4、压码看电影学习法系列贴：（多语言入门）字母表汇总

Syriac

Quick Facts Type Consonantal Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Aramaic Location West Asia Time 1st century CE to Present Direction Right to Left The Syriac script is one of the myriad of Aramaic variants that appeared in the ancient Fertile Crescent around the 1st century CE. It was used to write Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Assyrians, in northern Mesopotamia (the area near where the modern nations of Syria, Turkey and Iraq intersect) and particularly focused around the city of Edessa. The earliest Syriac script is called Estrangela, whose name is derived from the Greek word strongulos meaning 'rounded'. Estrangela inscriptions date from as far back as the year 6 CE, and by the 3rd century CE the Bible and Christian theological works had been translated into Syriac. As the city of Edessa became an important Christian center, Syriac spread throughout region as far as Palestine, and even travelled down the Silk Road and all the way to China. In the year 489 CE, a schism occurred in the Syrian Christian church between the followers of Nestorius of Persia and Jacob of Edessa. This not only split the church but also started the process of splitting the Estrangela script into two branches. The western branch, known as Jacobite, or more correctly Serto, appeared around the 8th century CE and took a much more cursive look than Estrangela. The eastern branch, called Nestorian, developed out of Estrangela more slowly, only showing a slightly distinct look by the 12th century CE. The following chart illustrates all three types of Syriac scripts, Estrangela, Serto, and Nestorian. Originally, like Aramaic, Estrangela did not have any signs to mark vowels. However, the potential of confusion and ambiguous reading was rampant, and this became enough of a nuisance that not one but two systems of marking vowels appeared. Around 700 CE, the Serto script adopted Greek vowel letters, and modified them into vowel diacritics. A Serto vowel diacritic is usually written above the consonant letter that the vowel follows. However, if a consonant letter takes up a lot of vertical space, the vowel diacritic can occur under it. Another system, located in the East where the Nestorian script is evolving, appeared earlier during the 4th century CE. In this system, modified versions of the letters y and w were used for the sounds , , and [o], while new diacritics were created to spell the sounds [a], [a:], [e], and [e:]. It is thought that this method of vowel marking influenced how vowels are represented in Hebrew. In the previous illustration, the blue boxes in the Nestorian section represent consonant letters that the vowel diacritics attach to. Note that a modified y or w diacritic is written after the consonant letter, but as Syriac is written from right to left, the vowel diacritic will appear to the left of the consonant letter. Miraculously, even through countless invasions, political turmoil, and religious persecution, the Syriac-speaking people endured. Still known today as Assyrians, they continue to use Aramaic liturgically, publish newspapers, and have an active web presence. As Syriac Aramaic has changed little in the last two thousand years, Assyrians are proud that they speak a language with a direct link to the ancient world and to Jesus Christ. Related Links Learn Assyrian (Syriac-Aramaic) Online. Learn Assyrian Aramaic. Assyrians after Assyria. Nineveh Online.

South Arabian

Quick Facts Type Consonantal Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic Location West Asia > Arabia Peninsula Time 500 BCE to 600 CE Direction Right to Left The South Arabian alphabet was used primarily in the Sabaean and Minaean kingoms in the Southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. It is thought to have diverged from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet as early as 1300 BCE, and a developing form appeared in Babylonia and near Elath of the Gulf of Aqaba around the 8th/7th centuries BCE. The South Arabian proper appears around 500 BCE, and continued to be used until around 600 CE (at which time, of course, the entire Arabian Peninsula was converted to Islam and Arabic became the most important language). There were also contemporary relatives of this alphabet further to the north to write down the Thamudic, Lihyanite, and Safaitic languages. This script was transported across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it transformed into classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez) and modern-day Amharic. Related Links Written in Stone: Inscriptions from the National Museum of Saudi Arabia.has good pictures of various South Arabian scripts, although it makes dubious statements that Aramaic came from the northern variant of South Arabian, and that Thamudic dates back to 1500 BCE.

Thamudic

Quick Facts Type Consonantal Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic Location West Asia > Arabia Peninsula Time 200 BCE to 300 CE Direction Right to Left The Thamudic script is a northern variant of the South Arabian script. It was used to write the Thamudic language (a South Semitic language related to Arabic) in northern Arabia and part of the Sinai Peninsula. Similar scripts were used by nearby languages such as Safaitic and Lihyanite. The majority of Thamudic scripts occur on rock cliffs and boulders, but there was enough textual evidence to reconstruct an alphabet of 28 letters. Usually, Thamudic was written from right to left like other Semitic scripts, but occasionally it was written from left to right, and even top to bottom. Related Links Written in Stone: Inscriptions from the National Museum of Saudi Arabia.good pictures of various South Arabian scripts, although it makes dubious statements that Aramaic came from the northern variant of South Arabian, and that Thamudic dates back to 1500 BCE. Nabataean Writing.an interesting page on languages and scripts (including Thamudic) used in the Nabataean area in the late antiquity.

