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- Abugida
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- developed by illiterate(s)
- Evolved slowly from parent
- first in its area
- government-mandated
- inventor known
- language unknown
- Logograms
- mercantile script
- National pride
- now ceremonial
- Numbers
- 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
- Syllabaries
- technology influenced
- Uncategorized
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Category Archives: Alphabet
Latin Carolingian Reforms — ~782 AD, Germany
Emperor Charlemagne apparently tried to learn how to read and write, but with poor success. Probably part of his difficulty was that he had to spend a bunch of time conquering countries, part of the difficulty was that he started … Continue reading
Posted in Alphabet, government-mandated, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!"
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Ogham – 300 AD, Ireland
Ogham is a runic script mostly used in Ireland, but to a lesser extent in the northern island of Britain. While the earliest provable use dates from the 4th century AD, there are linguistic clues that it is older: there … Continue reading
Old Hungarian — 600? AD, Hungary
Hungary, despite being solidly in Europe, has had a long history of trade with and conquest by Central Asian peoples. It is not entirely clear where Hungarians came from — or more specifically, where the people who brought the Hungarian … Continue reading
Younger Futhark — 800 AD, Scandinavia
Elder Futhark evolved into Younger Futhark, with the transition happening between 650 AD and 800 AD. Younger Futhark was most different from Elder Futhark in the number of characters: Younger Futhark had only two-thirds as many letters as Elder Futhark. … Continue reading
Elder Futhark — 160 AD, Denmark
Elder Futhark, an early runic script, was definitely used in 160AD in Denmark. Based on linguistic clues, some people think that it is much older. One of the clues cited is that it is written both left-to-right and right-to-left, like … Continue reading
Leet — ~1980 AD, USA
Leet, also known as “1337” is a writing system developed for the English language which gains some of its value in being difficult to understand — but not too difficult. It is in some respects a code-substitution cipher, where glyphs … Continue reading
Ol Chiki — 1925 AD, India
The Santali spoken language is not an Indo-European language, while the majority spoken languages in northern India are Indo-Europeean. (Santali is an Austro-Asiatic language, and hence more closely related to Vietnamese than to Sanskrit.) The Indic writing systems designed for … Continue reading
Pau Cin Hau alphabet — 1931 AD, Mayanmar
The Pau Cin Hau logographic script was reformed in 1931 AD, moving from a logographic language to an alphabet. While it is not unusual for a phonetic writing system to evolve from a logographic writing system, it is very rare … Continue reading
Posted in Alphabet, inventor known, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!"
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Mahajani — 1600 AD? <1850 AD?, India
Mahajani, like the Punjabi Landa, was used as a mercantile script (and is sometimes classified with Landa). Unlike Punjabi Landa, which dispenses with vowels altogether, Mahajani is sort of like a sloppy alphabet. It is possible to show a vowel … Continue reading
Jenticha — 1942 AD, Nepal
In Northern India and southern Nepal, there is a language called Sunuwar, alternatively Kõits-Lo, Mukhiya, Kiranti-Kõits, Koinch, Koincha, and Koints. In 1942, Karna Jenticha developed a script for this language. There have been two versions of Jenticha: the first was … Continue reading