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- developed by illiterate(s)
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- revealed in a dream
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Category Archives: Rating: 2 “Not all that interesting”
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
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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Saurashtra — <1880AD, India
The Saurashtra people have a very unsettled past. They lived in Gujarat, but then Gazni Mohammed invaded around 1000 AD and the Saurashtras took off for Devagiri, farther south. They stayed there for two centuries, but then that empire collapsed … Continue reading
Modi — 1600 AD, India
Like Gujarati, Modi is a variant of Devanagari that was developed in about 1600 AD. Like Gujarati, it was used mostly for accounting, then later for administration. It looks very similar to Devanagari, but with fewer ligatures, rounder/”swoopier” glyphs that … Continue reading
Punjabi Landa — 900 AD, India
As I mentioned in the Khudawadi post yesterday, merchants simplified Sharada, presumably to let them write more quickly. In addition to dropping the vowel diacritics, they also used the same character for aspirated (“breathy”) and non-aspirated consonants, and dropped punctuation … Continue reading
Sharada — 800 AD, India
Sharada — also called Sarada and Sharda — is descended from Gupta through Kutila (a writing system so obscure that I wasn’t able to find enough to write about, and I have pretty low standards). Sharada’s use centered in Kashmir, … Continue reading
Demotic — 650 BC, Egypt
Demotic was significant in the history of language understanding, as it was one of the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone (along with Greek script and Egyptian hieroglyphics). However, it is really only a font difference from hieratic (or hieroglyphics). … Continue reading