye). A detail explanation of the sacred calendar can be found at Mesoamerican Writing Systems, but in brief it can visualized as two interlocked cycles of 20 "day signs" and 13 numbers or "coefficients". The two cycles move in parallel, so a day with the 1st day sign and coefficient 1 will be followed by a day with the 2nd day sign and coefficient 2. The following is a list of day signs in the piye. However, even the list of days in the piye is controversial, as nearly every published paper presents a different list. The following list is from Javier Urcid (2000). Another cycle of time recorded on Zapotec texts is the Calendar Round, a 52-year cycle that interlocks the solar and sacred calendars. A year in the Calendar Round is identified by the date in the sacred calendar that corresponds to the first day in the solar year. Because of the way the mathematics works out, only four day signs in the piye can occur on the first day of the solar year. These four day signs are called "year bearers" because they "bear" the burden of the year. To graphically distinguish Calendar Round years from days in the piye, a special glyph in the shape of a headdress or crown is placed above the year bearer. The four year bearers are laa (lightning), china (deer), piya (soap plant), and xoo (earthquake). It is not known if the Zapotecs counted time in other calendrical cycles such as the solar calendar or "weeks" of 13 days called trecenas. Because the coefficients of the piye can only go up to 13, any glyph compound with a numeral higher than 13 can potentially be a day in a solar month, a solar month, or a trecena. One glyph, known as the glyph W due to its similarity to the letter, not only accompany numbers larger than 13 but also occur near Calendar Round and piye dates. However, mathematical simulation has shown that glyph W cannot form part of any of these three possibilities. Glyph W definitely plays a time-keeping role, but right now it's an enigma. Unlike later Mixtec and Aztec scripts, Zapotec was much more textual, possibly capable of representing sentences. Zapotec very well could be a logophonetic writing system, but likely not as extensively phonetic as Epi-Olmec or Maya. For instance, the number of non-calendrical glyphs range between 80 to 90, making it possible that Zapotec contained a mixture of logograms and phonograms. Also, the way signs are joined into compounds might indicate affixes, possibly spelled out phonetically, attached to a root logogram to form a noun or verb phrase. Some tantalizing clues come from Javier Urcid, whose studies have shown that possible instances of homophonic principle, or "rebus writing", are used in naming personages. He also demonstrated that grammatical constructs (like short sentences) might be present in some monuments (which you will see below). Historical Context of Zapotec Writing The Zapotec script has great antiquity, being one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica. The first examples of Zapotec writing are in the form of danzante slabs, stone monuments carved with the image of slain and mutilated captives and a brief inscriptions. The majority of danzantes are found in Monte Albán, but one is found in the nearby town of San José Mogote. While once the San José Mogote danzante was thought to be the most ancient Zapotec inscription (dated to 500 BC), there is now considerable argument against this date. However, regardless of the status of the San José Mogote slab, danzantes are generally dated to the period known as Monte Albán I (400 to 200 BCE), still making them the some of the earliest texts in Mesoamerica. The texts on danzante slabs vary greatly in content, but in the simplest form an inscription consists of a day in the sacred calendar. In ancient Oaxaca, a person is named for the day in the sacred calendar he or she was born on, so it is most likely that the danzantes depict and name the slain captive. So from its inception, Zapotec writing is used as a political tool to chronicle and glorify the the military prowess of the Zapotec state. Apart from the danzantes, there were other kinds of inscriptions. Stelae 12 and 13, which are very likely contemporary with the danzantes, not only display dates in the Calendar Round, but also show that the system is already textual because of the presence of non-calendrical signs. Later, during the period of Monte Albán II (200 BCE to 250 CE), the military use of Zapotec writing is taken to another level. Instead of depicting slain captives, these new monuments very likely record and commemorate conquests of other polities in