Tifinagh is the traditional writing system of the Tuareg people, who are scattered throughout different countries of northern Africa such as Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Burkana Faso. It is the sole descendent of the more widespread ancient script, and ultimately derives from the script. In fact, the name Tifinagh is thought by some modern scholars to mean "Phoenician/Punic letters" (finagh being derived from Punic). Tifinagh is not used widely and certainly not in public contexts such as newspaper, literature, or history. Rather, it is instead employed for recreational or personal purposes such as letters, diaries, and household decorations.
The following is the traditional Tifinagh alphabet.

Like other scripts in the Phoenician family, Tifinagh is an abjad or a consonantal alphabet, meaning that the letters only represent consonants. Vowels are left unwritten except occasionally at the end of a word by the signs for /a/, for /i/, and for /u/.
Another special case at the end of word is the feminine ending /-t/. In some instances, the letter is joined with the previous letter to form a ligature (that is, a sign that is a compound of two other signs).


Recently the government of Morocco adapted Tifinagh as the "official" alphabet to write Berber languages in Morocco that up to this point did not have a writing system or were written in either Arabic or Latin alphabets. Signs were added to the traditional Tifinagh to denote vowels as well as sounds not found in the original alphabet. This new system is called Neo-Tifinagh, and it is Tamazight, Tachelhit, Kabyle
Tifinagh is part of the Unicode range, from U+2D30 to U+2D7F.

Ugaritic

Quick Facts Type Consonantal Alphabetic Genealogy Cuneiform Location West Asia Time 1300 BCE to 800 BCE Direction Left to Right The Ugaritic script was really one of a kind, for it was a cuneiform alphabet (old Persian really was closer to a syllabary). Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provided the first evidence of the "modern" ordering of letters, which in Ugaritic went like 'a, b, g, and so on, that eventually gave the order of letters in the Greek and Roman abecedaries. This writing system was employed in the city of Ugarit, located in western Syria from around 1300 BCE. It later was supplanted by the West Semitic, Proto-Sinaitic-descended scripts. Related Links Ugaritic font at RK Fonts.

Armenian Segmental Alphabet Nearly all the sounds in a language can be represented by an appropriate consonant and vowel alphabet. However, just take a look at English spelling and you can almost feel we"re back to logographic systems :) ! Armenian

Quick Facts Type C&V Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic Location West Asia > Armenia Time 5th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Armenian alphabet was created in the 5th century CE by Saint Mesrop under influences from Greek (as reflected in the alphabetical order and the left-to-right direction of writing). The alphabet's original 36 letters were well suited for the Old Armenian language. Two additional letters, "o" and "fe", were added later during the late Middle Ages to write loan words, bringing the total number of letters to 38. The Old Armenian language was the only written form of the language from the 5th to the 19th century, while in the intervening centuries, phonological changes have split the Armenian language into two dialects, namely Eastern and Western. However, only the Eastern dialect is taught as the written form at school nowadays as it is closer to the historical Old Armenian form, even though the Western dialect is more widely spoken. In the following chart, both the Eastern (EA) and Western (WA) phonetic values for each letter are given. The name of the letters are given in the Eastern dialect, but you can directly translate any name to its Western version by simply mapping all the Eastern phonetic values to their Western counterparts.

Copyright © 1996-2010, Lawrence Lo. All Rights Reserved

Coptic

Quick Facts Type C&V Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Greek Location Africa > Egypt Time 2nd century BCE to Present Direction Left to Right The Coptic script takes its name from the Egyptian Christians, the Copts. Strangely enough, the word "Copt" was originally came from the Greek word "aiguptios", meaning 'Egyptian'. It was shortened to "guptios", then transmitted into Arabic as "qopt", and finally back into Egyptian as "coptos". As the name implies, the Coptic script represented the Egyptian language just as Egyptian hieroglyphics had done for 3000 years before. The Coptic script was adopted from the Greek alphabet approximately around the 2nd century CE. The Copts adopted the Greek alphabet completely even though many of the Greek letters represent sounds that didn't exist in Egyptian. Instead they kept the extraneous letters for their numeric values. In addition, the Copts added 5 letters, taken from the Egyptian script, that represent sounds that don't exist in Greek. The final count of signs was 32, and neatly represented the Egyptian language at the beginning of the first millenium CE. Unlike the three Egyptian that preceeded it, the Coptic script represents both consonants and vowels. This has helped scholars immeasurably in reconstructing the history of the Egyptian language as well as provide some insight into how Egyptian words were really pronounced. The Coptic script replaced the Demotic as the commonly used script in Egypt. It eventually went out of fashion around the 14th century when Arabic became the predominant language in Egypt. The Coptic script and the language it represents were restricted to liturgical purposes in the Coptic Orthodox Church. The following is the Coptic alphabet. The letters in blue denote the phonetic value of the letter, while the words in purple are the names of the letters.

