4、压码看电影学习法系列贴：（多语言入门）字母表汇总

South Asian Writing Systems Comparison

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 5th century BCE to Present Direction Left to Right The scripts of South Asia all share a common root, and what is a better to see their affinity than to see their letters in side-by-side comparisons. To that end, here is an interactive chart to compare letters from major South Asian scripts. Please be patient. There are a lot of image files so this could take a minute to load.

Sinhala

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 8th century CE to Present CE Direction Left to Right Sinhala has been a distinctive script used to write the Sinhalese language spoken in Sri Lanka. Sinhala is a most closely related to the Grantha script, but also takes some elements from the Kadamba script as well. The following is the basic Sinhala script. Like other South Asian scripts, a Sinhala letter has an inherent vowel of /a/. To change this vowel to another, extra strokes called matras are added to the basic letter, as in the following example: Related Links Languages and Scripts of India. Eden"s Page: Scripts of all of Asia.

Tagalog

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Southeast Asia > The Philipines Time 14th to 17th century CE Direction Left to Right Tagalog is the most widely spoken tongue in the Philipines today. Nowadays it is written in a Roman alphabet, but prior to Spanish colonial rule, Tagalog speakers employed a syllabic alphabet named Baybayin to record their language. The Tagalog Baybayin is one of the many indigenous scripts of pre-colonial Philipines The development of scripts in Philipines remains somewhat of a mystery due to destruction of native literature by Spanish authorities as well as poor preservation of the plant-based writing material in the Tropics. It is thought that scripts in Philipines derived from the Kawi script of Java around the 14th century CE. Ultimately, scripts in Philipines derive from Indian scripts. Like Indian scripts, every Tagalog letter inherently carries the vowel /a/. Furthermore, in order to represent a different vowel, diacritical marks called kudlit are added to the basic letter. In the case of Tagalog, a dot above the letter represents either /e/ or /i/, whereas a dot below represents /o/ or /u/. The following is the basic Tagalog script: The following are the vowel diacritics: Originally the Baybayin did not represent consonants occuring at the end of the syllable, even though the syllabic structure of Tagalog does allow an ending consonant. During the 17th century CE, in order to more fully represent Spanish loanwords, especially those used to translate the Bible, the Spanish priest Father Francisco López introduced a new kudlit in the form of the plus sign or cross (+) which if placed under a letter that removes the vowel. The Tagalog script was largely abandoned by the 17th century CE and was replaced by the Spanish (Roman) alphabet. Modern Tagalog writing employs the Roman letters A, B, K, D, E, G, H, I, L, M, NG, O, P, R, S, T, U, W, and Y.

Takri

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia > Western Himalayas Time 13th Century CE to 19th Century CE Direction Left to Right The Takri script derives from the Sarada script and was used in the western regions of the Himalayas. By the early 20th century, the Takri script has been replaced by Devanagari. The following is the basic Takri script. Similar to other South Asian scripts, representation of vowels other than /a/ is achieved using diacritical marks called matras placed around the letter. Related Links Languages and Scripts of India.

