Category Archives: previous script didn’t quite work

Grantha — 500 AD, India

Posted on May 23, 2011 by ducky

Around 500 AD, the Tamil people of Southern Inda started using Grantha, a slightly different form of the Brahmi alphabet, to write Sanskrit (the language of sacred Hindu texts), while still continuing to use Vatteluttu to write representations of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, Evolved slowly from parent, now ceremonial, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | 4 Comments

Ol Chiki — 1925 AD, India

Posted on May 15, 2011 by ducky

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 →

Posted in Alphabet, inventor known, National pride, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!" | Tagged | 1 Comment

Hangul — 1446 AD, Korea

Posted on March 12, 2011 by ducky

Chinese script didn’t work terribly well for Korean, even with Gugyeol, Hyangchul, or Idu additions.  Around 1440 AD, King Sejong the Great asked his board of scholarly advisers to advise him on a better writing system.  On October 9, 1446 … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphabet, inventor known, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", Syllabaries | 2 Comments

Hiragana — ~800 AD, Japan

Posted on March 4, 2011 by ducky

It was easier to write Japanese with Manyogana than with exclusively Chinese logograms, but it was still difficult because the same glyph would represent a word in one place and a sound in another. For their next attempt, the Japanese … Continue reading →

Posted in previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", significant female influence, Syllabaries | 9 Comments

Manyogana — 450 AD, Japan

Posted on March 3, 2011 by ducky

China was culturally very dominant in East Asia, and so educated people in Japan learned the Chinese script when writing first came to Japan.  Eventually, Japanese people wanted to write in Japanese, but unfortunately, the Chinese script was not well … Continue reading →

Posted in previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", Syllabaries | 3 Comments

Khitan scripts — 920 AD and 925 AD, Mongolia

Posted on March 1, 2011 by ducky

Emperor Taizu of the Khitan (AKA Liao) people introduced a script in 920 AD for his nomadic Mongolian nation. They had been using Chinese script, but the Chinese script was  a poor fit for the Khitan language.  Spoken Khitan had … Continue reading →

Posted in Abjad, inventor known, language unknown, Logograms, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!", Syllabaries, Undeciphered | 1 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

Kharosthi — 350 BC, Pakistan

Posted on February 12, 2011 by ducky

The Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered huge tracts of Asia in around 500 BC, and held it until about 330 BC.  They spread the use of their official language, Aramaic, and with it the Aramaic writing system.  Near the end of … Continue reading →

Posted in Abugida, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!" | 2 Comments

Greek — 800 BC, Greece

Posted on January 31, 2011 by ducky

Greek legend says that a Phoenician, Cadmus, brought writing to the Greeks.  This is not hard to believe, as the earliest Greek glyphs look very similar to Phoenician.  However, the Greek alphabet had something from the beginning that no other … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphabet, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 5 "Whoa!!" | 9 Comments

Akkadian cuneiform — ~2300 BC, Iraq

Posted on January 5, 2011 by ducky

The Sumerians and the Akkadians lived near each other for quite a while, with the culture of the Sumerian city-states being dominant at first.   Eventually the Akkadians recognized a good thing, so adopted writing from the Sumerian cuneiform.  The Akkadian … Continue reading →

Posted in Logograms, previous script didn't quite work, Rating: 4 "Huh, interesting!", Syllabaries | 7 Comments