the Valley of Oaxaca. These monuments are called conquest slabs, and they usually contain a central vertical glyphic sequence that consists of a variable glyph, a "mountain" glyph, and an inverted head. Generally speaking, in Mesoamerica, the word "mountain" or "hill" often appear as part of place names. The inverted head could be interpreted as a defeated enemy. This leads to the conclusion that the variable glyph must be the name of the place that was conquered by the Zapotecs. An example is the following (graciously provided by David R Hixson who runs the amazing Mesoamerican Photo Archives): By comparing the name of towns on these conquest slabs with names of towns on 15-th century Aztec manuscripts of tributes from Oaxaca, scholars have determined the size of the Monte Albán state when the slabs were made. It extended well outside the Valley of Oaxaca. So far monuments have been anonymous. However, a set of monuments located in the South Platform of Monte Albán not only reflects the martial nature of the Zapotec state, but depicts and names what appears to be a ruler. Furthermore, by comparing this group of monuments, Javier Urcid detect a "formula" or pattern of glyphs that might be a similar sentences with variations in subjects and objects. Images accompanying the texts on the South Platform monuments depict a ruler and bound captives, which leads to the interpretation of the glyphs (especially the "fish" and "knotted bag" glyphs) as related to glorification of the ruler by a display of his prisoners. You can see the in situ reproduction of these monuments at the Monte Albán South Platform Monuments section at the Mesoamerican Photo Archives. However, not all texts in Monte Albán are war-related. The Lápida de Bazán is thought to represent some form of diplomatic relationship between Monte Albán and Teotihuacán. The evidence is the figure on the left appears to wearing Teotihuacán-style clothing, and every well might have been a visitor from that great city in Central Mexico. The person on the right probably was a local ruler, dressed in local jaguar-style clothing. Due to lack of calendrical signs, the accompanying text might have recorded what the depicted event was. In addition to the Lápida de Bazán, there are many other clues about the relationship between the two metropolises in the early Classic. Some buildings in Monte Albán have Teotihuacano architectural influences. In Teotihuacán itself, there was a Zapotec barrio where a permanent Zapotec colony was established and flourished. At its peak between 100 and 600 CE, Monte Albán had as many as 30,000 inhabitants. However, after 700 CE, the population rapidly declined, and it probably ceased to be the capital of the Zapotec state. Regional states appeared, and the Monte Albán hegemony was at its end. The focus of writing in these new regional states shifted from warfare and diplomacy to royal lineage. Not surprisingly these new kind of monuments are called "Genealogical Registers" by archaeologists. Genealogical registers depict notable ancestors of the patrons who commissioned the work. They are visually separated into levels, usually two, each one with a couple engaging in some kind of activity. Often the couple on one level is older than the couple in the other, depicting most probably two generations. In the above example, the top level appears to be the older generation, as the beard on the man of that level seems to indicate. The characters at the top level are Lady 3 Eye, and Lord 1 or 2 Monkey (the number is damaged, but it is either 1 or 2 given the size of the damage). The lower register depicts Lady 10 Deer, and Lord 6 Soap Plant. At the top of the register there is a jaw-like opening, nicknamed "Jaw of Heaven" by Marcus and Flannery, from which some kind of supernatural descends. This supernatural is probably an ancestor, possibly the progenitor of the lineage or some other famous ancestor. The Zapotec system very likely was the source of the Mixtec system, which is characterized by a highly pictorial and minimal set of logograms, and by the use of the rebus principle for rough phonetic spelling of names. In fact, the Zapotec writing system started to be replaced by the early form of Mixtec script by the 10th century CE. When the Spanish conquistadores arrived in Oaxaca in the 16th century CE, the Zapotec script has long been forgotten, although the Zapotec language continues to be spoken to this date. More information can be found in Mesoamerican Writing Systems. Related Links Zapotec Writing at FAMSI. Monte Albán Gallery. Mesoamerican Photo Archives.

