Here is a glossary of some of the more technical terms I use, how I use them.\u00a0 Links that are in bold take you to the Wikipedia entry, which will be more detailed and usually and more correct, but longer and perhaps not exactly representative of how I use the term.<\/p>\n
Abugida<\/strong><\/a> — A type of syllabary which has a “default” vowel associated with its syllables.\u00a0 Almost all the abugidas are derived from Brahmi<\/a>, and are mostly found in India, the Himalayas, and the countries between India and China. This type of writing system is more compact than an alphabet but has fewer characters than a non-abugida syllabary at the expense of more diacritics and rules.\u00a0 In particular, handling cases where there are consonant clusters (like the “str” in “street”) gets tricky, and there are several strategies for showing that there is no vowel in between those characters:<\/p>\n Alphabet<\/strong> — In the context of this blog, I use “alphabet” as a technical term meaning a writing system which has glyphs separate and independent vowels and consonants, where the vowels are almost always written.\u00a0 Examples: Coptic<\/a>, Latin<\/a>, Greek<\/a>.<\/p>\n Aspirated<\/strong><\/a> — A phoneme with a “breathy” sound (unusual in English).\u00a0 My mother has an aspirated “w” in “whale”, while I think I have an unaspirated “w”, pronouncing “whale” the same as “wail”.\u00a0 I believe that the Mexican pronunciation of the “h” sound at the start of “Juan” is aspirated, while the Anglo pronunciation is unaspirated.<\/p>\n Consonant conjunct — See explanation under Abugida.<\/p>\n Declension<\/a><\/strong> — A subset of inflections which does not include verb inflection.<\/p>\n Diacritic<\/strong><\/a> — A graphical decoration put onto a glyph which changes its pronunciation slightly.\u00a0 Examples: accent marks in Latin scripts, the dakuten<\/em> in Hiragana<\/a> and Katakana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Glyph<\/strong><\/a> — The graphical representation of the fundamental unit of a writing system, what is frequently called “a character”.\u00a0 Why don’t I just call it “a character”?\u00a0 Because “a character” is, in some sense, independent of the exact representation.\u00a0 In the Latin script, for example, a script “a”, a Helvetica “a”, and a Fraktur “a” glyphs might look very different, but they all represent the same “a” character.\u00a0 There are some writing systems (like Naxi Dongba<\/a> or Mixtec<\/a>) where the fundamental element is not really a “character, it’s more like a picture.<\/p>\n Inflection<\/a><\/strong> — A sound stuck onto a word to change the meaning slightly .\u00a0 Common declensions change the case, tense, or conjugation of a verb, or to change the gender or number (e.g. singular and plural) of a noun.\u00a0 Examples: \u201c-ing\u201d, \u201c-ed\u201d, or \u201c-s\u201d in English.<\/p>\n Phoneme<\/strong><\/a> — The smallest unit of recognizable sound.\u00a0 Generally one consonant is one phoneme; one vowel is one phoneme.\u00a0 “Th” is two glyphs but one phoneme; “\u30b9” (the Japanese Katakana “sa”) is one glyph but two phonemes.<\/p>\n Syllabary<\/strong><\/a> — A writing system where each glyph represents a syllable, not an isolated consonant or an isolated vowel.\u00a0 Examples: Cree<\/a>, Manyogana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Virama — See explanation under Abugida.<\/p>\n Voiced<\/strong><\/a> — A consonant pronounced with the vocal cords vibrating, giving a “humming” sound.\u00a0 You can’t whisper a voiced consonant (like “d” or “b”); you can’t put a musical note on an unaspirated consonant (like “t” or “p”).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is a glossary of some of the more technical terms I use, how I use them.\u00a0 Links that are in bold take you to the Wikipedia entry, which will be more detailed and usually and more correct, but longer … Continue reading
\n<\/strong><\/a>Abjad<\/strong><\/a> — A writing system where some (most?) of the vowels are usually not written.\u00a0 Examples: Hebrew<\/a>, Arabic.<\/p>\n\n