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Writing

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Linguistics

   Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a
   medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that
   represent language or record information, and the creation of material
   to be conveyed through written language. (There are some exceptions;
   for example, the use of a typewriter to record language is generally
   called typing, rather than writing.) Writing refers to both activities
   equally, and both activities may often occur simultaneously.

Means for recording information

Writing systems

   The major writing systems – methods of inscription – broadly fall into
   four categories: logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, and featural.
   Another category, ideographic (symbols for ideas), has never been
   developed sufficiently to represent language. A 6th, pictographic, is
   insufficient to represent language on its own, but often forms the core
   of logographies.

Logographies

   A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme.
   The vast number of logograms needed to write language, and the many
   years required to learn them, are the major disadvantage of the
   logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, the efficiency of
   reading logographic writing once it is learned is a major advantage.

   No writing system is wholly logographic: all have phonetic components
   as well as logograms ("logosyllabic" components in the case of Chinese,
   cuneiform, and Mayan, where a glyph may stand for a morpheme, a
   syllable, or both; "logoconsonantal" in the case of hieroglyphs), and
   many have an ideographic component (Chinese "radicals", hieroglyphic
   "determiners"). For example, in Mayan, the glyph for "fin", pronounced
   "ka'", was used to represent the syllable "ka" whenever clarification
   was needed. However, such phonetic elements complement the logographic
   elements, rather than vice versa.

   The main logographic system in use today is Chinese, used with some
   modification for various languages of China, Japanese, and, to a lesser
   extent, Korean in South Korea. Another is the classical Yi script.

Syllabaries

   A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate)
   syllables. A glyph in a syllabary typically represents a consonant
   followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, though in some scripts more
   complex syllables (such as consonant-vowel-consonant, or
   consonant-consonant-vowel) may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically
   related syllables are not so indicated in the script. For instance, the
   syllable "ka" may look nothing like the syllable "ki", nor will
   syllables with the same vowels be similar.

   Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple
   syllable structure, such as Japanese. Other languages that use syllabic
   writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee;
   Ndjuka, an English-based creole language of Surinam; and the Vai script
   of Liberia. Most logographic systems have a strong syllabic component.

Alphabets

   An alphabet is a small set of symbols, each of which roughly represents
   or historically represented a phoneme of the language. In a perfectly
   phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond
   perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a
   word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the
   pronunciation of a word given its spelling. As languages often evolve
   independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been
   borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which
   letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies
   greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.

   In most of the alphabets of the Mid-East, only consonants are
   indicated, or vowels may be indicated with optional diacritics. Such
   systems are called abjads. In other, vowels are indicated through
   diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are
   called abugidas. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree, are learned
   by children as syllabaries, and are often called "syllabics". However,
   unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each
   syllable.

   Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate
   letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet.

Featural scripts

   A featural script notates the building blocks of the phonemes that make
   up a language. For instance, all sounds pronounced with the lips
   ("labial" sounds) may have some element in common. In the Latin
   alphabet, this is accidentally the case with the letters "b" and "p";
   however, labial "m" is completely dissimilar, and the similar-looking
   "q" is not labial. In Korean Hangul, however, all four labial
   consonants are based on the same basic element. However, in practice,
   Korean is learned by children as an ordinary alphabet, and the featural
   elements tend to pass unnoticed.

   Another featural script is SignWriting, the most popular writing system
   for many sign languages, where the shapes and movements of the hands
   and face are represented iconically. Featural scripts are also common
   in fictional or invented systems, such as Tolkien's Tengwar.

Historical significance of writing systems

   Historians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with
   history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and
   petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of
   writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent
   language directly.

   Writing systems always develop and change based on the needs of the
   people who use them. Sometimes the shape, orientation and meaning of
   individual signs also changes over time. By tracing the development of
   a script it is possible to learn about the needs of the people who used
   the script as well as how it changed over time.

Tools

          (See methods of representing text)

Writing in historical cultures

Mesopotamia

   The original Mesopotamian writing system was initially derived from a
   system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the
   4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts,
   using a round-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay for recording
   numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a
   sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and
   sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced by writing using a
   wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for
   logograms, but evolved to include phonetic elements by the 29th century
   BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken
   Sumerian. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing
   system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. By the 26th century BC,
   this script had been adapted to another Mesopotamian language,
   Akkadian, and from there to others such as Hurrian, and Hittite.
   Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for
   Ugaritic and Old Persian.

China

   In China historians have found out a lot about the early Chinese
   dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang
   Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze
   implements. Markings on turtle shells have been carbon-dated to around
   1500 BC. Historians have found that the type of media used had an
   effect on what the writing was documenting and how it was used.

   There has recently been discoveries of tortoise-shell carvings dating
   back to c. 6000 BC, but whether or not the carvings are of sufficient
   complexity to qualify as writing is under debate. If it is deemed to be
   a written language, writing in China will predate Mesopotamian
   cuneiform, long acknowledged as the first appearance of writing, by
   some 2000 years.

Egypt

   The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette,
   dating to c.3200 BC, and several recent discoveries that may be
   slightly older, though the glyphs were based on a much older artistic
   tradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic
   adjuncts that included an effective alphabet.

   Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and
   literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only
   people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to become
   scribes, in the service of temple, pharaonic, and military authorities.
   The hieroglyph system was always difficult to learn, but in later
   centuries was purposely made even more so, as this preserved the
   scribes' status.

   The world's oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around
   2000 BC from a hieroglyphic prototype, and over the next 500 years
   spread to Canaan and eventually to the rest of the world.

Indus Valley

   The Indus Valley script (circa 2000-1500 BC) is a mysterious aspect of
   ancient Indian culture as it has not yet been deciphered. Although
   there are many examples of the Indus script, without true understanding
   of how the script works and what the inscriptions say, it is impossible
   to understand the importance of writing in the Indus Civilization.

Phoenician writing system and descendants

   The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite
   script in around the 11th century BC, which in turn borrowed ideas from
   Egyptian hieroglyphics. This writing system was an abjad — that is, a
   writing system in which only consonants are represented. This script
   was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs to
   represent their vowels. This alphabet in turn was adapted by various
   peoples to write their own language, resulting in the Etruscan
   alphabet, and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and
   Runes. Other descendants from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic
   alphabet, used to write Russian, among others. The Phoenician system
   was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew script
   and also that of Arabic are descended.

   The Tifinagh script (Berber languages) is descended from the
   Libyco-Berber script which is assumed to be of Phoenecian origin.

Elsewhere

   Many other systems have been developed independently, for example the
   complex Mayan system.

Creation of text or information

Creativity

Author

Critiques

   Writers will often search out others to evaluate or criticize their
   work. This can give the writer a better product in the end. To this
   end, many writers join writing circles, often found at local libraries
   or bookstores. With the evolution of the internet, writing circles have
   started to go online.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
