Lydian script was used to write the

Lydian language Lydian (𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤶𐤯𐤦𐤳 ''Sfardẽtiš'' " anguageof Sardis") is an extinct Indo-European Anatolian language spoken in the region of Lydia, in western Anatolia (now in Turkey). The language is attested in graffiti and in co ...

. Like other scripts of

Anatolia 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 ...

in the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...

, the Lydian alphabet is based on the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...

. It is related to the East Greek alphabet, but it has unique features. The first modern codification of the Lydian alphabet was made by

Roberto Gusmani The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...

in 1964, in a combined

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or fo ...

, grammar, and text collection. Early Lydian texts were written either from left to right or from right to left. Later texts all run from right to left. One surviving text is in the bi-directional

boustrophedon Boustrophedon is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the le ...

manner. Spaces separate words except in one text that uses dots instead. Lydian uniquely features a

quotation mark Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...

in the shape of a

right triangle A right triangle (American English) or right-angled triangle ( British), or more formally an orthogonal triangle, formerly called a rectangled triangle ( grc, ὀρθόσγωνία, lit=upright angle), is a triangle in which one angle is a right a ...

Alphabet

The Lydian alphabet is closely related to the other

alphabets of Asia Minor Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logographic and syllabic scripts. The alphabets of Asia Minor proper s ...

as well as to the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

. It contains letters for 26 sounds. Some are represented by more than one symbol, which is considered one "letter." Unlike the

Carian alphabet The Carian alphabets are a number of regional scripts used to write the Carian language of western Anatolia. They consisted of some 30 alphabetic letters, with several geographic variants in Caria and a homogeneous variant attested from the Nile ...

, which had an ''f'' derived from Φ, the Lydian ''f'' has the peculiar ''8'' shape also found in the Neo-Etruscan alphabet and in Italic alphabets of

Osco-Umbrian languages The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in Central and Southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of Ancient Rom ...

such as Oscan, Umbrian, Old Sabine and South Picene (Old Volscian), and it is thought to be an invention of speakers of a Sabellian language (Osco-Umbrian languages). In addition, two digraphs, ''aa'' and ''ii'', appear to be

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

of and under speculative circumstances, such as lengthening from stress. Complex consonant clusters often appear in the inscriptions and, if present, an

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

was evidently not written: 𐤥𐤹𐤯𐤣𐤦𐤣 ''wctdid'' t͡stθiθ','' 𐤨𐤮𐤡𐤷𐤯𐤬𐤨 ''kśbλtok-'' spʎ̩tok Note: a newer transliteration employing ''p'' for ''b'', ''s'' for ''ś'', ''š'' for ''s'', and/or ''w'' for ''v'' appears in recent publications and the online Dictionary of the Minor Languages of Ancient Anatolia (eDiAna), as well as Melchert's Lydian corpus.

Examples of words

''ora'' ra"month" ''laqrisa'' akʷrisa"wall, dromos" or "inscription" ''bira'' ira"house, home" ''wcbaqẽnt'' ̩t͡spaˈkʷãnd"to trample on" (from PIE *pekʷ- "to crush")

Unicode

The Lydian 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 In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...

). The Unicode block for Lydian is U+10920–U+1093F:

Notes

External links

References

* . Translator Chris Markham. * French language text. *Gusmani, R. ''Lydisches Wörterbuch. Mit grammatischer Skizze und Inschriftensammlung'', Heidelberg 1964 (Ergänzungsband 1-3, Heidelberg 1980-1986). *Melchert, H. Craig (2004) "Lydian", in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . pp. 601–608. * Shevoroshkin, V. ''The Lydian Language'', Moscow, 1977. {{list of writing systems

Script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of ha ...