Florian Coulmas, The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford (UK) & Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xxvii, 603. Hb £65.00, $74.95.

1999 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-454
Author(s):  
Janet S. (Shibamoto) Smith
Keyword(s):  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Personal Favorite ◽  
The World ◽  
Pleasant Surprise ◽  
The Devil

What is alloglottography? A diaeresis? A digamma? Whose writing system has kanamajiri writing and kokuji? How would you start to find any of these in a conventional writing system text/reference, unless you knew where (in the world) to start? What about opisthograph, ostracon, quoc-ngu, and tugra? None are in the index of Daniels & Bright 1996, which I consider the best book to date on the world's writing systems. But all are entries, cross-referenced to other entries, in Coulmas's Encyclopedia. The reader can also look up Bamum writing, Djuka syllabic writing, the Hatrene script, Hsi-hsia writing, the Loma syllabary, Peguan script, Tifinagh, Urartian writing, and the Wolof alphabet directly, without having first to know what set of writing systems, geographical or typological, they belong to. My personal favorite is Sogdian writing (471–74), an Aramaic-derived script used by Persian colonists in Chinese Turkestan; the cursive form of this writing system is attributed to Ahriman the devil, because it is so hard to distinguish the letters. What a pleasant surprise, for one satiated with discussions of the weaknesses and unnecessary complexities of Japanese writing!

A survey of diacritic restoration in abjad and alphabet writing systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANKLIN ỌLÁDIÍPỌ̀ ASAHIAH ◽  
ỌDẸ́TÚNJÍ ÀJÀDÍ ỌDẸ́JỌBÍ ◽  
EMMANUEL RÓTÌMÍ ADÁGÚNODÒ
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Evaluation Metrics ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Intractable Problems

AbstractA diacritic is a mark placed near or through a character to alter its original phonetic or orthographic value. Many languages around the world use diacritics in their orthography, whatever the writing system the orthography is based on. In many languages, diacritics are ignored either by convention or as a matter of convenience. For users who are not familiar with the text domain, the absence of diacritics within text has been known to cause mild to serious readability and comprehension problems. However, the absence of diacritics in text causes near-intractable problems for natural language processing systems. This situation has led to extensive research on diacritization. Several techniques have been applied to address diacritic restoration (or diacritization) but the existing surveys of techniques have been restricted to some languages and hence left gaps for practitioners to fill. Our survey examined diacritization from the angle of resources deployed and various formulation employed for diacritization. It was concluded by recommending that (a) any proposed technique for diacritization should consider the language features and the purpose served by diacritics, (b) that evaluation metrics needed to be more rigorously defined for easy comparison of performance of models.

scholarly journals On roman letters and other stories

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-172
Author(s):  
Charles Lock
Keyword(s):  
Letter Writing ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Roman Alphabet ◽  
Athanasius Kircher ◽  
Roman Letter

This essay questions the assumption that the roman alphabet is more purely phonetic than any other, and that other scripts and writing-systems are less efficient, whether for the production of texts or for their comprehension. Those who habitually use roman letters are asked to consider their competence to understand other writing systems. The work of Stanley Morison emphasizes the ideological significance of alphabets and of particular letter-forms. M.B. Parkes and Paul B. Saenger are cited to indicate how punctuation and spacing are aspects of the roman-letter writing system that cannot be treated as purely phonetic. Beyond the world of roman letters there is a focus on Syriac and the Xi’an stele, which was printed by Athanasius Kircher in 1667 and marks the first publication in the west of a substantial text in Chinese.

An Error Analysis of Hiragana and Katakana Writing Systems in the Learning of Japanese as Third Language at UiTM

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Norhazlina Husin ◽  
Nuranisah Tan Abdullah ◽  
Aini Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
The Other ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Main Challenge

Abstract The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students has its own issues and challenges. It does not merely involve only teaching the four language skills. Japanese language has its own unique values. These unique values also tend to differentiate the teaching of Japanese language as a third language from other third language acquisitions. The teaching of Japanese language as third language to foreign students also involves the teaching of its writing system. This makes the teaching of Japanese language rather complicated because Japanese language has three forms of writings, namely: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Students are required to fully understand the Hiragana system of writing first before proceeding to learn the other two forms of writings. The main challenge in the teaching of Japanese writing systems is the time allocated that can be considered as very limited as other language aspects need to be taught too. This, which relates directly to students’ factor very much contribute to the challenges foreseen. Students are likely to face problems in understanding and using the writings as they simultaneously need to adhere to the findings teaching and learning schedules. This article discusses on the analysis conducted in terms of the learning of the Hiragana and Katagana systems of writing among foreign students. The discussion in this article is based on the teaching of Japanese language to students of Universiti Teknologi MARA(UiTM), Shah Alam. Keywords: Third language, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji

In search of the perfect orthography

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Venezky
Keyword(s):  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
International Phonetic Alphabet ◽  
Experienced Reader ◽  
Cultural Considerations ◽  
Advanced Stages ◽  
One To One ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychological Processing ◽  
The Ideal

