Syllabaries often begin as simplified logograms, as shown here with the Japanese katakana writing system. is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet To the left is the modern letter, with its original Chinese form on the right.

Writing systems
History
Grapheme
List of writing systems
Types
Featural alphabet
Alphabet
Abjad
Abugida
Syllabary
Logography
Related
Pictogram
Ideogram

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. The history of writing encompasses the various Writing systems that evolved in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. This is a list of writing systems (or scripts) classified according to some common distinguishing features A featural alphabet is an Alphabet wherein the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode phonological features of the phonemes they represent An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either An Abjad is a type of Writing system in which each symbol stands for a Consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate Vowel. An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language A pictogram ( also spelled pictogramme) or pictograph is a Symbol representing a Concept, object, activity place or event An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek idea "idea" + grafo "to write" is a Graphic symbol that represents an Idea A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds A word is a unit of Language that carries meaning and consists of one or more Morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together and has a Phonetic A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract

Languages using syllabaries

Languages that use syllabic writing include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B), the Native American language Cherokee, the African language Vai, the English-based creole language Ndyuka (the Afaka script), Yi language in China, the Nü Shu syllabary for Yao people, China, and the ancient Filipino script Alibata. "Lion Gate" redirects here For other uses see Lions' Gate (disambiguation. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Linear B is a script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of Greek. The Cherokee language is written in a Syllabary invented by Sequoyah (also known as George Gist or George Guess in 1819 The Vai are an Ethnic group that live mostly in Liberia, small communities of Vai also live in south-eastern Sierra Leone. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin. Ndyuká ( in English also called Ndyuká tongo or Okanisi is a Creole language of Suriname. The Afaka script (afaka sikifi is a Syllabary of 56 letters devised in 1908 for the Ndyuka language an English-based creole of Surinam The Yi scripts, also known as Cuan or Wei are used to write the Yi languages Classical Yi Logogram China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Nü Shu ( is a Syllabary Writing system that was used exclusively among women in Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern The Yao nationality ( Traditional Chinese: 瑤族 Simplified Chinese: 瑶族 Pinyin: Yáo zú; Vietnamese: người Dao China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Baybayin or Alibata (known in Unicode as the Tagalog script) is a pre- Spanish Philippine Writing system that originated The Chinese, Cuneiform, and Maya scripts are largely syllabic in nature, although based on logograms. Written Chinese comprises the written symbols used to represent Spoken Chinese and the rules about how they are arranged and punctuated The Maya script, also known as Maya hieroglyphs, was the writing system of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently A logogram, or logograph, is a Grapheme which represents a word or a Morpheme (a meaningful unit of language They are therefore sometimes referred to as logosyllabic. The Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana (developed around 700 AD). is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities Kana is a general term for the syllabic Japanese scripts Hiragana (ひらがな and Katakana (カタカナ as well as the old system is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with Katakana and Kanji; the Latin alphabet is a Japanese Syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet They are mainly used to write some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words, e. g. hotel is written with three kana, ホテル (ho-te-ru), in Japanese. Because Japanese uses a lot of CV (consonant + vowel) syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language. As in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana: あった (a-t-ta) and かいた (ka-i-ta). It is therefore sometimes called a moraic writing system. Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in Phonology that determines Syllable weight (which in turn determines stress

Difference between an abugida and a syllabary

Indian languages and Ethiopian languages have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary. Ethiopia has many indigenous languages (some 84 according to the Ethnologue, 77 according to the 1994 census most of them Afro-Asiatic ( Semitic An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which These are sometimes mistaken for syllabaries, but unlike in syllabaries, all syllables starting with the same consonant are based on the same symbol, and generally more than one symbol is needed to represent a syllable. In the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics (also an abugida). Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian In a true syllabary there is no systematic graphic similarity between phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for the vowels). That is, the characters for "ke", "ka", and "ko" have no similarity to indicate their common "k"-ness (e. g. hiragana け, か, こ). Compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are similar graphically (typically, a common consonantal base is annotated in a more or less consistent manner to represent the vowel in the syllable). An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language.

Comparison to English alphabet

The English language allows complex syllable structures, making it cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States A "pure" syllabary would require a separate glyph for every syllable in English. Thus one would need separate symbols for "bag," "beg," "big," "bog," "bug" ; "bad," "bed," "bid," "bod," "bud," etc. However, such pure systems are rare. A work-around to this problem, common to several syllabaries around the world (including English loanwords in Japanese), is to write an echo vowel, as if the syllable coda was a second syllable:　ba-gu for "bag", etc. In Phonology, a syllable coda comprises the Consonant sounds of a Syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a Vowel Another common approach is to simply ignore the coda, so that "bag" would be written ba. This obviously would not work well for English, but was done in Mycenean Greek when the root word was two or three syllables long and the syllable coda was a weak consonant such as n or s (example: chrysos written as ku-ru-so).

See also

• List of syllabaries

Other types of writing systems

• Abugida
• Abjad
• Alphabet
• Logogram

External links

• Syllabaries - Omniglot's list of syllabaries and abugidas, including examples of various writing systems