Alphabets and Languages

[der_kluge]

This is kind of an oddball question - but what is the name of the English alphabet?

And what are the names of different kinds of alphabets? Like heiroglyphs is one kind of alphabet, for example. The Chinese use another kind of alphabet, of which the name of it I forget.

Anyone know this stuff, or know of a site that covers it?

 

[Mark]

http://www.adh.brighton.ac.uk/schoolofdesign/MA.COURSE/LAlphabet.html

Hope that helps!

 

[der_kluge]

Thanks, Mark. I'll take a look at that.

Here's an interesting site I just came across.

The evolution of alphabets

 

[randomling]

The alphabet we use is called the Roman alphabet, though we use Arabic figures. Other alphabets include Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Cyrillic (which Russian and some other Slavonic languages use).

As for kinds of alphabets, there are two basic kinds of alphabet. The ones I've named above are all phonetic alphabets -- they use symbols to represent sounds in their languages. The other type of alphabet (I forget the term!) uses symbols to represent concepts.

Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese use this type of alphabet. Cantonese and Mandarin in fact use the same alphabet, meaning that although they cannot understand each other's spoken language, the written form is exactly the same. Hieroglyphics were basically pictographic (although this developed later into a phonetic alphabet).

I can't think of a comprehensive web site off the top of my head, sorry, but I hope that helps!

Side note: of 6,000 languages known to be spoken or to have been spoken in the world, only 76 have ever been written down. So don't imagine every language that's spoken has to have a written form!

 

[der_kluge]

Is it cuneiform? I've heard that term.

 

[der_kluge]

While I'm here, here's a site with some fantasy alphabet fonts.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/1557/fonts1.htm

 

[randomling]

Is it cuneiform? I've heard that term.

Yeah that sounds right! Thanks.

 

[der_kluge]

Actually, I think it's the writing system developed by the Mayans. But close, the type of alphabet, I think, is called "logographic".

This is an awesome site:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/index.htm

 

[ichabod]

There are two kinds of scripts. The first is ideograms, where each symbol represents a single concept, and where the symbol does not relate to pronunciation. Examples include Chinese characters, Mayan heiroglyphics, and Arabic numerals. The other is phonetic scripts, where characters have no meanings (sort of) but represent a certain sound. There are two types of phontic scripts: phonemic scripts were each symbol is one phoneme, and syllabaries, where each symbol represents a syllable consiting of a consonant and a vowel.

I think English is technically Latin script, roman being the straight up style (as opposed to italic). Cuneiform was a mediteranean script that is now dead.

I use Writing Systems of the World by Akira Nakanishi as a reference when designing props for my games. Tons of examples.

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

This is kind of an oddball question - but what is the name of the English alphabet?

You know I've always called it Harold...
Hope thats of some help to you Curtis... oh and drop me a line about you know what sometime..

Thanks for the links to guys, been rooting around for some things like this for a while now..