Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here.
Hi again! Last month, I wrote about languages that aren’t related. This time, I’m going to talk about something that you might not realize many languages have in common: their writing system 📝
Our question this week:
This is a fantastic question! For many of us, being able to communicate in writing might feel like a fundamental part of using language, but writing actually emerged much more recently than expressive (spoken or signed) language. People have been communicating for a long time, and writing is just one way to represent what we’re saying! You may even find that the writing system you know best is an imperfect way of capturing all the concepts you can express—for example, have you ever felt like a text message was incomplete without an emoji or two?
Also, not all languages have a writing system, but this doesn’t mean they are any less complex or complete than languages that do!
While there is lots of diversity in the writing systems that exist today, a lot of them are more closely related than they may look at first glance. Here, I’ll discuss how writing systems evolved, how some of them are related, and a few fascinating examples of unique writing systems you may not know about!
In this post:
Where did different writing systems come from?
Writing systems descended from Egyptian or Chinese systems
Writing systems that descended from Brāhmī
Writing systems that did not develop from one of these scripts
Where did different writing systems come from?
Writing developed independently in at least three different places in the ancient world, at different times and using different mediums. It’s important to note that the surface used to record written language is crucial when discussing the history of writing: Many of the earliest known examples of writing were found on durable materials like stone, clay, or bone, meaning that they were able to last over the long periods of time that elapsed between when they were created and when they were later rediscovered. It’s entirely possible that older writing systems also developed and died out in other parts of the world, and if they were recorded on materials like leaves or bark, we may never know about them.
The Middle East
The earliest known writing system in the world began in Ancient Sumer, in present-day Iraq. This script, called Sumerian cuneiform, was written using a wedge-shaped stylus pressed into slabs of wet clay. It was used to write many of the region’s languages, including Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite, but these languages are now extinct and cuneiform is no longer in use.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were developed around the same time, and it’s unclear whether ancient Egyptians were inspired by their Sumerian neighbors. In any case, this writing system has stood the test of time and is a distant ancestor to many of the world’s languages! (If you’re reading this now, you’re reading an alphabet that descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs 🤯)
China
Several centuries later, writing in China took the form of what’s now known as “oracle bone script,” which is just as cool as it sounds: Royal court diviners were tasked with making official predictions by writing on turtle or ox bones, heating the bones until they cracked, and interpreting the patterns that appeared. Experts haven’t deciphered all of this script, but enough is understood that we know that this writing system evolved into modern-day Chinese characters!
No one knows when exactly this form of writing truly began—the oracle bones that have been recovered have writing that seems too sophisticated to be the first time the script was used, but earlier examples haven’t been found.
Mesoamerica
Some ancient Mesoamerican civilizations—including the Maya, the Olmecs, and the Zapotecs—developed their own writing systems, and although the practice of writing in this part of the world probably began with just one group and then spread from there, no one’s sure which of these groups started writing first. What we do know is that Maya glyphs, which are the most thoroughly deciphered script in the region, were partially syllabic and partially logographic, meaning that some characters represented syllables, like ba or ko, while others stood for an entire concept, such as a jaguar head to represent the word for “jaguar.” They also had a numeral system that used 20 as its base (instead of 10, like English does)!
Many examples of Maya glyphs have survived because they were carved into stone, but this system was forcibly ended in the 16th and 17th centuries by European colonists and missionaries. Many Mayan languages are still spoken today, but they are typically written in a version of the Latin alphabet (the same system that English uses).