Tamil

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 8th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Tamil script evolved from an ancient southern form of the Brahmi script, but was also influenced by the Grantha script. It is currently used to write the Tamil language in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu as well as in Sri Lanka. Interestingly, the Tamil language is one of the oldest recorded languages in southern India. The earliest texts, written in the southern variant of Brahmi, date from just before the 1st century CE. Overtime the script changed, and by the 8th century CE the Tamil script has evolved into more or less its modern form. The following is the basic Tamil script. Unlike other South Asian scripts, Tamil does not have signs for voiceless aspirated (such as /kh/), voiced (/g/), and voiced aspirated stops (/gh/), which explains the relatively small number of signs in the Tamil script compared to other South Asian scripts. To write some of these sounds, some signs have multiple sound values: stands for both /ka/ and /ga/, for both /ca/ and /sa/, for /ta/, /da/, and /ða/, for /pa/ and /ba/, and so on. Sometimes these phonetic alterations are conditioned by the sound's position in the word (such as is /pa/ at the beginning of word or after a voiceless consonant, and /ba/ between vowels or after /m/), while other times they are somewhat random (such as can be both /ca/ and /sa/ at the beginning of a word). This confusion is due to phonological changes not reflected in the script, and to loanwords from Sanskrit and nearby languages. Borrowings from Sanskrit also added some special letters to Tamil. The last row of six letters are called Grantha letters and have been used to write Sanskrit loanwords. Nowadays they are used to write words with English origin as well. Similar to other South Asian scripts, a Tamil letter carries the inherent vowel of /a/. To change this vowel to another, extra strokes or signs are placed around the letter, as indicated by the following chart. Even the absence of the vowel is indicated by a dot written, called virama, above the letter. While the diacritics for nearly all the vowels are relatively identical, the diacritics for /u/ and /u:/ vary between letters, as illustrated in the following example: Another interesting feature of the Tamil script is how consonant clusters are written. In other South Asian scripts, letters are joined together to form a single sign, which often does not resemble the original letters. Tamil, on the other hand, each consonant in the cluster (except the last one) is represented by the corresponding letter plus the virama on top. Related Links Tamil transliteration and pronunciation.

Telugu

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location South Asia Time 18th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Telugu script is used to write the Telugu language which is spoken in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is closely related to the Kannada script and is derived from the Old Kannada script. The following is the basic Telugu script. 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.

Thai

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Southeast Asia > Thailand Time 1283 CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Thai script is a syllabic alphabet based on the Brahmi script adapted to write the Thai or Siamese language. Its invention is attributed to King Ramkhamhaeng, who reigned from 1275 to 1317. It is also possible that the Khmer alphabet might have had an influence on the Thai alphabet. The oldest Thai inscription dates from 1283. The Thai script has some very complex rules on how letters are pronounced. Often multiple letters represent the same sound. This is partially due to the fact that many sounds found in Indian languages did not exist in the Thai language, so letters representing similar sounds in Indian languages came to represent the same sound in Thai, and also due to phonological changes in the Thai language in the past hundreds of years that have merged different sounds into the a single sound. On the other hand, the sounds of many Thai letters differ depending on whether the letter occurs at the start or the end of a syllable. There are only six consonants that can end a syllable, namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, and /ng/, but nearly all letters can occur at the end of a syllable (but pronounced as one of these six consonants). The following is the basic Thai alphabet. Note that the sound the letter stands for at the beginning of a syllable is written as C-, where as the sounds at the end of the syllable is written as -C. You might have noticed the blue letters L, M, and H, below the phonetic values of the letters (the text in red). These denote the "class" the letters belong to. Another peculiar characteristic of the Thai alphabet is that each letter is classified into one of three classes: low, middle, and high. We will revisit these classes later. Like other Brahmi-derived scripts, a Thai letter used as the initial consonant of a syllable also carries the inherent vowel /ɔ/. When the letter occurs at the beginning of a consonant cluster or at the end of a syllable the inherent vowel is left unpronounced. However, unlike other related scripts which usually use a mark to indicate that the inherent vowel is not pronounced, Thai does not make use of this mark, so often it becomes somewhat confusing to the beginning learner as to which letter's inherent vowels should be pronounced and which shouldn't be. #> In order to represent a different vowel other than the inherent, extra strokes or marks are added around the basic letter. They are illustrated in the following chart: Not sure what some of the sounds stand for? Visit the Phonetics page for more details. In addition to the typical Thai letters and vowel markers, loan words from Sanskrit and Pali (a South Asian language related to Sanskrit) employ four special letters and four special vowel markers. Thai is a tonal language, meaning that in the pitch just as important to the correct pronunciation of the syllable as its sounds. There are five tones in Thai, low, middle, high, falling, and rising. To represent these tones, there are four tone marks in Thai, with the unmarked letter denoting the fifth tone. However, it is not as simple as it sounds. The real tone of a syllable is indicated by the tone mark combined with the class of the letter, conditioned by whether the syllable ends with a stop consonant and whether the vowel is short or long. It is best illustrated in the following grid. The combinations with no tone mark might be a little bit confusing. First of all, the headings that include V and C denote the ending sequence of sounds of a syllable. VL represents a long vowel, VS means a short vowel, CN represents a nasal consonant (/m/, /n/, /ng/), and CS represents a stop consonant (/p/, /t/, /k/). Sounds placed inside parenthesis means that the sounds may or may not occur. For example the sequence -VL(CN) stands for syllables ending in VL (a long vowel), and VLCN (a long vowel followed by nasal consonant like /m/, /n/, or /ng/). Equivalently, the examples in Thai also reflect the sound sequence. The vowel markers on top of the black letter denote the long vowel /i:/ and the short vowel /i/. The greyed out letter means that the sound may or may not occur, and thus is equivalent to (CN). There is no space or any kind of separator between words, so all the words in a sentence form one long block of letters. The only division, a space, occurs between sentences or phrases. The direction of writing, like other Brahmi-derived scripts, runs horizontally from left to right, and then downward when the horizontal space fills up.

