This week: A slight detour to give some more background on writing systems. Then the footnotes and a little trivia about the rain to get us out. Here we go.
In discussing alphabets last week, one point I glossed over that maybe I shouldn't have is, just what is an alphabet anyway? How is it different from other writing systems? Oh, and, by the way, when we talk about English using the Latin alphabet, are the French, Spanish, Italian, and other languages Latin alphabets the same Latin alphabet? Given that they have different letters in some case or different sounds for the same letters in others? (1) Let's find out. Here we go.
Let's start with a list of near-synonyms or related words to investigate: alphabet, syllabary, ideogram (or ideograph). These three words give us the basis of most modern writing systems and cover everything from the Romance languages of Europe to the Chinese and Japanese writing systems with a little bit of everything in between. (2)
The venerable Encyclopedia Britannica has a list: The World's Most Commonly Used Writing Systems. In short, it lists the Latin (English, Spanish, et. al.) alphabet (3), Chinese characters (Hanzi, Kanji, etc.; also, logograms), Arabic script, Devanagari, and the Bengali alphabet.
Of these five writing systems, four use what could be considered alphabets (note: the article refers to the Bengali alphabet as a syllabic alphabet, which is a subcategory that I’ll talk about more in just a bit). But that doesn't really tell the whole story. After all, Wikipedia's article on writing systems has three broad categories broken down into a whole host of subcategories.
At the most basic level we see the same logograms and syllabaries we've already discussed. But, when it comes to alphabets, we are presented with the new term, segmental scripts, of which "true alphabets" is only the second category. So, what gives?
Logograms according to Merriam-Webster: "a letter, symbol, or sign used to represent an entire word.” (5) So, logographic writing systems are those like Chinese and Japanese wherein a single mark represents an entire word. These can be further broken down by dividing systems where each symbol represents a consonant sound, like Egyptian, or where each symbol represents a syllable as in the various scripts derived from Chinese hanzi.
Syllabaries, on the other hand, are, "A set of written characters representing syllables and (in some languages or stages of writing) serving the purpose of an alphabet." (Oxford English Dictionary). So, for example, Japanese uses two distinct syllabaries (alongside kanji pictographs) as part of its full writing system. Hiragana is used to "spell" things, for lack of a better term, while Katakana, which uses a different set of symbols to represent the exact same sounds, is used to write words derived from foreign languages.
So, then, how about those segmental scripts? Wikipedia prefaces its list by defining the term as, "A segmental script has graphemes which represent the phonemes (basic unit of sound) of a language." In other words, these scripts have letters (symbols) that represent the most basic parts of word as it is spoken. So, for example, to take an English word at random, "car," we see the three sounds of the word represented by three different letters. (4)
However, there are several alphabets used throughout the world where marks are added to letters to change what they represent. (6) To better explain what this means, think out the letter y. Famously, or infamously, maybe, it can function as both a vowel and a consonant. So, imagine that were we to write a standard y, it would be pronounced as it is in the word yellow. But, add a line over the top and it could be pronounced as it is in the word candy. Honestly, adding that kind of marking to English is not a bad idea…
And that, in 800 meandering words, is an explanation of just, exactly, an alphabet is: a collection of symbols used to create and record the myriad and varied ways we talk to one another. And, at the end of the day, talking and communicating with each other is the best tool we’ve got for understanding one another. Be kind.
Footnotes
Yes, kind of. They’re all based on the Latin alphabet but each alphabet is considered unique to the language it represents.
There is a whole different set of words for describing how things are written, but the only one that is really necessary is script. I might get into all the others one of these days, but not today.
The article also notes that the Latin alphabet is the basis for the International Phonetic Alphabet, which speaks to why it doesn't work very well for every and all languages. At this point, I don't know if that's something that can be corrected, but I think we ought to try.
Of course this is massively over-simplified, but if you are ever really bored in a room full of linguists, ask them just how many phonemes are in any given word, then sit back and watch the fur fly.
I mentioned this briefly at the end of Learned Volume 4, Issue 8, when I pondered what the next logograph to make the jump from punctuation to word will be.
Massively oversimplifying again, but the full list of which alphabets belong to which subset is exhaustively long. It is fascinating and well worth a read if you’ve got time, if only to see just how many different alphabets there are or have been throughout human history.
Trivially Yours
We’re well into our second evening of torrential rains and thunderstorms where I live and the smell of rain is heavy in the air. But what comes after the rain? That heady, earthy, post-rain smell? That, Reader, is called petrichor and if you figure out a way to bottle it, you’ll make a mint. Trust me.
Stay curious,
J