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- developed by illiterate(s)
- Evolved slowly from parent
- first in its area
- government-mandated
- inventor known
- language unknown
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- mercantile script
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- now ceremonial
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- previous script didn't quite work
- private or secret
- probably developed by illiterate(s)
- probably first in its area
- Rating: 1 "Dull, only here for completeness"
- Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting"
- Rating: 3 "I did not know that"
- Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!"
- Rating: 5 "Whoa!!"
- revealed in a dream
- significant female influence
- spiritual or supernatural
- stupid
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- technology influenced
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Category Archives: Abugida
Gond — 2010 AD, India
It is not very common for someone to create a new script. Cherokee, Ol Chiki, Pin Cin Hau logograms, Gurmukhi, Hangul are just a few of the scripts which we know were created or invented more-or-less from scratch. However, in … Continue reading
Tolong Siki — 1999 AD, India
Tolong Siki was developed rather recently for the Kurukh spoken language. Previously, Devanagari was used (and is still used in large part a decade later). Tolong Siki is one of the few languages that was created from scratch collaboratively that … Continue reading
Sora Sompeng — 1936 AD, India
In the history of writing systems, it is not uncommon for people create writing systems based on dreams or visions. It is also not uncommon for writing systems to have particular religious significance. It *is* somewhat rare for people to … Continue reading
Gondi — 1928 AD, India
Gondi was developed by a gentleman named Munshi Mangal Singh Masaram, to be used in central India to write the Gondi language. (In India, it almost appears that people don’t take a spoken language (and hence ethnicity) seriously unless it … Continue reading
Thanna — 1700 AD, Maldives
Thaana, used in the island chain of the Maldives off of the Indian coast, is one of the very very few alphabetic or abugida writing systems whose glyphs (apparently) are not ultimately derived from Proto-Sinaitic. Like most blanket statements on … Continue reading
Tulu — 1500 AD, India
There are arguments about whether the Tulu script descended from the Malayalam script or whether Malayalam descended from Tulu. I tend to believe the camp which posits that there was a single script, derived from Grantha, which diverged into Tulu … Continue reading
Telugu – 1300 AD, India
The Telugu script, like the Kannada script, derived from the Old Kannada script. In fact, the demarcation between Kannada and Old Kannada is when Telugu and Kannada started to diverge. If there hadn’t been the Telugu branch, scholars would probably … Continue reading
Kannada — 1300 AD, India
Not surprisingly, Kannada evolved gradually from Old Kannada. As such, it is tricky to specify a date when Kannada split from Old Kannada; I’ve seen dates between 1100 AD (when the first differences appeared) to 1800 AD (when, under the … Continue reading
Posted in Abugida, Rating: 2 "Not all that interesting"
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Old Kannada — 1100 AD, India
Old Kannada, also called Halegannada, Proto-Kannada, and Old Karanese, developed from Kadamba. It has evolved into present-day Kannada and Telugu, but has a couple of characters which are no longer used, including “rra” (shown illustrating this posting). Links: Wikipedia, Ancient … Continue reading
Kadamba — 400 AD, India
Kadamba derived from Bhattiprolu script, and was the ancestor of two more modern scripts, Kannada and Telugu. There is very little information about the script. It is even sometimes called “Pre-Old-Kannada script”, which just goes to show how little of … Continue reading