Lydian Script
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Lydian script was used to write the
Lydian language Lydian is an extinct Indo-European language, Indo-European Anatolian languages, Anatolian language spoken in the region of Lydia, in western Anatolia (now in Turkey). The language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the late 8th centu ...
. Like other scripts of
Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
in the
Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...
, the Lydian alphabet is based on the
Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...
. 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 Roberto is an Italian, Portuguese and Spanish variation of the male given name Robert. Notable people named Roberto include: * Roberto (footballer, born 1912) * Roberto (footballer, born 1977) * Roberto (footballer, born 1978) * Roberto (footb ...
in 1964, in a combined
lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) 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 () ...
, 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 l ...
manner. Spaces separate words except in one text that uses dots instead. Lydian uniquely features a
quotation mark Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the sam ...
in the shape of a triangle.


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 language, Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logogram, logographic and syllabary, syllabic scripts. ...
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 BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
. 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 Ro ...
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 one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...
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 first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...
schwa was evidently not written: 𐤥𐤹𐤯𐤣𐤦𐤣 ''wctdid'' t͡stθiθ','' 𐤨𐤮𐤡𐤷𐤯𐤬𐤨 ''kspλtok'' 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" ''laqriša'' akʷriʃa"wall, dromos" or "inscription" ''pira'' ira"house, home" ''wcpaqẽnt'' ̩t͡spaˈkʷãnd"to trample on" (from PIE *pekʷ- "to crush")


Unicode

The Lydian alphabet was added to the
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
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 contiguous 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:


See also

*
Lydian language Lydian is an extinct Indo-European language, Indo-European Anatolian languages, Anatolian language spoken in the region of Lydia, in western Anatolia (now in Turkey). The language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the late 8th centu ...
*
Lydia Lydia (; ) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom situated in western Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey. Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire. Its capital was Sardis. At some point before 800 BC, ...
*
Lydians The Lydians (Greek language, Greek: Λυδοί; known as ''Sparda'' to the Achaemenids, Old Persian cuneiform Wikt:𐎿𐎱𐎼𐎭, 𐎿𐎱𐎼𐎭) were an Anatolians, Anatolian people living in Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spo ...
*
Runes Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...


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 handw ...
Writing systems Obsolete writing systems Right-to-left writing systems