Writing systems descended from Egyptian or Chinese systems
Now that we know where the world’s ancient writing systems developed, let’s look at the systems that are in use today! Many of the world’s most well-known and widespread writing systems are descendants of the script found in Egypt or China:
Scripts descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs:
| Script and example text | Example text | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | you’re reading it! | The Latin alphabet is used to write many Indo-European languages, including Romance, Germanic, and some Slavic languages. |
| Cyrillic | українська абетка | The Cyrillic alphabet is used to write many Slavic languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbian, as well as languages from Turkic and other families. |
| Greek | το ελληνικό αλφάβητο | Both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are largely based on an older version of the Greek alphabet! |
| Vietnamese | chữ viết tiếng Việt | The Vietnamese alphabet is a version of the Latin alphabet (it was created by a Portuguese missionary) with the addition of lots of diacritics, or accent marks, that make it recognizably Vietnamese: ă, â, đ, ê, ô, ơ, and ư are considered separate letters, while the diacritics à, á, ả, ã, and ạ are used to distinguish tones. |
| Arabic | الأبجدية العربية | As different as the Arabic and Hebrew writing systems look, they are closely related to each other: Both are abjads, and both are used to write Semitic languages from the Afro-Asiatic family! |
| Hebrew | אלפבית עברי | |
| Geʽez | የኣማርኛ ፊደል | The Geʽez script (an abugida) is also used to write several Semitic languages that are primarily spoken in East Africa, including Amharic and Tigrinya. Unlike Arabic and Hebrew, Geʽez is written and read from left to right (like the Latin alphabet)! |
Scripts descended from Chinese oracle bone script
| Script | Example text | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese hanzi | 汉字书写系统 | Not only is hanzi used to write all of the different varieties of Chinese, but these logographic characters are also used in Japanese! Japanese kanji characters are borrowed directly from Chinese hanzi. |
| Japanese kanji | 文字体系 | |
| Japanese hiragana | ひらがな | These writing systems may look very different and have different uses in Japanese, but they share the same ancestor—both hiragana and katakana are syllabaries that were developed from a set of Chinese characters called manyougana, used since ancient times to represent Japanese sounds! |
| Japanese katakana | カタカナ |
Writing systems that descended from Brāhmī
Several languages in South and Southeast Asia developed from the Brāhmī script, but it is uncertain whether Brāhmī was, in turn, based on or inspired by Aramaic (the same script that Arabic and Hebrew descended from), or if it arose independently. Writing systems based on Brāhmī include the following:
| Script | Example text | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Devanagari | देवनागरी | All of these writing systems are used for Indo-European and Dravidian languages primarily spoken in India and Sri Lanka. Devanagari is used to write Hindi and many other South Asian languages spoken in South Asia, while the rest of the scripts share the name of the spoken language they are most closely associated with: Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Sinhala. |
| Gujarati | ગુજરાતી લિપિ | |
| Tamil | தமிழ் அரிச்சுவடி | |
| Telugu | తెలుగు లిపి | |
| Kannada | ಕನ್ನಡ ಅಕ್ಷರಮಾಲೆ | |
| Malayalam | മലയാളലിപി | |
| Sinhala | සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව | |
| Tibetan | དབྱངས་གསལ་ | The Tibetan abugida is used to write Tibetan, as well as many of the Tibetic languages, such as Dzongkha, the official language of Bhutan. |
| Khmer | អក្សរខ្មែរ | Thai and Lao are both based on an older form of the Khmer system! |
| Thai | อักษรไทย | |
| Lao | ອັກສອນລາວ |
Writing systems that did not develop from one of these scripts
Unlike the scripts above, these next writing systems were invented with little or no influence from pre-existing systems. In each case, someone saw a need for a new system—either their language had no writing system, or used a writing system that had been imposed on them by another group—and created one. As you’ll see, you don’t need years of formal linguistic training in order to make an immense contribution to your language!
| Script | Example text | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hangul | 한국어 공식 문자 | Hangul was created by a Korean king in the 1400s who wanted a specifically Korean writing system to replace the Chinese characters that had previously been used to write Korean. It’s a type of featural script because the characters are designed to look like the place in the mouth where they’re produced! |
| Cherokee | ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ | The Cherokee syllabary was developed by a Cherokee man named Sequoyah in the 19th century. Prior to inventing the Cherokee script, he wasn’t able to read or write in any language, and only spoke Cherokee! Within 20 years of the script’s completion, literacy rates among the Cherokee reached nearly 100%. |
| Inuktitut (and other Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics) |
ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ | Many indigenous languages of Canada such as Inuktitut, Cree, and Ojibwe use a version of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics as their writing system, which was inspired by the success of the Cherokee script. Each character represents a consonant, and the orientation of the character tells you what vowel is paired with it! For example, ᔭ represents the sound “ja,” ᔨ is “ji,” and ᔪ is “ju,” while ᕙ makes the sound “va,” ᕕ is “vi,” and ᕗ is “vu.” |
| Adlam | 𞤀𞤣𞤤𞤢𞤥 𞤆𞤵𞤤𞤢𞤪 | Two Guinean brothers, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, wanted to create a unique and more accurate system to write their language, Fulani. At that point, Fulani (also known as Fula, Fulfulde, or Pulaar) had previously been written using Arabic characters. They were only 10 and 14 years old when they developed the Adlam alphabet in 1989! |
Worth a thousand words
In short, the world’s oldest writing systems—just like the languages they’re used for—have changed a lot over the course of their existence. Language is always changing, and writing has tried to keep up and meet the practical, cultural, and expressive needs of its users. These writing systems represent just one small part of the incredible linguistic diversity that exists around the world, and learning a new writing system can be an endeavor that’s both challenging and rewarding.
For more answers to your language and learning questions, get in touch with us by emailing dearduolingo@duolingo.com.