{"id":331,"date":"2007-03-22T17:41:41","date_gmt":"2007-03-22T17:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/22\/script-classification\/"},"modified":"2007-03-22T17:41:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-22T17:41:41","slug":"script-classification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"Classification of writing systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People sometimes question the way the writing systems on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\">Omniglot<\/a> are classified. Most writing systems fit well into one category or another, but others straddle several categories, or don&#8217;t fit well into any category.<\/p>\n<p>For example, when used to write Hebrew, the Hebrew script is an abjad or consonant alphabet. When it&#8217;s used to write Yiddish all the vowels are usually written, so is the Yiddish version a fully vocalised abjad or a phonemic alphabet?<\/p>\n<p>Writing systems like Chinese, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Mayan are the most difficult to define. In many sources Chinese is classified as logographic, i.e. a writing system consisting of logographs or logograms, which are defined in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.m-w.com\/dictionary\/logogram\">Merriam-Webster dictionary<\/a> as &#8220;a letter, symbol, or sign used to represent an entire word&#8221;. This is not the best name for the script as only some Chinese characters are logograms. Other terms include morphosyllabic, logosyllabic, ideographic, pictographic.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Visible Speech<\/em>, John DeFrancis says that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Chinese system must be classified as a syllabic system of writing. More specifically, it belongs to the subcategory that I have labeled meaning plus-sound syllabic systems or morphosyllabic systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Morphosyllabic seems to be a good term for Chinese, but what about Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Mayan, etc?<\/p>\n<p>Any suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People sometimes question the way the writing systems on Omniglot are classified. Most writing systems fit well into one category or another, but others straddle several categories, or don&#8217;t fit well into any category. For example, when used to write Hebrew, the Hebrew script is an abjad or consonant alphabet. When it&#8217;s used to write [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}