世界各地的文字.doc

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1、【精品文档】如有侵权，请联系网站删除，仅供学习与交流世界各地的文字Quick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime16th century CE to PresentDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseThe Gurmukhi script is tightly associated with the Sikh religion, as the words guru-mukh literally m

2、ean from the mouth of the guru. It was created in the 16th century CE by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad, to write the Punjabi language. Stylistically, Gurmukhi derives its letter shapes from Landa, but considerable influence from Nagari is evident from the top horizontal bar present in most letter

3、s. Punjabi has three tones, but they are not represented in the writing system except for sporadic use of the ha letter (reduced to a subscript) to indicate a high tone. Vowels and other attachments: Related links: Languages and Scripts of India JavaneseQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBra

4、hmiLocationSoutheast Asia IndonesiaTime4th century CE to PresentDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseJavanese is one of the earliest languages in Indonesia to possess a literary tradition. As a result of contact with Indian merchants, speakers of Javanese adapted the

5、 Pallava script, a variant of the Brahmi script, during the 4th centruy CE to write their own language. By the 8th century CE, this Indian prototype has evolved into a distinctive script known as the Kawi script. The transition from Kawi into Javanese during the 13th century BCE was more stylistic t

6、han structural. Only the visual composition of the script changed. The way the script worked remained unchanged. Like other Brahmi-derived scripts, the Javanese script is a syllabic alphabet. Each letter in reality represent a consonant followed by a standard vowel, /a/ in Javaneses case. A letter o

7、f this type is called an aksara. The following is the chart of the basic aksaras in the modern Javanese script. In addition, a small set of letters called aksara murda or aksara gedhe is used to write titles and names of respectable people. In such cases, aksara murda letters will replace all regula

8、r aksara letters that have corresponding murda letters. Aksara murda letters originated from letters borrowed from Pallava to represent sounds found in Indian languages but not in Javanese, and so they evolved to become honorific variants. The aksara murda letters are in the following chart: In orde

9、r to change the inherent vowel of /a/ to some other vowel, extra strokes called sandangan are written next to the letter. Often grouped with the sandangan but serves a different function is the patn, which actually mutes the vowel so that the letter only stands for its consonant. Initial vowels are

10、usually written with the ha letter followed by the sandangan marks. However, there is also an optional set of letters called aksara swara used to write initial vowels without sandangan. The patn is one of the two ways to suppress the inherent vowel in a letter. Another way is an alternate set of let

11、ters called pasangan. which when juxtaposed to an aksara letter will result in a consonant cluster where the aksara letter stands for the first consonant and the pasangan the second in the cluster. The following is the regular pasangan letters. Just like aksara letters, the pasangan letters contain

12、a regular set and a murda set. The following are the pasangan murda letters. The images on this page was created with the Javanese font from Jason Glavy that can be downloaded from KalingaQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime6th to 11th century CEDirectionLeft to Ri

13、ghtMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseKalinga is the ancient name of Orissa, and the Kalinga script was used to write an ancient form of the Oriya language. The Kalinga script is derived from Brahmi and visually is very close to that ancient script. By the 12th century this script has b

14、een abandoned in favor of a Bengali-derived script which eventually became the Oriya script. KashmiriQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime14th century CE to PresentDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseThe Kashmiri script is essential

15、ly the modern version of the Sarada script. All letters have nearly identical shape to their counterparts in Sarada. The spoken language of Kashmiri can be heard in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as immediately nearby areas in both India and Pakistan. One fact so typical of this poli

16、tically charged area is that the Kashmiri language is spoken by both Hindus and Muslims, but each group would write the language with a different script. The use of the Kashmiri script to write the Kashmiri language is mostly confined to Hindus, while Muslims would write the Kashmiri language with a

17、n Arabic-derived alphabet (such as the one for Urdu). The following is the basic Kashmiri script. Vowels and other attachments: Related links: Languages and Scripts of India KhmerQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSoutheast AsiaTime12th century CE to Present CEDirectionLeft to

