Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features.
Proto-writing and ideographic systems Ideographic scripts (in which graphemes are ideograms representing concepts or ideas rather than a specific word in a language) and pictographic scripts (in which the graphemes are iconic pictures) are not thought to be able to express all that can be communicated by language, as argued by the linguists John DeFrancis and J. Marshall Unger. Essentially, they postulate that no true writing system can be completely pictographic or ideographic; it must be able to refer directly to a language in order to have the full expressive capacity of a language. Unger disputes claims made on behalf of Blissymbols in his 2004 book Ideogram.
Although a few pictographic or ideographic scripts exist today, there is no single way to read them because there is no one-to-one correspondence between symbol and language. Hieroglyphs were commonly thought to be ideographic before they were translated, and to this day, Chinese is often erroneously said to be ideographic.Halliday, M.A.K., Spoken and written language, Deakin University Press, 1985, p.19 In some cases of ideographic scripts, only the author of a text can read it with any certainty, and it may be said that they are interpreted rather than read. Such scripts often work best as mnemonic aids for oral texts or as outlines that will be fleshed out in speech. +Ideographic systems for languageNameLanguage(s)NotesAdinkraAkanBirch-bark glyphsAnishinaabemowinDongbaNaxiOften supplemented with syllabic Geba script.Ersu Shaba scriptErsuKaidā glyphsLusonaLukasaLubaNsibidiEkoi, Efik, IgboSiglas poveirasTesterianUsed for missionary work in Mexico. There are also symbol systems used to represent things other than language: +Ideographic systems for things other than languageNameNotesEmojisUsed as expressive icons in modern mediaBlissymbolsA constructed ideographic script used primarily in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)iConjiA constructed ideographic script used primarily in social networkingIsotypeLoCoSA wide variety of notation systems
Logographic systems In logographic writing systems, glyphs represent words or morphemes (meaningful components of words, as in mean-ing-ful) rather than phonetic elements.
No logographic script is composed solely of logograms; all contain graphemes that represent phonetic (sound-based) elements as well. These phonetic elements may be used on their own (to represent, for example, grammatical inflections or foreign words), or may serve as phonetic complements to a logogram (used to specify the sound of a logogram that might otherwise represent more than one word). In the case of Chinese, the phonetic element is built into the logogram itself; in Egyptian and Mayan, many glyphs are purely phonetic, whereas others function as either logograms or phonetic elements, depending on context. For this reason, many such scripts may be more properly referred to as logosyllabic or complex scripts; the terminology used is largely a product of custom in the field, and is to an extent arbitrary.
Consonant-based logographies Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic – the writing systems of Ancient Egypt Egyptian language
Syllable-based logographies Anatolian hieroglyphs – Luwian. Cuneiform – Sumerian, Akkadian, other Semitic languages, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, and Urartian. Aegean scripts – Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A (Minoan language) and Linear B (Mycenaean Greek). Chinese characters – Chinese, Japanese (called Kanji), Korean (called Hanja), Vietnamese (called Chữ Hán, obsolete). Sawndip – Zhuang Chữ Nôm – Vietnamese Khitan large script – Khitan Khitan small script – Khitan Jurchen script – Jurchen Tangut script – Tangut Sui script – Sui language Yi (classical) – various Yi/Lolo languages Pau Cin Hau logographic script – Tedim Eghap (or Bagam) script – Məgaka Mi'kmaw hieroglyphs – originally a pictorial system, transformed into a logographic system by French priest Father Le Clerq. Maya script – Ch'olan, Yucatecan and Tzeltalan, especially Epigraphic Ch'olti'. Mixteca-Puebla script – Nahuan languages, especially Classical Nahuatl (Aztec script), Mixtecan languages (Mixtec script), others.
Syllabaries In a syllabary, graphemes represent syllables or moras. (The 19th-century term syllabics usually referred to abugidas rather than true syllabaries.)
Afaka Ndyuka Alaska or Yugtun script Central Yup'ik Bété Cherokee Cherokee Cypro-Minoan – Cypro-Minoan (probably ancestral to Eteocypriot). Cypriot Arcadocypriot Greek, Eteocypriot Geba Naxi Iban or Dunging script Iban Kana Japanese (although primarily based on moras rather than syllables). Hiragana Katakana Man'yōgana Kikakui – Mende Kpelle Kpelle Lisu Bamboo script Loma Loma Masaba – Bambara NüshuChinese Nwagu Aneke scriptIgbo VaiVai WoleaianWoleaian (a likely syllabary) Yi (modern) various Yi/Lolo languages
Semi-syllabaries In most of these systems, some consonant-vowel combinations are written as syllables, but others are written as consonant plus vowel. In the case of Old Persian, all vowels were written regardless, so it was effectively a true alphabet despite its syllabic component. In Japanese, a similar system plays a minor role in foreign borrowings; for example, [tu] is often written as <to> + reduced-size <u>, and [ti] as <te> + reduced-size <i>. These syllables and a few others, which do not exist in a conservative phonology of modern Japanese, are nevertheless needed for loanwords which the Japanese are increasingly intent on pronouncing as close as possible to the source language, hence the orthographic innovation. Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries behaved as a syllabary for the stop consonants and as an alphabet for the rest of consonants and vowels.
The Tartessian or Southwestern script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic full semi-syllabaries. Although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, as in a full semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. Some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet. Other scripts, such as Bopomofo, are semi-syllabic in a different sense: they transcribe half syllables. That is, they have letters for syllable onsets and rimes (kan = "k-an") rather than for consonants and vowels (kan = "k-a-n").
