| Avestan | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | Alphabet | |
| Spoken languages | Avestan language, Middle Persian | |
| Time period | 400–1000 CE | |
| Parent systems | Phoenician alphabet → Aramaic alphabet → Pahlavi script → Avestan |
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| ISO 15924 | Avst | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224-654 CE became a Prestige dialect The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BC The Aramaic alphabet is an Abjad, a Consonantal Alphabet, used for writing Aramaic. ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of Writing systems (scripts In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's | ||
| History of the alphabet |
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Middle Bronze Age 19 c. The history of the Alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the History of writing. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral BCE
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| Meroitic 3 c. The Meroitic script is an Alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë / BCE |
| Ogham 4 c. Ogham (ogam ˈɔɣam Modern Irish or, English) is an Early Medieval Alphabet used primarily to represent the Old Irish language (and CE |
| Hangul 1443 CE |
| Canadian syllabics 1840 CE |
| Zhuyin 1913 CE |
| complete genealogy |
The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during the Sassanid era (226-651) to render the Avestan language. Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian Nearly all the segmental scripts (loosely " Alphabets " but see below for more precise terminology used around the globe appear to have derived from the The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty or Sassanian Dynasty (ساسانیان) is the name used for the third Iranian dynasty and the second Persian empire Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta.
As a side effect of its development, the script was also used for Pazend, a method of writing Middle Persian that was used primarily for the Zend commentaries on the texts of the Avesta. The Pazend or Pazand is one of the Writing systems used for the Middle Persian language Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224-654 CE became a Prestige dialect The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. In the texts of Zoroastrian tradition, the alphabet is referred to as din dabireh or din dabiri, Middle Persian for "the religion's script. Zoroastrianism (ˌzɔroʊˈæstriəˌnɪzəm is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings "
Contents |
History
The development of the Avestan alphabet was provoked by the need to correctly represent recited Avestan language texts. Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta. The various text collections that today constitute the canon of Zoroastrian scripture are the result of a collation that occurred in the 4th century, probably during the reign of Shapur II (309-379). The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. Shapur II was the ninth King of the Sassanid Empire from 309 to 379 It is likely that the Avestan alphabet was an ad hoc[1] innovation related to this - "Sassanid archetype" - collation.
The enterprise, "which is indicative of a Mazdean revival and of the establishment of a strict orthodoxy closely connected with the political power, was probably caused by the desire to compete more effectively with Buddhists, Christians, and Manicheans, whose faith was based on a revealed book. "[1] In contrast, the Zoroastrian priesthood had for centuries been accustomed to memorizing scripture - following by rote the words of a teacher-priest until they had memorized the words, cadence, inflection and intonation of the prayers. This they passed on to their pupils in turn, so preserving for many generations the "correct" way to recite scripture. This was necessary because the priesthood considered (and continue to consider) precise and correct enunciation and cadence a prerequisite of effective prayer. Further, the recitation of the liturgy was (and is) accompanied by ritual activity that leaves no room to attend to a written text.
The ability to correctly render Avestan did however have a direct benefit: By the common era the Avestan language words had almost ceased to be understood, which led to the preparation of the Zend texts (from Avestan zainti "understanding"), that is commentaries on and translations of the canon. The development of the Avestan alphabet allowed these commentaries to interleave quotation of scripture with explanation thereof. The direct effect of these texts was a "standardized" interpretation of scripture that survives to the present day. For scholarship these texts are enormously interesting since they occasionally preserve passages that have otherwise been lost.
