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

Hebrew — 300 BC, Israel

Posted on February 18, 2011 by ducky

Hebrew is a difficult writing system to shoehorn into this blog format.  For starters, when did the Hebrew script come into existence?  Unlike Cree and Cherokee, which had very distinct release dates, the Hebrew script evolved over thousands of years.  … Continue reading →

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

Ge’ez — 400 BC, Ethiopia

Posted on February 14, 2011 by ducky

Ge’ez, aslo called Ethiopic, is the only Old World abugida outside of Southest Asia and the only abugida that is not clearly derived from Brahmi.  (Aside from Kharosthi, of course, which maybe spawned Brahmi.) However, it took a long time … Continue reading →

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

Brahmi — 400 BC, India

Posted on February 13, 2011 by ducky

Brahmi is sort of the Phoenician of East Asia: almost all the non-logographic scripts in East Asia come from Brahmi, including almost all of the scripts used in India, Tibet, Nepal, Mongolia, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos.  Brahmi was a … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 12 Comments

Paleohispanic scripts — 450 BC, Spain

Posted on February 10, 2011 by ducky

One of the places the Phoenicians colonized was the Mediterranean side of Spain, and their writing system spread around that peninsula.  Like in Italy, there were quite a few different, mostly related scripts.  Unlike in Italy, there wasn’t a hugely … Continue reading →

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

Tifinagh — 400 BC, Tunisia or Libya

Posted on February 9, 2011 by ducky

Nobody is quite sure where the Berber script, used by the nomads of Northern Africa, came from.  English sources are pretty certain that Tifinagh evolved from the Phoenician script that settlers brought with them when they founded Carthage in about … Continue reading →

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

Samaritan — ~600 BC, Israel

Posted on February 8, 2011 by ducky

There is a joke among linguists about the difference between a dialect and a language: “a language is a dialect with a standing army”. Similarly, I think that the distinction between the first alphabet used to write Hebrew — what … Continue reading →

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

Venetic — 690 BC, Italy

Posted on February 7, 2011 by ducky

Venetic was an Indo-European language related to Latin, spoken on the Italian peninsula in the vicinity of what became Venice.  Venetic was one of several scripts in what is now Italy, representing quite a few languages: Latin, Etruscan, Venetic, Faliscan … Continue reading →

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

Lycian — 600 BC?, Turkey

Posted on February 5, 2011 by ducky

The Lycians lived in southwest Turkey, not far from Greece, but spoke a descendant of Luwian.   They made a new alphabet by adding a few characters to the Dorian dialect of the Greek  alphabet.  Some of the letters might have … Continue reading →

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

Carian — 650 BC?, Turkey

Posted on February 4, 2011 by ducky

There are a fair number of texts in Carian in both southwestern Turkey and in Egypt, but archeologists had a devil of a time figuring out what they said.  This was a bit odd, as the Carians used a variant … Continue reading →

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

Latin Majuscule — 690 BC, Italy

Posted on February 3, 2011 by ducky

Latin script and its variants are the most widely used writing systems in the world.  Latin script is the primary writing system in most of Europe, almost all of North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica, large portions of Africa, … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphabet, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 8 Comments