Category Archives: Rating: 4 “Huh, interesting!”

Tibetan — 630 AD, Tibet

Posted on April 13, 2011 by ducky

According to Tibetan tradition, Thonmi Sambhota went to India in about 630 AD to study writing, and devised a script based on Gupta or Siddham for the Tibetan language. Tibetan has some differences from mainline Brahmi-derived scripts.  For consonant clusters, … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 1 Comment

Siddham — 650 AD, India

Posted on April 12, 2011 by ducky

Buddhists in around 400 AD wrote Sanskrit with a version of Gupta script that eventually diverged into Siddham script.  At first, writing down the Sanskrit was used mostly as a memorization aid, but when Buddhism spread to the much-more literate … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, now ceremonial, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 2 Comments

Khojki — 1350 AD, Pakistan

Posted on April 10, 2011 by ducky

Khojki was developed in around 1350 AD by Pir Sadardin in the Sindh region of Pakistan for recording Ismaili (a branch of Shia Islam) religious literature, mostly in the Sindhi language.  As with its sibling Gurmukhi, it is very similar … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, now ceremonial, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | Leave a comment

Gurmukhi — 1539 AD, India/Pakistan

Posted on April 10, 2011 by ducky

In about 1539 AD, the second Sikh Guru Angad Dev Ji developed a script, Gurmukhi, from Punjabi Landa.  While he used this script to write religious works in several different languages, it came to be a symbol of Punjabi — … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, inventor known, National pride, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 4 Comments

Gibberish font — ~2000 AD, USA

Posted on April 1, 2011 by ducky

There is a highly entertaining site “Hanzismatter” which is dedicated to helping people figure out just what exactly that tattoo they got really says in Chinese or Japanese. The authors of that site were somewhat puzzled by the number of … Continue reading →

Posted in Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", stupid | 2 Comments

Modern Yi — 1974 AD, China

Posted on March 21, 2011 by ducky

In 1974, the Chinese government decided to make a syllabary for the Yi language, based on the symbols in Classic Yi.  As with the Zhuang in the 1950s, it isn’t clear to me why if it was such a good … Continue reading →

Posted in Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | Leave a comment

Taiwanese kana — ~1900 AD, Taiwan

Posted on March 20, 2011 by ducky

As a result of losing the first Sino-Japanese war, China had to cede Taiwan to Japan in 1895. The Japanese went through phases of let-the-Taiwanese-be-Taiwanese alternating with phases where they tried to assimilate the Taiwanese into Japanese culture. During one … Continue reading →

Posted in government-mandated, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 3 Comments

Classic Yi — 700? 1485? AD, China

Posted on March 17, 2011 by ducky

For a very long time, the Yi people used a logographic script to write their language. Their tradition says that it was created by someone named Aki in around 700 AD, but the earliest record is from 1485 AD. Mostly … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 1 Comment

Sawndip — <689 AD, China

Posted on March 15, 2011 by ducky

The Zhuang people of southern China have been using an augmented Chinese script for over 1300 years called Sawndip.  This writing system was used extensively in popular culture (songs, poems, ceremonies, and some literature) and religion, but not governmental documents. … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 4 Comments

Chu nom — ~1200 AD, Vietnam

Posted on March 13, 2011 by ducky

Like Japanese and Korean, Vietnam was under the cultural influence of China for a long time and thus started out by using the Chinese script.  Unlike Japanese and Korean, however, Vietnamese is not agglutinative — most of its words are … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 1 Comment