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Orthographic Depth
The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence. It depends on how easy it is to predict the pronunciation of a word based on its spelling: shallow orthographies are easy to pronounce based on the written word, and deep orthographies are difficult to pronounce based on how they are written. In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly. In other words, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. In contrast, in deep (opaque) orthographies, the relationship is less direct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. Not all writing systems represent language in this way: a syllabary assigns symbols to spoken syllables, while logographies assign symbols to words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first letters were invented in Ancient Egypt to serve as an aid in writing Egyptian hieroglyphs; these are referred to as Egyptian uniliteral signs by lexicographers. This system was used until the 5th century AD, and fundamentally differed by adding pronunciation hints to existing hieroglyphs that had previously carried no pronunciation information. Later on, these phonemic symbols also became used to transcribe foreign words. The first fully phonemic script was the Proto-Sinaitic script, also descending from Egyptian hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemics''. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a character. (A specific geometric shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given typeface is called a glyph.) Conceptualization There are two main opposing grapheme concepts. In the so-called ''referential conception'', graphemes are interpreted as the smallest units of writing that correspond with sounds (more accurately phonemes). In this concept, the ''sh'' in the written English word ''shake'' would be a grapheme because it represents the phoneme /ʃ/. This referential concept is linked to the ''dependency hypothesis'' that claims that writing merely depicts speech. By contrast, the ''analogical concept'' defines gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Orthography
French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years. Even in the late 17th century, with the publication of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française">first French dictionary by the Académie française, there were attempts to reform French orthography. This has resulted in a complicated relationship between spelling and sound, especially for vowels; a multitude of silent letters; and many homophones, e.g. ''/////'' (all pronounced ) and ''//'' (all pronounced ). This is conspicuous in verbs: ' (you speak), ' (I speak / one speaks) and ' (they speak) all sound like . Later attempts to respell some words in accordance with their Latin etymologies further increased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burmese Orthography
The Burmese alphabet (, MLCTS: ''mranma akkha.ya'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese, based on the Mon–Burmese script. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit. In recent decades, other, related alphabets, such as Shan and modern Mon, have been restructured according to the standard of the Burmese alphabet (see Mon–Burmese script). Burmese orthography is deep, with an indirect spelling-sound correspondence between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), due to its long and conservative written history and voicing rules. Burmese is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability and to avoid grammatical complications. There are several systems of transliteration into the Latin alphabet; for this article, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khmer Orthography
Khmer script (, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official language of Cambodia. It is also used to write Pali in the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and Thailand. Khmer is written from left to right. Words within the same sentence or phrase are generally run together with no spaces between them. Consonant clusters within a word are "stacked", with the second (and occasionally third) consonant being written in reduced form under the main consonant. Originally there were 35 consonant characters, but modern Khmer uses only 33. Each character represents a consonant sound together with an inherent vowel, either ''â'' or ''ô''; in many cases, in the absence of another vowel mark, the inherent vowel is to be pronounced after the consonant. There are some independent vowel characters, but vowel sounds are more commonly represented as depe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thai Orthography
The Thai script (, , ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai script itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols (, ), 16 vowel symbols (, ) that combine into at least 32 vowel forms, four tone diacritics ( or , or ), and other diacritics. Although commonly referred to as the ''Thai alphabet'', the script is not a true alphabet but an abugida, a writing system in which the full characters represent consonants with diacritical marks for vowels; the absence of a vowel diacritic gives an implied 'a' or 'o'. Consonants are written horizontally from left to right, and vowels following a consonant in speech are written above, below, to the left or to the right of it, or a combination of those. History The Thai script is derived from the Sukhothai script, which itself is derived from the Old Khmer script (, ''akson khom''), which is a southern Brahmic style of writing derived from the south Indian Pal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongolian Script
The traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first Mongolian alphabet, writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic script, Cyrillic in 1946. It is traditionally written in vertical lines from top to bottom, flowing in lines from left to right . Derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, it is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. It has been adapted for such languages as Oirat language, Oirat and Manchu language, Manchu. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script continue to be used in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia to write Mongolian, Xibe language, Xibe and, experimentally, Evenki language, Evenki. Computer operating systems have been slow to adopt support for the Mongolian script; almost all have incomplete support or other text rendering difficulties. History The Mongolian vertical script developed as an adaptation of the Old U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibetan Orthography
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or ''abugida'', forming a part of the Brahmic scripts, and used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. Its exact origins are a subject of research but is traditionally considered to be developed by Thonmi Sambhota for King Songtsen Gampo. The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written form used in everyday writing is called umê script. This writing system is especially used across the Himalayan Region. History Little is known about the exact origins of Tibetan script. According to Tibetan historiography, it was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota, who was sent to India along with other scholars to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and other brahmi languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at the Pabonka Hermitage. This occurred , towards the beginning of Songt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logograph
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language. Types of logographic systems Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logographic; the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Script
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in ''The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century&n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Orthography
Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rather, the writing system is '' morphosyllabic'': characters are one spoken syllable in length, but generally correspond to morphemes in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of a polysyllabic word. Most characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000. This has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems (generally Pinyin) as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese. Chinese writing is first attested during the late Shang dynasty (), but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faroese Orthography
Faroese orthography is the method employed to write the Faroese language, using a 29-letter Latin alphabet, although it does not include the letters C, Q, W, X and Z. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin script: * Eth (Faroese ') never appears at the beginning of a word, which means its majuscule form rarely occurs except in situations where all-capital letters are used, such as on maps. * can also be written in poetic language, such as ' ('the Faroes'). This has to do with different orthographic traditions ( Danish–Norwegian for and Icelandic for ). Originally, both forms were used, depending on the historical form of the word; was used when the vowel resulted from I-mutation of while was used when the vowel resulted from U-mutation of . In handwriting, is sometimes used. * While , , , , and are not found in the Faroese language, was known in earlier versions of Hammershaimb's orthography, such as for Saksun. * While t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