The 9th-14th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that there was once a much larger collection of written Zoroastrian literature, but these texts - if they ever existed - have since been lost, and it is hence not known what script was used to render them. The question of the existence of a pre-Sassanid "Arsacid archetype" occupied Avestan scholars for much of the 19th century, and "[w]hatever may be the truth about the Arsacid Avesta, the linguistic evidence shows that even if it did exist, it can not have had any practical influence, since no linguistic form in the Vulgate can be explained with certainty as resulting from wrong transcription and the number of doubtful cases is minimal; in fact it is being steadily reduced. The Avesta is the primary collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language. Though the existence of an Arsacid archetype is not impossible, it has proved to contribute nothing to Avestan philology. "[1]
Genealogy & script
The Pahlavi script, upon which the Avestan alphabet is based, was in common use for representing various middle Iranian languages, but was not adequate for representing a religious language that demanded precision since Pahlavi was a simplified abjad syllabary which only contained a handful of consonant characters (most with multiple pronunciations), and left most vowels unexpressed. An Abjad is a type of Writing system in which each symbol stands for a Consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate Vowel. Pahlavi script had at most 22 characters (the number varied by region and epoch), and as "Book Pahlavi", the most common form of the script, had only twelve letters representing about 24 sounds.
In contrast, Avestan was a full alphabet, with explicit characters for vowels, and allowed for phonetic disambiguation of allophones. In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. The alphabet included many characters (a, i, k, t, p, b, m, n, r, s, z, š, xv) from cursive Pahlavi, while some (ā, γ) are characters that only exist in the Psalter Pahlavi variant (in cursive Pahlavi γ and k have the same symbol). [2] Some of the vowels, such as ə appear to derive from Greek minuscules. [2] Avestan o is a special form of Pahlavi l that exists only in Aramaic ideograms. An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek idea "idea" + grafo "to write" is a Graphic symbol that represents an Idea Some letters (e. g. ŋ́, ṇ, ẏ, v), are free inventions. [3]
Avestan script, like Pahlavi script and Aramaic script also, are written from right to left. In Avestan script, letters are not connected, and ligatures (the "standard" ones being sk, šc, št, ša) are "rare and clearly of secondary origin. "[2] Fossey[4] lists altogether 16 ligatures, but most are formed by the interaction of swash tails.
Words and the end of the first part of a compound are separated by a dot (point). Beyond that, punctuation is weak or non-existent in the manuscripts, and Karl Friedrich Geldner (1880) had to devise one for standardized transcription. Friedrich Karl Geldner ( December 17, 1852 &ndash February 5, 1929) was a German Linguist best known for his analysis and In his system, which he developed based on what he could find, a triangle of three dots serves as a colon, a semicolon, an end of sentence or end of section: which is which is determined by the size of the dots and whether there is one dot above and two below, or two above and one below. Two above and one below signify - in ascending order of 'dot' size - colon, semicolon, end of sentence or end of section. One above and two below signify 'turned end of sentence' and 'turned end of section'.
Graphemes
In total, the Avestan alphabet has 37 consonants and 16 vowels. There are two main transcription schemes for Avestan, the older style used by Christian Bartholomae, and the newer style used by Karl Hoffmann. Karl Hoffmann ( 26 February 1915 &ndash 21 May 1996) was a German Linguist who specialized in Indo-European
The following list shows the letters as ordered and transcribed by Hoffmann (1996), based on Bartholomae:
- Vowels (16)
- a ā å ā̊ ą ą̇̇ ə ə̄ e ē o ō i ī u ū
- Consonants (37)
- k x x́ xᵛ g ġ γ c j t ϑ d δ t̰ p f b β ŋ ŋ́ ŋᵛ n ń ṇ m m̨ ẏ y w r s z š ž š́ ṣ̌ h
Not represented in the above table are the semi-vocalic glides ii and uu, which in the Bartholomae system are transcribed as y and w. Later, when writing Middle Persian in the script (i. Middle Persian is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times (224-654 CE became a Prestige dialect e. Pazend), another consonant was added to it to represent the [l] phoneme that didn't exist in the Avestan languages. The Pazend or Pazand is one of the Writing systems used for the Middle Persian language
Technical standards
The script has been proposed to be encoded in the Unicode Standard by Michael Everson and Roozbeh Pournader, and was accepted by the Unicode Technical Committee on 2007-02-09, to be included in Unicode 5. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and Font designer. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 474 - Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1.
The accepted Unicode range is U+10B00 through U+10B35 for letters (ii and uu are not represented as single characters) and U+10B38 through U+10B3F for punctuation. [5] Two of the 64 spaces are not used.
References and bibliography
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External links
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