Syllabic
In a syllabic writing system, the overwhelming number of signs are used solely for their phonetic values. These phonetic signs are Syllabograms, meaning that they represent syllables rather than individual sound. A few non-phonetic are used for numbers, punctuation, and commonly used words.

Bengali

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 11th century CE to Present Direction Left to right Bengali is a Nagari-derived script that appeared in eastern South Asia around the 11th century CE. It is still currently used in Bangladesh, as well as the state of West Bengal in India (hence the script's name) on the eastern part of India. The old Bengali script (11th century CE) is also the parent to many other scripts of eastern India, such as #a @oriya#, Manipuri, and Maithili. The Bengali script is used to writer languages in eastern India such as Bengali, Assamese, and Manipuri. Once again, like other South Asian writing systems, vowels following a consonant other than the default /a/ is written with extra strokes, as in the following example: Related Links Languages and Scripts of India.

Brahmi

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 5th century BCE to 4th century CE Direction Variable (Horizontal) 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. This elegant script appeared in India most certainly by the 5th century BCE, but the fact that it had many local variants even in the early texts suggests that its origin lies further back in time. There are several theories on to the origin of the Brahmi script. The first theory is that Brahmi has a West Semitic origin. For instance, the symbol for a resembles Semitic letter 'alif. Similarly, dha, tha, la, and ra all appear quite close to their Semitic counterparts. Another theory, from a slightly different school of thought, proposes a Southern Semitic origin. Finally, the third theory holds that the Brahmi script came from Indus Script. However, at least in my personal opinion, the lack of any textual evidence between the end of the Harappan period at around 1900 BC and the first Brahmi and Kharoshthi inscriptions at roughly 500 BC makes the Indus origin of Brahmi highly unlikely. Yet on the other hand, the way Brahmi, and its relative Kharosthi, works is quite different from Semitic scripts, and may point to either a stimulus-diffusion or even indigenous origin. The situation is complex and confusing, and more research should be conducted to either prove or disprove any of the theories. 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. The following chart is the basic Brahmi script. There are many variations to the basic letter form, but I have simplified it here so that the most canonical shape is presented. And an example of strokes added to indicate different vowels following the consonants /k/ and /l/. The Brahmi script was the ancestor of all South Asian Writing Systems. In addition, many East and Southeast Asian scripts, such as Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, and even Japanese to a very small extent (vowel order), were also ultimately derived from the Brahmi script. Thus the Brahmi script was the Indian equivalent of the Greek script that gave arise to a host of different systems. You can take a look at the evolution of Indian scripts, or the evolution of Southeast Asian scripts. Both of these pages are located at the very impressive site Languages and Scripts of India. You can also take a look at Asoka's edict at Girnar, inscribed in the Brahmi script. Related Links Languages and Scripts of India. Eden"s Page: Scripts of all of Asia.

Buginese

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Southeast Asia > Indonesia Time 17th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Buginese script is a syllabic alphabet used to write the Buginese language as spoke on the island of Sulawesi (or Celebes) in central Indonesia. It is likely to have derived from the ancient Kawi of Java, and ultimately from the ancient Brahmi script of India. It is also named lontara', which means "palm leaves", indicating the most common medium of Buginese writing. And by extension, lontara' also came to mean a form of literature recording Buginese histories and geneologies. Each letter of the Buginese script carries a consonant and the inherent vowel of /a/. The only exception is the letter that represents only /a/, which is used only at the beginning of a word. The Buginese script uses extra strokes or diacritics to modify the inherent vowel of the basic letters. These strokes also work to modify the single a letter into other vowels occurring at the beginning of a word. The Buginese script is increasingly endangered as a living script, as the Buginese language is more commonly written in the Latin alphabet nowadays. The traditional lontara' script is relegated to ceremonial purposes and historical curiosity.