Consonant-vowel semi-syllabaries Bamum scriptBamum (a defective syllabary, with alphabetic principles used to fill the gaps) Eskayan Bohol, Philippines (a syllabary apparently based on an alphabet; some alphabetic characteristics remain) Linear Elamite Elamite language Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries Paleo-Hispanic languages Celtiberian script Celtiberian language Northeastern Iberian script Iberian language Southeastern Iberian script Iberian language Southwest Paleohispanic script Tartessian Old Persian cuneiform Old Persian
Onset-rime semi-syllabaries Bopomofophonetic script for different varieties of Chinese. Khom script Bahnaric languages, including Alak and Jru'. Quốc Âm Tân Tự Vietnamese
Segmental systems A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes (basic unit of sound) of a language.
Note that there need not be (and rarely is) a one-to-one correspondence between the graphemes of the script and the phonemes of a language. A phoneme may be represented only by some combination or string of graphemes, the same phoneme may be represented by more than one distinct grapheme, the same grapheme may stand for more than one phoneme, or some combination of all of the above.
Segmental scripts may be further divided according to the types of phonemes they typically record:
Abjads An abjad is a segmental script containing symbols for consonants only, or where vowels are optionally written with diacritics ("pointing") or only written word-initially.
Ancient North Arabian Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Hasaitic, Hismaic, Safaitic, Taymanitic, and Thamudic Ancient South Arabian Old South Arabian languages including Himyaritic, Hadhramautic, Minaean, Sabaean and Qatabanic; also the Ethiopic language Geʽez. Libyco-Berber –Berber languages Aramaic, including Khwarezmian ( Chorasmian), Elymaic, Palmyrene, and Hatran Arabic Arabic, Paleo-Arabic, Azeri, Bengali (historical occasion), Chittagonian (historical occasion), Punjabi, Baluchi, Kashmiri, Pashto, Persian, Kurdish (vowels obligatory), Sindhi, Uighur (vowels obligatory), Urdu, Malay (as Jawi) and many other languages spoken in Africa and Western, Central, and Southeast Asia, Hebrew Hebrew and other Jewish languages Manichaean script Nabataean the Nabataeans of Petra Pahlavi script Middle Persian Parthian Psalter Phoenician Phoenician and other Canaanite languages Proto-Canaanite and Proto-Sinaitic – Bronze Age Canaanites. Sogdian –Sogdian language Samaritan (Old Hebrew) Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew Syriac Classical Syriac, Sureth, Turoyo and other Neo-Aramaic dialects Tifinagh Tuareg Ugaritic Ugaritic, Hurrian
True alphabets A true alphabet contains separate letters (not diacritic marks) for both consonants and vowels.
Linear nonfeatural alphabets
Linear alphabets are composed of lines on a surface, such as ink on paper.
A·chik Tokbirim Garo Adlam Fula Alifuru Bahasa tanah languages Armenian Armenian Ariyaka script Pali, Isan, Lao Avestan Avestan Avoiuli Raga Borama Somali CarianCarian Caucasian Albanian Caucasian Albanian Coorgi–Cox alphabet Kodava Coptic Egyptian Cyrillic Eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian), the Western South Slavic Serbian, Eastern Slavic languages (Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian), the other languages of Russia, Kazakh language, Kyrgyz language, Tajik language, Mongolian language. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are changing to the Latin alphabet but still have considerable use of Cyrillic. See Languages using Cyrillic. Deseret alphabet – proposed for English but never adopted Eclectic shorthand English Elbasan Albanian Fraser Lisu Gabelsberger shorthand German Garay Wolof and Mandinka Georgian Georgian and other Kartvelian languages Gjirokastër (also called Veso Bey) Albanian Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic Gothic Gothic Greek Greek, historically a variety of other languages Hanifi Rohingya Hurûf-ı munfasıla proposed for Ottoman Turkish but never widely adopted International Phonetic Alphabet Kaddare Somali Latin Roman originally Latin language; most current western and central European languages, Turkic languages, sub-Saharan African languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, languages of maritime Southeast Asia and languages of Oceania use developments of it. Languages using a non-Latin writing system are generally also equipped with Romanization for transliteration or secondary use. Lycian Lycian Lydian Lydian Manchu Manchu Mandaic Mandaic dialect of Aramaic Medefaidrin also called Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ; used for the religious language of the same name Mongolian Mongolian Mundari Bani Mundari Mru script Mru Neo-Tifinagh Tamazight Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong Hmong N'Ko Maninka language, Bambara, Dyula language Oduduwa script Yoruba Ogham Gaelic, Britannic, Pictish Ol Chiki Ol Cemet' or Ol Chemet' Santali Old Hungarian (in Hungarian magyar rovásírás or székely-magyar rovásírás) Hungarian Old Italic a family of connected alphabets for the Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Messapian, South Picene, Raetic, Venetic, Lepontic, Camunic languages Old Permic (also called Abur) Komi Old Turkic Old Turkic Old Uyghur Old Uyghur Ol Onal Bhumij Language Osmanya Somali Pau Cin Hau alphabetic script Paite and other Northeastern Kuki-Chin languages Runes Germanic languages Sayaboury (also called Eebee Hmong or Ntawv Puaj Txwm) Hmong Daw Sorang Sompeng Sora Tai Lue Lue Tangsa Tangsa language Todhri Albanian Tolong Siki, Kurukh Banna Kurukh Toto Toto Unifon – proposed for English, never adopted Vah Bassa