1. Seminar on Endangered Languages
Writing Systems

2. Writing Systems Different Writing Systems What makes a writing system
Standardization vs Historical artifacts
Constructed Writing Systems
Computing and its influence on writing

3. Types of Writing Systems
Sampson 1985: “Writing Systems”
Logographic systems: Chinese
Phonographic Systems:
Syllabic: Linear B
Consonantal: West Semitic
Segmental: Greek
Featural: Hangul
Geoffrey Sampson, “Writing systems”

4. History of Writing Earliest writing systems Mesopotamia around 3200BCE
Mesoamerica around 600BCE
China around 1200BCE
But there is considerable controversy
More than numbers
Markings, counting beads ...
More than painting pictures/signs

5. Writing Development Picture Writing Transitional Phonological
Represent actual objects, times, etc
Transitional
Representing the abstract ideas
Yukaghir example: is it writing?
Phonological
Represent things with similar sound
Inca knotted strings: quipu
Native American spiral of pictures: Lone Dog’s winter count

6. Writing Uses Taxes, taxes and taxes Rules, religions
Record who owns what when
How much you have to pay
Rules, religions
Laws (Hammurabi ~1770BCE)
Fortune telling (Oracle Bones ~1300BCE)
Histories/Literature
Early authors whose names we know
Ptahhotep (Egypt) and Enheduanna (Sumerian) 2400BCE
Enheduanna is one of earliest known female names

7. What things are writing?
Known writing systems follow Zipf's Law
Some things are very frequent
Some things are very infrequent
But things that follow Zipf's Law may or may not be writing
Indus Script
Amish Barn Symbols
Linear A

8. How is Writing Done Often influenced by the medium
Cuneiform – easy to cut in stone/paper
Cursive script (書法)
Often borrow someone else's script
Chinese Characters for Japanese
Latin script for Vietnamese
Latin script for English

9. Direction Left to right: English Right to left: Arabic
Vertical (right to left): Chinese/Japanese
Boustrophedon (like an ox)
Left to right to left: Ancient Greek
Direction the faces look: Mayan

10. Script can become stylized

11. Script can become stylized
土 火 水 風
Earth, Fire, Wind, Water
Avatar: the Last Airbender

12. Stylized Decorative

13. Stylized not so decorative
New Boeing project is going to work on handwriting

14. Alphabetic Order How does this occur?
Well its the order of the alphabet
Phonetic (ish) Ordering
By tables (Sanskrit, Japanese Kana)
By unicode/ascii order
(That came later)
By order of the stars/Kings
Japanese alphabet name: “a-e-i-o-u”

15. Writing Distinctions Upper and Lower Case Case was the printer's case
(why do European languages have this)
Language origin spelling artifacts
Ph and gh in English (Greek, Germanic)
Silent initial w and k
Wales vs Whales
Japanese (Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana)
Capital letters usually located in the upper tray of the printer’s case
“bicameral” – for clarity

16. Writing causes Standardization
Removal of previously supported letters
Ye Olde …
Þ deleted from alphabet so replaced with y
So “Ye” is still pronounced “the”
Menzies, Culzean, Dalzell
Ȝ deleted from alphabet so replaced with z
(mostly old Scots names)
Often printing encourages more standardizations
Æ, ß (“f” in English and ss in German)
But new letters too
@ & % (its about taxes again)
“Mengus”, “Kullane”, “D-L” (was a “y” sound)
Hawaiian “l” vs “r”

17. Writing causes Standardization
Removes dialectal variations
Jail vs gaol
Tuppence, thruppence
Back correction of pronunciation
Forehead
Awry, indictment
Versailles, Dubois, Presque Isle

18. Constructed Writing Systems
Hangul
Phonetically defined
Configurable blocks
11,172 mathematical possibilities
Source: wikipedia.org

19. “New” writing systems Vietnamese Up to 19th Century Hanzi based
Replaced with Romanization plus diacritics
Gaelic
Did match (19th Century) pronunciation
Ojibwe (Anishinaabe/Chippewa)
ᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ (19th Century)
Musical notation

20. AAC Languages Minspeak Blissymbols
“Augmentative and Alternative Communication”/Assistive technology
Blissymbols: words do not correspond to any one language’s phonetic system
made to facilitate communication between linguistic communities (multiglot Ukraine)
“I want to go to the cinema”

21. Third is a Sweet potato

22. Contemporary Writing Influences
New writing systems emerging from new devices and communication patterns
emoji
Source: iemoji.com
Emoji rendered differently in different OS/device/etc.
Cultural interpretations of emotion, images
Phone carriers, unicode, etc. Gets involved in political and sociological dialogue – why support turban and not black, e.g.

23. Contemporary Writing Influences
Computer/Typewriter influenced
“two spaces” between sentences
not in unicode so can't use it
New symbols :-)
'Labelling' is now 'labeling'

24. Contemporary Writing Influences
All input is romanized
Indic languages
Chinese, Japanese use roman as input
Many languages have romanized version
Arabizi, Greeklish
Romanagari