Tibetan

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Central Asia > Tibet Time 7th Century CE to Present Direction Left to Right Tibetan is one of the oldest Sino-Tibetan language to be recorded. The earliest Tibetan inscriptions date from 7th to 8th century CE in what is called the dbu can (which translates into "with a head") script, which also appeared on manuscripts from around 11th CE and remained until the modern day in the form of printed Tibetan text. Another script tradition, the dbu med ("without a head", "acephalous"), appearing first around the 12th century CE. The main difference between the two script traditions is that the dbu can script has the top line (hence the name "with a head") and less cursive than the dbu med script. The origin of the Tibetan script is rather obscure. Tibetan Buddhist tradition states that it was created by Minister Thon mi Sambhota in northeastern India by order of the Tibetan king Srong btsan sgam po. On the other hand, the Bon po religious tradition maintains that the script came from Iranian or Central Asian origins. However, no matter how it came into Tibetan, the script's structure clearly suggests that its ultimate ancestor is the Brahmi script of India: (a) each sign is actually a syllable consisting of a consonant plus the vowel /a/; (b) the ordering of the characters are same as in Brahmi; and (c) the way the vowels /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/ are represented by marks above and below the signs. The following is a list of all the signs in the dbu can script. The first line is the Tibetan sign, and the second line is the traditional transliteration of the sign that reflected how the sign was pronounced in the 7th century CE (see below). Also, notice the dot to the upper right of every sign. When it is present, the sign is meant to be syllabic, i.e. Ca, but without it, it becomes only the consonant. Retroflex (apico-palatal) consonants (/t/ and /d/) occur only in loanwords from Sanskrit. In these cases, the regular signs for /t/ and /d/, respectively, are flipped horizontally to represent these sounds. Syllables with vowels other than /a/ is denoted by a set of vowel marks above or below the consonant sign. Hence the default vowel of /a/ is replaced with the vowel of the mark. Initial vowels are denoted by writing the /a/ signs with the desired vowel mark. The writing system of Tibetan is incredibly conservative, to the point that a written word would sound nothing like the spoken word. Phonological changes since the 7th century CE include simplification of consonant clusters and development of tones, but the writing system has remained formalized and unchanged since the 7th century CE. For example, the word written as brgyad (which means "eight") is now pronounced as /gye/. However, there is really no way to ameliorate this situation since there are thousands of mutually unintelligible Tibetan dialects, all of which use the same writing system.

