~ this simple symbol is tilde ~
Tilde comes from Latin Titulus.
While it's used sometimes to indicate tones and accents it was first developed to mark palatal nasals.
Like the Cedilla it begun life as a scribal shorthand in the European Middle Ages.
Ancient Latin doesnt seem to have had an "NG" sound and Greek writes ng as gg.
However later Romance and other European languages developed a full range of palatals and nasals we do not have in English.
Spanish scribes used a tilde over n to show the "ny" sound.
From Spanish it was borrowed to show in some languages that there was NO nasalization of a vowel or that a nasalized vowel had replaced an earlier nasal sound that had disappeared as in Brazilian and Continental Portugese and Frnech.
Other languaes that mark a palatal nasal with a tilde are apart from Castilian Spanish, Asturian, Basque, Talalog,Galician, Guarani, Tetum and Papaimento.
Tilde a simple squiggle of a sign has now migrated to Asia and the Americas and even has special functions in IPA.
More about diacritics and nasals soon.
A blog about Signs Fonts Typography Design Scripts Calligraphy Symbols etc,.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Z and Cedilla
The Curious tale of Z and Cedilla.
Our modern cedilla symbol begun life as a "scribal ligature" which in plainer words means two characters combined into one by scribes as a kind of shorthand. The sounds cedilla represents in Roamnce language in one stage were written cz and had a Spanish nickname of cedilla or zedilla - the litte zeta. Originally the sound was probably "ts" and later became a "sh" sibilant sound partly due to the large number of Arabic and Hebrew speakers in Spain during the Islamic era.
It has been or is used in Spanish, Portugese, Catalan, Friuli and Occitan.
Beyond Europe it was adopted by several languages of the Turkkic family when they switched from Arabic and Cyrillic to Roman alphabets, Osmanli also known as Ottoman, Azeri, Tatar, Turkmen, and others.
While usuallu representing a sibilant one European Langaue Latvian uses it to mark Palatals to distinguish them from Velars and Nasals so it appears under g, K, L, and N.
Its use was much more common before IPA fonts were available.
Friday, 11 November 2011
A Tale of Palm and Paper and Printing
This is an image of a lontar, a traditional book format in SE Asia made from palm leaves.
The script is Balinese.
In the modern world we tend to take the use of paper for granted but there was a time when paper was scarce and unusual and writing was done in parchment (treated and scraped leather hides) clay tablets, wax tablets or lead or papyrus and on silk or cloth.
Paper is a relatively new innovation and it's no consequnce that printing appeared soon after paper became more common. Printing probalby increased the demand for paper.
Imagine trying to print with wooden blocks or silk screens or movable type IN MASS PRODUCTION on silk or palm leaves or wood?
The pairing of paper and print is why China and Japan had a surprisingly high literacy rate when you consider the difficulties of learning to read and write at least a thousand characters for basic literacy.
Okay the Japanese and Koreans ended up developing kana and hangul but you see my point?
Movable type wouldnt have worked on papyrus or clay tablets not in multiple copies.
In Indonesia the Old KAWI script and related forms competes with Arabic and the Roman ABC.
It was the Dutch who introduced printing. That's probably why Bahasa books and magazines are usually printed in the Roman alphabet though there is a modified form of Arabic that has extra letters to cover sounds that do not exist in Arabic like ng and ny.
There is yet another type of script used in the Celebes and Sulawesi but that's a topic for another post.
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Another Beautiful thing from Bali!
Ever wondered about that curly writing you see at the gates of Balinese temples or on some street and public signs along with Bahasa and English? This is the abc used for it. Like the Javanese KAWI script to which it is closely related its ancestor is the Brahmi script brought to SE Asia by Hindu / Buddhist traders priests sages and teachers before Islam. It's called hanaxaraka and also dentawiyanjana and tulisan.
It also has vowel signs not shown here and extra letters only used for transcribing Sanskrit words in religious manuscripts.
It also has vowel signs not shown here and extra letters only used for transcribing Sanskrit words in religious manuscripts.
Quietly yet powerfully elegant like Bali itself!
Except perhaps for certain parts of Denpasar and Kuta that are not a suitable topic for this blog?
Monday, 24 October 2011
Books and Bark
BOOKS AND BARK.
Most of the words for books in various languages either refer to the material its made from or the idea of a book as a written thing.
Arabic KiTaB and Chinese SHU are examples of this.
However many more words refer to the materials books were made of before paper and parchment were common.
