Writing systems in different languages

Vivian Cook 
Writing System Home 
Spelling tests

Is writing based on visual symbols? Go to Signs page

 

Read the following out loud:

  1. The child is father to the man.

  2. 25+59=84

  3. Little Pig, Pillimore, Grimithistle, Pennywhistle, Great big Thumbo, father of them all.

  4. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata, Shantih shantih shantih.

  5. A! Elbereth Gilthoniel! Silivren penna mνriel o menel aglar elenath Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth.

Undoubtedly several of these have words that are unknown to you; how then were you able to read them aloud? Only because sound-based systems like English allow anything to be read aloud.

 

The Dual Route Model of Reading Aloud

The two routes

The Phonological Route

The Lexical 
Route
converts written units ...  to phonemes  to meanings
also known as ... assembled phonology  addressed phonology
needs… mental rules  mental lexicon of items
works by… correspondence rules  matching
can handle … any novel combination  only familiar symbols
used with … any words  high frequency words

Samples of different scripts
see also Scripts

Some links to samples of scripts:
http://www.omniglot.com/
  http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/orthography/examples.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/9594/
http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/ling001/intro-resources-writing.html

Japanese book title (Second Language Learning and Language Teaching)

Chinese book title (Second Language Learning and Language Teaching)

Korean book title (Chomsky's Universal Grammar)


person		  
mouth 
mountain
to walk
horse

 
Malaysia
tree

population
volcano
music
river
wood

large
body 
elephant
sheep
to go
England		  
forest
Some sample Chinese characters

 

The two main writing systems

Sound-based writing systems

 Meaning-based writing 
systems
Symbols link to speech sounds Symbols link to word meanings
Needs: 
– some phonological properties e.g. predictable vowels (Arabic) 
– small number of symbols 		 Needs:
– unvarying word forms, e.g Chinese
– many thousands of characters
Syllabic: Japanese (kana), many Indian languages (Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati etc) Character-based: Chinese, Japanese (kanji)
Consonantal: Arabic, Persian, Urdu, etc.
Alphabetic: Spanish, Russian, Hindi etc

For figures on numbers of users go to Scripts Statististics