Writing Systems

Writing systems, means of graphically recording language, are of three fundamental types: (1) logographic systems which consist of nonphonetic symbols, called logograms, which represent entire words; (2) syllabic; and (3) segmental writing systems which comprise phonetic symbols representing syllable-units and individual sounds, respectively. Segmental scripts can be further divided into two types: those representing only consonants (alephbeths) and those spelling both consonants and vowels (alphabets). Writing first appears among the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BC and reveals itself in Egypt not long thereafter. Both the Sumerian and Egyptian systems are partially logographic and partially phonetic (the former syllabic, the latter segmental). The first attested script that consists solely of symbols for individual sounds (consonants) is called Proto-Sinaitic, used to write the Canaanite language of a people living in Egypt early in the second millennium BC. Proto-Sinaitic is one form of the more widely attested Proto-Canaanite script, ancestor of the Phoenician alephbeth, which is itself the source of the Greek alphabet, appearing in c.late ninth/early eighth century BC (the Greeks had earlier written with the syllabic scripts called Linear B and the Cypriot Syllabary). The Phoenician script is also the source of the Aramaic writing system, which in turn probably gave rise to the early scripts of India. Writing appears independently in China by c.1200 BC. Chinese writing is parent to Japanese (by the end of the ninth century AD); early Korean was written with Chinese characters, but the native Han'gul appeared in perhaps the fifteenth century AD. Writing also develops independently in Mesoamerica, as among the Maya by at least the third century AD.