18、RightMap data 2008 ZENRIN, Europa Technologies - Terms of UseThe Khmer script was one of the earliest writing systems used in Southeast Asia, first appearing in the 7th century CE. It derived immediately from the Pallava script, a variety of the Grantha script of South India, which in turn ultimatel

19、y is descended from the ancient Brahmi script of India. Like all Brahmi-derived scripts, Khmer has certain traits similar to those found in South Asian scripts. The direction of writing in Khmer is left to right, and downwards when horizontal space runs out. Khmer is a syllabic alphabet, meaning tha

20、t a letter represents a syllable in the form of a consonant followed by an inherent vowel. An interesting feature of the Khmer script is that there are two letters for each consonant, one letter carrying the inherent vowel of /a/ and the other /o/. This stems from reusing letters for sounds present

21、in Indian languages but not Khmer. So, roughly speaking, the a-letters correspond to the voiceless letters in Indian scripts, and o-letters to the Indian letters for voiced consonants (fewer of which exist in Khmer than in Indian tongues). The following is the Khmer script. Note that q is the stands

22、 for the glottal stop. Another note is that the last row of letters (g-, f-, and zh-) represent sounds found only in words borrowed from other languages. Note that I have rearranged the alphabet to group letters by their initial consonants, thus scrambling the traditional alphabetical order. The nor

23、mal ordering of letters follows those in Indic scripts, but translated onto the a and o letters of Khmer. So for example, the velar (/k/-like sounds) letters in Indic scripts are ordered as ka, kha, ga, gha, and nga. As previously mentioned, voiced consonants letters in Indic scripts were reused for

24、 the o-series of letters, and therefore this transforms into ka, kha, ko, kho, and ngo. Another feature of the Khmer script is the use of extra strokes (called vowel diacritics) around a letter to change the inherent vowel. Once again, because there are two letters for each consonant, the same vowel

25、 diacritic works differently for an a-letter and an o-letter. The following chart illustrates this dichotomy. The first line under each row of vowel diacritic lists the vowels for the a-letters, and the second line lists the vowels for the o-letters. But of course, there are exceptions. The q- lette

26、rs dont use vowel diacritics, but instead have special letters for many of the vowels. This stems from the fact that the q- letters came from the word-initial /a/ vowel letter in Indic scripts. As there were letters for other word-initial vowels in Indic scripts as well, they also were incorporated

27、into Khmer as q- letters. All q- letters only appear at the beginning of a word, which is the only place where a glottal stop can occur in Khmer. In addition, certain syllables starting with /r/ and /l/ are also written using special letters too. Once again, this stems from Indic scripts having spec

28、ial cases with /r/ and /l/ sounds. Consonant clusters are written using ligatures. A ligature is a double decker sign composed of a normal letter and a subscript. Normally, subscripts are smaller versions of the normal letters, but sometimes they are mutated into shapes that dont resemble the corres

29、ponding normal letters. In a cluster, the first letter to be read is the normal letter, which sits at the central location, and the second letter is the subscript, which sits under the first letter and sometimes extends up the side of the first letter. The following chart lists normal letters (in bl

30、ue) and respective subscripts (in black). The following is an example of subscripts used in conjunction with normal letters and vowel diacritics to write out Khmer words. The Khmer script is still used in Cambodia, having evolved over more than a thousand years. One consequence of this long history

31、is that certain words are not pronounced as they are spelled, so sometimes a comma-like diacritic is placed on letters that are no longer pronounced. The Lao and Thai scripts are related to the Khmer script, but exact relationships are unknown. Some consider Lao to be a sibling to Khmer and Thai as

32、a derived script, but with the rapid spread of Buddhism and Indian scripts into Southeast Asia the exact parentage of these scripts will likely remain uncertain. Related links: KhmerL LepchaQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth Asia HimalayaTime18th century CE to PresentDire