Latin LIBER originally meant the inner bark of a tree. Yes bark not the other Liber though that word is probalbly connected since LIBER may have been seen as a tree / plant god before that Italian diety was linked to the Greek Dionysios.
Codex derives from Caudex meaing something wooden or a block of wood.
Before paper and parchment codices were once tablets of wood bound down one side.
The Chinese word Pian used to refer to sheets once referred to thin slices of wood and the word CE?
Well the oldest ideogram shows bound tablets long strips of wood or bamboo .
Before parchment or paper or papyrus in northern europe and other places bark was used.
Birch bark writings have been discovered in India Russian Norway and throughout Northern Eurasia
Particularly bark or thin slices of wood from trees of the birch family that have a fiber arrangement that makes preparing slices and bark easier.
Papyri plants are unique to Africa and nealry becmae extinct in Egypt due to over harvesting.
Parchment from leather was developed because of the high cost of papyrus and its processing.
It is a fortunate thing that the Chinese discovered how to turn a pulp of plant fibers into paper.
I do wonder sometimes if some Chinese merchant somehow visited an island in the Pacific where tapa cloth was made from plant fibers and described the process to some one back in China who wanted an cheaper alternative to silk ?
Our word book in its oldest form is related to beech so perhaps beech was used also?
Book was booc in Old English. Beech was Booec Birch was Bierc.
In Modern German Beech is Buche Birch Birke and Book is BUCH.
Although our word PAPER derives from papyrus our ancestors often wrote on bark or wood.
Perhaps in Australia we might be writing in paperbark if paper in its modern form had never been developed?
Most of the words for books in various languages either refer to the material its made from or the idea of a book as a written thing.
Arabic KiTaB and Chinese SHU are examples of this.
However many more words refer to the materials books were made of before paper and parchment were common.
Latin LIBER originally meant the inner bark of a tree. Yes bark not the other Liber though that word is probalbly connected since LIBER may have been seen as a tree / plant god before that Italian diety was linked to the Greek Dionysios.
Codex derives from Caudex meaing something wooden or a block of wood.
Before paper and parchment codices were once tablets of wood bound down one side.
The Chinese word Pian used to refer to sheets once referred to thin slices of wood and the word CE?
Well the oldest ideogram shows bound tablets long strips of wood or bamboo .
Before parchment or paper or papyrus in northern europe and other places bark was used.
Birch bark writings have been discovered in India Russian Norway and throughout Northern Eurasia
Particularly bark or thin slices of wood from trees of the birch family that have a fiber arrangement that makes preparing slices and bark easier.
Papyri plants are unique to Africa and nealry becmae extinct in Egypt due to over harvesting.
Parchment from leather was developed because of the high cost of papyrus and its processing.
It is a fortunate thing that the Chinese discovered how to turn a pulp of plant fibers into paper.
I do wonder sometimes if some Chinese merchant somehow visited an island in the Pacific where tapa cloth was made from plant fibers and described the process to some one back in China who wanted an cheaper alternative to silk ?
Our word book in its oldest form is related to beech so perhaps beech was used also?
Book was booc in Old English. Beech was Booec Birch was Bierc.
In Modern German Beech is Buche Birch Birke and Book is BUCH.
Although our word PAPER derives from papyrus our ancestors often wrote on bark or wood.
Perhaps in Australia we might be writing in paperbark if paper in its modern form had never been developed?
Monday, 17 October 2011
The Curious Case of Z
The Curious Case of Z
and how it came to be the last letter in our Alphabet though not others.
Z is not just for Zebra!
This image to the right is an early form of the letter Z ... not I ... yes Z!
Zed Zeta Zee Zayin Zee Zay was originally about the sixth and seventh letter of the ABC back when only the Phonenicians and Greeks had alphabets. So how did it move from that place to the final place in our modern ABC?
Well you can blame the Romans! Old Latin lost its z sound which changed to a g and although they had a Z sign borrowed from the Greeks in 310 BCE the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed it from the ABC.
By the first century BCE however many Latin writers were citing loan words from Greek in Latin writings and so Zeta was inserted back in but at the end of the ABC. Hence nearly every script derived from the Roman ABC has Z as a final letter.
In the Cyrillic and other scripts though Z is NOT final. It retains a position close to that it had in the earliest writing systems. Many languages even add an extra z sign with a diacritic to show a palatal z.
The letter z has been used to indicate more than one sound : /z/ /dz/ /ts/ .
