The Lycian alphabet was used to write the

Lycian language The Lycian language ( )Bryce (1986) page 30. was the language of the ancient Lycians who occupied the Anatolian region known during the Iron Age as Lycia. Most texts date back to the fifth and fourth century BC. Two languages are known as Lyci ...

of the

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

region of

Lycia Lycia ( Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 ''Trm̃mis''; el, Λυκία, ; tr, Likya) was a state or nationality that flourished in Anatolia from 15–14th centuries BC (as Lukka) to 546 BC. It bordered the Mediterranean Sea in what is ...

. It was an extension of the Greek alphabet, with half a dozen additional letters for sounds not found in Greek. It was largely similar to the Lydian and the

Phrygian alphabet The Phrygian alphabet is the script used in the earliest Phrygian texts. It dates back to the 8th century BCE and was used until the fourth century BCE ("Old-Phrygian" inscriptions), after which it was replaced by the common Greek alphabet ("New ...

The alphabet

The Lycian alphabet contains letters for 29 sounds. Some sounds are represented by more than one symbol, which is considered one "letter". There are six vowel letters, one for each of the four oral vowels of Lycian, and separate letters for two of the four nasal vowels. Nine of the Lycian letters do not appear to derive from the Greek alphabet.

Numbers

Lycian uses the following number symbols: I (vertical stroke) = 1, < ("less than" sign) (or, rarely, ''L'' or C or V or Y) = 5, O (circle) = 10; a horizontal stroke — is one half; a symbol somewhat like our letter H may mean 100. The number 128½ would therefore be expressed as HOO

Unicode

The Lycian alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1. It is encoded in Plane 1 ( Supplementary Multilingual Plane). The Unicode block for Lycian is U+10280–U+1029F:

Notes

References

* . Translator Chris Markham. * * Roger D. Woodard, 2007, ''The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor''.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lycian Script Writing systems Obsolete writing systems Lycian language

The alphabet

Numbers

See also

Notes

References

External links