Philologists, linguists, and educators have insisted for several centuries that the ideal orthography has a one-to-one correspondence between grapheme and phoneme. Others, however, have suggested deviations for such functions as distinguishing homophones, displaying popular alternative spellings, and retaining morpheme identity. If, indeed, the one-to-one ideal were accepted, the International Phonetic Alphabet should become the orthographic standard for all enlightened nations, yet the failure of even a single country to adopt it for practical writing suggests that other factors besides phonology are considered important for a writing system. Whatever the ideal orthography might be, the practical writing systems adopted upon this earth reflect linguistic, psychological, and cultural considerations. Knowingly or unknowingly, countries have adopted orthographies that favour either the early stages of learning to read or the advanced stages, that is, the experienced reader. The more a system tends towards a one-to-one relationship between graphemes and phonemes, the more it assists the new reader and the non-speaker of the language while the more it marks etymology and morphology, the more it favours the experienced reader. The study of psychological processing in reading demonstrates that human capacities for processing print are so powerful that complex patterns and irregularities pose only a small challenge. Orthographic regularity is extracted from lexical input and used to recognise words during reading. To understand how such a system develops, researchers should draw on the general mechanisms of perceptual learning.

scholarly journals Multiple Literacies Theory: how it functions, what it produces

Perspectiva ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Masny
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Literacies ◽  
Literacy Studies ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
New Literacy ◽  
New Literacy Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment

At the moment, there are two literacy theories that seem to dominate the research on literacies. They are known as the New Literacy Studies (NLS) (BARTON; HAMILTON; IVANIČ; 2002; STREET, 2003) and Multiliteracies (COPE; KALANTZIS, 2009). This article is about a different theory, Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) that demarcates itself from them ontologically and epistemologically. It will also highlight aspects of NLS and Multiliteracies in order to point out the differences with MLT. This article aims to put forward the major concepts that underlie this theory and present vignettes from a study examining how perceptions of writing systems in multilingual children contribute to reading, reading the world and self as texts.

The relation of vowel letters to phonological syllables in English and German

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-234
Author(s):  
Martin Neef
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Language System ◽  
English I

Assuming that a writing system is inevitably dependent on a language system, the main function of written representations is to give access to the basic representations of the language system. In this paper, I want to deal with graphematic phenomena, i.e. the relations of written representations to corresponding phonological representations. In particular, I will delve into the relation of written representations to the phonological factor of the number of syllables, based on data from English and German. Though in these languages, there is neither a specific written element relating to the syllable number nor an isomorphic relation between vowel letters and the number of syllables, two questions are worth examining: Can a word have more syllables than vowel letters? Can a word have less syllables than uninterrupted sequences of vowel letters? The first question will be answered positively for both languages although there are some severe differences to be stated; the second question will be answered positively only for English. I will show that these results are side-effects of more basic regularities of the writing systems under consideration.

scholarly journals Revitalising Naxi dongba as a ‘pictographic’ vernacular script

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Duncan Poupard
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Standard Chinese

A script can be a window into a language and all the culture contained within it. China’s minority peoples have a multitude of scripts, but many are in danger of falling out of use, a decline spurred by the adoption and promotion of standard Chinese across the country. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to preserve minority writing systems. This article reveals how the primarily logographic Naxi dongba script (often labelled the world’s ‘last living pictographs’), used in China’s southwestern Yunnan province to record the Naxi language, can be practically used as a modern writing system alongside its more widely known traditional role as a means of recording religious rites, and what exactly separates these two styles of writing. The efforts that have been made to achieve the goal of modernisation over the past decades are reviewed, including the longstanding attempts at Unicode encoding. I make some suggestions for the future development of the script, and employ plenty of examples from recent publications, alongside phonetic renderings and English translations. It is hoped that overall awareness of this unique script can be raised, and that it can develop into a vernacular script with everyday applications.

scholarly journals Neurocognitive Basis of Dyslexia in Different Writing Systems

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liu ◽  
James R. Booth
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Dyslexia ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Chinese Writing ◽  
Alphabetic Writing

An important issue in dyslexia research is whether developmental dyslexia in different writing systems has a common neurocognitive basis across writing systems or whether there are specific neurocognitive alterations. In this chapter, we review studies that investigate the neurocognitive basis of dyslexia in Chinese, a logographic writing system, and compare the findings of these studies with dyslexia in alphabetic writing systems. We begin with a brief review of the characteristics of the Chinese writing system because to fully understand the commonality and specificity in the neural basis of Chinese dyslexia one must understand how logographic writing systems are structured differently than alphabetic systems.

scholarly journals Perang Armagedon

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Lanny Laras
Keyword(s):  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
End Times ◽  
False Prophet ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Generic Sense

The Armageddon will be the site of gathering of armies for a battle during end times, variously interpreted as either or symbolic location. The term is also used a generic sense to refer to end of the world scenario. According to the Bible, Jesus will return to earth and defeat the Antichrist, the False prophet and Satan the Devil in the Battle of Armageddon. Then Satan will be put into the “bottomless pit” or abyss for 1,000 years, knows as the Millennium.

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