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

Gugyeol — 950? AD, Korea

Posted on March 10, 2011 by ducky

Gugyeol, also transliterated as Kwukyel,  and also sometimes called Tho, was developed to help convert Chinese literature into understandable Korean.  The Chinese characters and word order were preserved, but characters for word endings, particles, and some verb forms were tacked … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 3 Comments

Hyangchal — 950? AD, Korea

Posted on March 9, 2011 by ducky

Hyangchal — literally “vernacular letters” — borrowed the shapes of Chinese characters, but used them exclusively to represent the sounds of the Korean spoken language.  There are not very many documents in Hyangchal, but there are some poems written in … Continue reading →

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

Idu — 1390? AD, Korea

Posted on March 8, 2011 by ducky

As in Japan, Koreans first started writing with Chinese script, but Chinese script didn’t work well to write Korean for similar reasons that it didn’t work well for Japanese.  (Japanese and Korean are syntactically very similar.) One thing the Koreans … Continue reading →

Posted in Evolved slowly from parent, Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 3 Comments

Kanji — 600? AD, Japan

Posted on March 6, 2011 by ducky

Kanji — the Japanese adaption of Chinese script — was the first script used to write Japanese.  Kanji is very very similar to Chinese script, but unsurprisingly, the two scripts have diverged over the course of fourteen hundred years (or … Continue reading →

Posted in Evolved slowly from parent, Logograms, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | Leave a comment

Katakana — ~800 AD, Japan

Posted on March 5, 2011 by ducky

Like Hiragana, Katakana is a syllabary used in Japan.  While Hiragana is used for “Japanese-y”/non-Chinese type things — Japanese words, declensions, inflections, and pronunciation, Katakana is used mostly for transcribing foreign words and/or words with a foreign origin.  (This is … Continue reading →

Posted in Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 6 Comments

Sogdian — 200 AD, Uzbekistan

Posted on February 25, 2011 by ducky

Sogdiana was an important nation on the Silk Road in Central Asia from around 400 BC to 1000 AD.  Sogdian traders went far and wide as merchants, similar to the Phoenicians; like the Phoenicians, they spread their language and their … Continue reading →

Posted in Abjad, Alphabet, probably first in its area, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 2 Comments

Old Nubian — 700 AD, Sudan

Posted on February 24, 2011 by ducky

Old Nubian script started around 700 BC in Sudan, but it wasn’t common (especially at first).  Most official and/or formal writing was in Greek or Coptic for quite some time. Old Nubian script is mostly Coptic, but with three additional … Continue reading →

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

Coptic — 150 BC or 300 AD, Egypt

Posted on February 23, 2011 by ducky

Coptic is an alphabet which was and is used to write Egyptian.  Around 150 BC, Egyptians were writing Egyptian using the Greek script, occasionally with some Demotic characters for sounds that weren’t in Greek.  By around 300 AD, they had … Continue reading →

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

Meroitic — 150 BC, Sudan

Posted on February 22, 2011 by ducky

The two Meroitic scripts (one from the hieroglyphic, one from the Demotic) seem like the bastard love children of Egyptian and Old Persian, and Old Persian was a bit of a bastard love-child itself. The two scripts have a one-to-one … Continue reading →

Posted in Abjad, Alphabet, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 1 Comment

Syriac — 200 BC? 6 AD?, Syria

Posted on February 19, 2011 by ducky

There are wildly different starting dates given for Syriac, a script descended from Aramaic and used, over time, to write several different languages.  I believe this has to do with Syriac script evolving slowly into a distinct script, Syriac spoken … Continue reading →

Posted in Abjad, Evolved slowly from parent, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 1 Comment