Cyrillic

Quick Facts Type C&V Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Greek Location Europe Time 9th century CE to Present Direction Left to Right The Cyrillic alphabet was traditionally one of the two scripts invented to write Slavic languages, the other being Glagolitic. However, Cyrillic emerged as the more widespread of the two, probably due to its similarity to the Greek alphabet. At its height during the Soviet Union, Cyrillic was used to write not only Slavic languages such as Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, etc., but also languages from other family like Mongolian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Azeri, Tajik, and so on. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many of these languages have started to move toward other alphabets, such as Arabic and Roman. It is rather clear to see that a majority of the Cyrillic letters were derived from Greek. The backward N which stands for /i/ comes from Greek eta η. Some of the letters (such as sibilants) were borrowed from Hebrew and Syriac alphabets. Quick note: Ъ and Ь used to represent a very short high back vowel and a very short high front vowel, respectively. They are now silent but mark the quality of the consonant preceding it. Ь means that the previous consonant is palatalized, while Ъ means that the preceding consonant is not palatalized even in a palatalizing environment. (Palatalization is the tendency of vowels like and [e] to push the tongue toward the front of the mouth while pronouncing a preceding consonant, causing the consonant to change a little, like [t] to become [ts], [s] to [š], etc). The following is the modern Cyrillic alphabet as adopted to write Russian. Each of the Cyrillic letters is actually a pair, the upper-case letter on the left and the lower-case letter on the right. Roman letters in blue represent traditional transliteration of Cyrillic. The purple letters are the phonetic value of the Cyrillic letter.

Copyright © 1996-2010, Lawrence Lo. All Rights Reserved

Etruscan

Quick Facts Type C&V Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Greek Location Europe > Italy Time 700 BCE to 100 CE Direction Right to Left The Etruscans were the first people in the Italic peninsula to learn to write. They adopted the Euboean Greek alphabet, and from them writing spread to other cultures of the Italic peninsula such as the Romans. The Etruscan language has never been conclusively shown to be related to any other language in the world. The problem is compounded by the fact that the textual corpus is limited in scope, mostly from tombstones. Imagine trying to reconstruct any language from texts in cemetaries. Chances are you'll get geneological words, personal titles, and brief dedicatory sentences. There are some bilingual texts with Phoenician, but they are short and few in number. As a consequence, the Etruscan language remains poorly understood. The following table represent various stages of the Etruscan alphabet. The "Model" alphabet is basically the Euboean Greek alphabet, and was not used but probably learned as part of a literate person's training. The "Archaic" alphabet was used between the 8th and 4th century BCE, before the Etruscans were part of the Roman Empire. The "Late" version was used from the 4th century BCE to the 1st century CE, at a time when Etruscan as a language was rapidly being replaced by Latin. The knowledge of Etruscan finally died out by the 1st century CE. As the above table indicates, the source of the Etruscan alphabet is the Euboean variant of the Greek alphabet. This explains the presence of the letters F and Q, and the usage of H for the [h] sound (instead of [e:]) and X for [ks] (instead of [kh]). The adoption possibly occurred as early as the 8th century BCE, before the general standardization of the Greek alphabet, as indicated by the archaic shapes of the letters, and the and the direction of writing (which is either right-to-left or boustrophedon). The Etruscan language did not have many of the sounds that the Greek language had. So while they did adopt nearly all letters in the Greek alphabet, they left many of them unused (such as Β, Δ, Ζ, Ο. In addition, they took Γ and changed it to represent the [k] sound. This, in turn, means that there are now three letters that represent the [k] sound, namely C, K, and Q. The Etruscans decided to use all of them, but each one in a prescribed environment: K appears before A, C before I and E, and Q before V. The letter F represented either the sound [w] or [v], as it is in Euboean Greek. However, Etruscan did have the sound [f]. In the early stages of the alphabet, the digraph (HF) was used to write the [f] sound. Later on, the letter 8 replaced *HF*. The Etruscan alphabet was the foundation for many other alphabets such as Oscan, Umbrian, and maybe even Futhark. However, its descendent, the Latin alphabet, would come to be one of the most widely used alphabets in the world.

Faliscan

Quick Facts Type C&V Alphabetic Genealogy Proto-Sinaitic > Greek Location Europe > Italy Time 400 BCE to 250 BCE Direction Right to Left The Faliscans were one of the many ethnic groups of ancient Italy before the Romans dominated the peninsula. In fact, they were not terribly different from the Romans. Both held small territories but lived under the aegis the Etruscans. The Faliscans were neighbors of the Romans, as their main city, Falerii (now Cívita Castellana), was only 72 km (or 45 miles) from Rome. The Faliscan language was also the closest language to Latin within the larger Italic language branch of the Indo-European family. Like the Romans, the Faliscans also adapted the Etruscan alphabet for their language. However, the Faliscan language is not too well-known, as only 100 inscriptions have been found in the area surrounding Cívita Castellana. The following is the Faliscan alphabet. Like other ethnic groups of pre-Roman Italy, the Faliscan language and script ceased from use as the Roman state conquered the Peninsula. Because of their proximity to Rome, the Faliscans became homogenized as Romans much earlier than other groups such as Etruscans and Oscans. After 250 BCE, the Faliscan culture disappeared from history.