33、ctionLeft to RightThe Lepcha script, also known as the Rng script, is a Brahmi-style syllabic alphabet possibly derived from the dbu med variant of the Tibetan script. It is used to write the Lepcha language, which is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal. Li

34、ke all Brahmi-derived scripts, each basic letter in Lepcha in fact represents a syllable that starts with a consonant and ends with an inherent vowel of /a/. The only exception is the letter for just the sound /a/. The following chart lists all basic Lepcha letters. To change the vowel of the syllab

35、le to a value other than /a/, additional strokes are added to various positions around the letter. This applies to both the normal consonant-initial letters as well as the singleton /a/ letter. Final consonants are represented by extra strokes, often placed at the top of the letter but sometimes bef

36、ore the letter: Consonant clusters can occur in the beginning of Lepcha syllables, and there are multiple ways of writing them. Consonant clusters of the type /Cl/ (where C is any consonant) are represented by their own letters. All other clusters are written with ligatures of various degrees of com

37、plexity. Clusters of the type /Cy/ and /Cly/ are written with a v-like attachment following the letter. Clusters of the form /Cr/ use a slightly curved vertical line. And finally, /Cry/ clusters are written with both the v-like element and the curved vertical line. Images on this page were created w

38、ith the Lepcha font by Jason Glavy (see link below). Related links: Lepcha font NagariQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime8th to 11th century CEDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseThe Nagari script is essentially an early form of t

39、he Devanagari script, which is still used in modern Indian. It appeared around the 8th century CE as an eastern variant of the Gupta script (whereas Sarada was the western variety). In turn it branched off into several scripts (in addition to Devanagari), such as Nandinagari, Bengali, and Tibetan, a

40、s well as influenced the Sarada-derived Gurmukhi script. Related links: Languages and Scripts of India OriyaQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime12th century CE to PresentDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Europa Technologies - Terms of UseThe Oriya script develope

41、d from an early form of the Bengali script, which belongs to the Northern group of South Asian scripts. Oriya is used to write the Oriya language, which is spoken in the modern Indian state of Orissa, located on the east coast of India. While the cursive shape of the Oriya letters appear to suggest

42、influences from Southern scripts, it is thought that the cursive shape evolved from the need to write on palm leaves with a pointed stylus. The basic signs of the Oriya script. As in other South Asian scripts, vowels other than the default /a/ are indicated by extra strokes: Related links: Languages

43、 and Scripts of India. SinhalaQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSouth AsiaTime8th century CE to Present CEDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 AND, Europa Technologies - Terms of UseSinhala has been a distinctive script used to write the Sinhalese language spoken in Sri Lanka.

44、Sinhala is a most closely related to the Grantha script, but also takes some elements from the Kadamba script as well. The following is the basic Sinhala script. Like other South Asian scripts, a Sinhala letter has an inherent vowel of /a/. To change this vowel to another, extra strokes called matra

45、s are added to the basic letter, as in the following example: Related links: Languages and Scripts of India Edens Page: Scripts of all of Asia TagalogQuick FactsTypeSyllabic AlphabeticGenealogyBrahmiLocationSoutheast Asia The PhilipinesTime14th to 17th century CEDirectionLeft to RightMap data 2008 Z

46、ENRIN, Europa Technologies - Terms of UseTagalog is the most widely spoken tongue in the Philipines today. Nowadays it is written in a Roman alphabet, but prior to Spanish colonial rule, Tagalog speakers employed a syllabic alphabet named Baybayin to record their language. The Tagalog Baybayin is on

47、e of the many indigenous scripts of pre-colonial Philipines The development of scripts in Philipines remains somewhat of a mystery due to destruction of native literature by Spanish authorities as well as poor preservation of the plant-based writing material in the Tropics. It is thought that scripts in Philipines derived from the Old Kawi script of Java around the 14th century CE. Ultimately, scripts in Philipines derive from Indian scripts. Like Indian scripts, every Tagalog letter inherently carries the vowel