Tocharian

Quick Facts Type Syllabic Alphabetic Genealogy Brahmi Location Central Asia Time 6th to 8th Century CE Direction Left to Right Tocharian was an Indo-European language spoken in Chinese Turkestan. Interestingly, it does not belong to any known Indo-European branch, but instead represents it own group. There were two major Tocharian dialects, namely Kuchean and Turfanian. The difference between them are quite pronounced and many linguists actually propose that they are different languages within a Tocharian branch of Indo-European. However, despite their phonological differences, they share the same basic script. The Tocharian script was derived from the Brahmi (or a close variant), and therefore very similar to South Asian scripts. There are two type of basic letters. One type represent a single vowel and is used only at the beginning of a word. The second kind of letters represent a consonant plus the inherent vowel /a/. The following chart illustrates the word-initial vowel letters and consonant letters. To represent a vowel other than /a/, the consonant letters are modified with extra strokes. These strokes occur above or below the letters themselves. There are also additional strokes to indicate nasalization or aspiration at the end of a syllable: Tocharians disappeared from the archaeological record after the 8th century CE as the other ethnic groups moved across Central Asia and absorbed the Tocharians into their own cultures. It is only in the 20th century that Tocharians have been rediscovered.

Consonantal Alphabet or Abjad
Consonantal alphabets are also known as abjads, and are all descendents of the Proto-Sinaitic script. In a "pure" consonantal alphabet, vowels are not written. However, nearly consonantal alphabets use certain conventions to

Arabic

Quick Facts Type Consonantal Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Aramaic Location West Asia, Africa Time 3rd century CE to Present Direction Right to Left Due to the influence of Islam, the Arabic alphabet is one of the most widespread writing systems in the world, found in large parts of Africa and Western and Central Asia, as well as in ethnic communities in East Asia, Europe, and the Americas. While originally used to write the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet has been adopted by other groups to write their own languages, such as Persian, Pashto, Urdu, and more. Although Arabic inscriptions are most common after the birth of Islam (7th century CE), the origin of the Arabic alphabet lies deeper in time. The Nabataeans, which established a kingdom in what is modern-day Jordan from the 2nd century BCE, were Arabs. They wrote with a highly cursive Aramaic-derived alphabet that would eventually evolve into the Arabic alphabet. The Nabataeans endured until the year 106 CE, when they were conquered by the Romans, but Nabataean inscriptions continue to appear until the 4th century CE, coinciding with the first inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet (which is also found in Jordan). Generally speaking, there are two variants to the Arabic alphabet: Kufic and Naskhi. The Kufic script is angular, which was most likely a product of inscribing on hard surfaces such as wood or stone, while the Naskhi script is much more cursive. The Kufic script appears to be the older of the scripts, as it was common in the early history of Islam, and used for the earliest copies of the Qu'ran. The following is an example of the Kufic script. This is part of a commemorative tablet dating to the 11th century CE and found in Toledo, Spain (which was controlled by Arabs at that time). 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. One interesting feature of Arabic is the multiple forms of a single letter. Depending on where in a word a letter appears, it could appear as an initial form (beginning of word), final form (end of word), or medial form (anywhere else). In addition, if the word has only one letter, than the isolated form is used. Like other Proto-Sinaitic-derived scripts, Arabic doesn't have letters for vowels. However, there is a system to marking vowels. Short vowels are represented by diacritics above or below a letter (see below). Long vowels are represented by using the short-vowel diacritics plus the letters alif, wa:w, ya: to represent the sounds [a:], [u:], and [i:], respectively. (Note that in the following example, the big dot is not a diacritic but is part of the letter nun) In addition to the vowel markers, Arabic also has several other diacritics. The hamza, which looks like C, denotes the glottal stop (the letter alif used to represent the glottal stop, but has become more of a placeholder for vowel-initial words). The hamza requires a "seat" letter (such as alif but also wa:w and ya:) to anchor onto. Another diacritic is the suku:n, which looks like a circle and is placed on top of a letter to denote the absense of any vowel. Finally, the diacritic shadda, which resembles W, represents the doubling of a consonant. And finally, Arabic uses a 10-base positional number system:

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