Burmese

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Southeast Asia Time 12th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Burmese or Myanmar script is a Brahmi-style syllabic alphabet, most likely adopted from the Mon script in the 12th century CE. Like other scripts in the Brahmi lineage, a single sign or letter represents a full syllable with the inherent vowel /a/. The only exception is the letter a which represents a vowel in the beginning of a word. In the above chart, the red text represents the traditional transliteration that corresponds to the letters' original Indian phonetic values. However, since Burmese has undergone phonetic changes since the 12th century CE, many of the letters no longer represent the sounds they had 800 years ago. The modern sounds that letters represent are therefore indicated in the blue texts surrounded by square brackets. Representation of syllables with vowels other than /a/ is by means of diacritics or additional strokes near the letter. In addition, because Burmese is a tonal language, these diacritics carry not only the vowel values but also tones. This means that the same vowel can be represented by several diacritics, each one of which carries a different tone. Burmese three major tones, namely "creaky", "high", and "low", and therefore each tone has a series of vowel diacritics, as illustrated in the chart below: Note: the "creaky" tone is a high tone with a short vowel length ending in a glottal closure. The other two tones are, as their names imply, high and low tones, and both have long vowel lengths. In the above example I used the letter ma, but the same system applies to all other letters, even including the vowel letter a. Hence to write vowels and/or tones other than the creaky /a/ in the initial position of a word, you can apply the same set of diacritics to the letter. There is also another set of vowel signs called akkhara to write vowels at the beginning of certain words (usually words borrowed from Indian languages), but not all vowel and tone combinations have akkhara letters. These are used mostly for historical reasons. To denote consonants that appear in positions other than the beginning of a syllable, two approaches are used. First, to represent a consonant at the end of a syllable, a hook-like stroke is placed above the letter to mute the vowel. Also, consonant cluster containing letters y, w, r, and h are possible in Brahmi. In these cases, special variants of these letters are used: Numbers in Burmese are positional:

Byblos

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Genealogy Unrelated Location West Asia Time 1500 BCE to 1400 BCE Direction Variable Byblos is an ancient Phoenician city along the coast of modern day Lebanon. Its name was the origin of the Greek word "biblion" which means "book", from which derived familiar words such as "bibliography" and "Bible". In short Byblos is nearly synonymous with writing. Ironically, Byblos was also home to a still poorly understood script employed roughly during the middle of the second millenium BCE. There are only a few short examples of this script, mainly on stone or metal. This script contains roughly one hundreds signs, which agrees with the number of signs necessary for a syllabary. The following is an example of the Byblos script.

Cherokee

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Genealogy Unrelated Location Americas > North America Time 1821 CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Cherokee syllabary was invented by a member of the Cherokee nation named Sequoya around 1821. The appearance of some of the signs indicate visual borrowing from the English alphabet, but the phonetic values of these signs do not correspond to their counterpart in English. In other words, Sequoyah simply took the shape of these English letters and assigned new syllabic values to them. The other signs do not resemble any English letter, and therefore were likely completely invented by Sequoya. The following chart lists all 85 signs in the Cherokee syllabary. Traditional transliteration letters are used as follows: The vowel written as v is really pronounced as a nasalized schwa. (Similar to en in taken, but without the [n] sound...and feel the vibration in the back of your nasal cavity) g stands for an unaspirated [k], like the k in sky. Similarly, gw is really unaspirated [kw] like qu in squash. The one instance of the syllabic symbol ka is pronounced aspirated, phonetically [kh], very much like how the British say the word 'car' d is an unaspirated [t], like t in stop, while t is aspirated, like t in to dz can either be like the ts in cats, or ch in church The Cherokee syllabary gained almost universal acceptance in the Cherokee community after its introduction in 1821. Cherokee was used in both printed as well as hand-written media, and included publications such as newspapers, magazines, and books. The syllabary has survived as a living script until the modern day, but its use has been greatly reduced. In the modern world, a very important application of the Cherokee syllabary is to preserve Cherokee religious works and traditional medicine. Related Links SE-GWO-YA was Here.about the earliest Cherokee text and its possible inception Freeware Cherokee Font.