Writing Flashcards
Pictogram
Looks like something
Ideogram
More abstract, can hold several meanings
Three types of writing systems
logography, syllabary, alphabet
Logography
Each word or morpheme is represented by one written character called a logogram
Logographic system advantage
Ability to communicate across dialects or even languages
Logographic system disadvantage
Need to memorize thousands of characters for basic literacy
Syllabary
Each syllable is represented by one character
Syllabary advantage
Requires far less characters than a logographic writing system
Syllabary disadvantage
Difficult to devise a language with complex syllable structures
Alphabets
Generally an alphabet represents each phoneme with one character
Vowel-less alphabets
individual consonants are represented by letters, but vowels are ignored
Vowel-less alphabet examples
Hebrew, Arabic
English’s alphabetic writing often violates what writing principle
One phoneme = one letter
Chinese writing
Earliest clear examples of Chinese writing are from the Oracle Bone Scripts from approximately 1200 BCE
How is modern Chinese writing different from the original Chinese writing?
Original Chinese writing had a clear pictographic origin, whereas modern Chinese characters are more abstract
Cuneiform
Earliest known writing system that originated in Mesopotamia. Means wedge shaped. Used from 3200BCE to 100CE
Mayan
Contains logographic and syllabic characters, used from 300BCE to 1600CE
Cherokee syllabary
Not entirely derived from the Latin alphabet but definitely was inspired by it
Quipus
“talking knots” used by Incans and other Andean cultures to record data, 3rd Millennium BCE to 17th century CE
Phaistos Disc
2nd Millennium, Minoan language, related to Cretan Hieroglyphs (?)