In Basque Z is actually a laminal S, in Finnish and German its ts and Estonian s and due to a sound change the Vietnamese use a D since a d sound has changed to a z .
Every letter has a history. Some odder than others.
and how it came to be the last letter in our Alphabet though not others.
Z is not just for Zebra!This image to the right is an early form of the letter Z ... not I ... yes Z!
Zed Zeta Zee Zayin Zee Zay was originally about the sixth and seventh letter of the ABC back when only the Phonenicians and Greeks had alphabets. So how did it move from that place to the final place in our modern ABC?
Well you can blame the Romans! Old Latin lost its z sound which changed to a g and although they had a Z sign borrowed from the Greeks in 310 BCE the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed it from the ABC.
By the first century BCE however many Latin writers were citing loan words from Greek in Latin writings and so Zeta was inserted back in but at the end of the ABC. Hence nearly every script derived from the Roman ABC has Z as a final letter.
In the Cyrillic and other scripts though Z is NOT final. It retains a position close to that it had in the earliest writing systems. Many languages even add an extra z sign with a diacritic to show a palatal z.
The letter z has been used to indicate more than one sound : /z/ /dz/ /ts/ .
In Basque Z is actually a laminal S, in Finnish and German its ts and Estonian s and due to a sound change the Vietnamese use a D since a d sound has changed to a z .
Every letter has a history. Some odder than others.
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Mongolians' Many Scripts
Mongolian's Many Scripts.
Currently the Roman ABC is probably the script used for most world languages closely followed by forms of Arabic however one language has the strange distinction of having had the most number of scripts used to write it.
I hope you will forgive me inflicting my handwriting on you but I suspect few of us have computers and browsers set to read Mongolian scripts of any kind.
Most modern alphabetic scripts ultimately derive from the Sinai script. From the Sinai script came the Aramaic Nestorian variant of Syraic forms of which reached Central Asia and were used to write the Indo-Iranian SOGDIAN language. This was adapted by the Uighurs though the Uighur language is now mainly written using Cyrillic or Arabic letters nowadays.
A scribe called Tatar Tenga in 1208 is said to have made the first adaption of the Uighur ABC to the Mongol language called Mongol Bichig by the Mongols. It's written vertically up and down with variant letter forms if the letter is initial medial or final in a word. With some changes it is still used to this day. Its also the origin for the script used to write Manchu.
However in 1269 Kubla Khan decreed ... no not a stately pleasure dome (see Coleridge's poems if you don't know what that means) ... that a script be developed that could be used to wirte the various languages of his empire, Chinese, Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan and more. This was the 'Phagspa script which the MOngols call SQUARE script dorbeljin usug. This was used throughout the YUAN dynasty but mainly for isncriptions, seals, official tablets, and some printed texts. It is still used in Mongolia and Tibet but very rarely for signs, inscriptions, seals, and printing some Buddhist texts. The model for this script was Tibetan dhu can.
The Mongolian vertical script contiuned in use in Mongolia and areas where Mongolian was and Mongolian texts were also written using Arabic and Chinese.
Then came the twentieth century and the revolutions. Outer Mongolai became a Republic and had the use of Cyrillic imposed on its people. Inner Mongolia retained the Vertical script .
So Uighur Vertical sPhagpa Arabic Chinese Cyrillic that's six scripts in eight centuries.
What next for Mongolian? A new script combining features of the others? Our Western ABC adapted to Mongolian or something new?
Currently the Roman ABC is probably the script used for most world languages closely followed by forms of Arabic however one language has the strange distinction of having had the most number of scripts used to write it.
I hope you will forgive me inflicting my handwriting on you but I suspect few of us have computers and browsers set to read Mongolian scripts of any kind.
Most modern alphabetic scripts ultimately derive from the Sinai script. From the Sinai script came the Aramaic Nestorian variant of Syraic forms of which reached Central Asia and were used to write the Indo-Iranian SOGDIAN language. This was adapted by the Uighurs though the Uighur language is now mainly written using Cyrillic or Arabic letters nowadays.
A scribe called Tatar Tenga in 1208 is said to have made the first adaption of the Uighur ABC to the Mongol language called Mongol Bichig by the Mongols. It's written vertically up and down with variant letter forms if the letter is initial medial or final in a word. With some changes it is still used to this day. Its also the origin for the script used to write Manchu.
However in 1269 Kubla Khan decreed ... no not a stately pleasure dome (see Coleridge's poems if you don't know what that means) ... that a script be developed that could be used to wirte the various languages of his empire, Chinese, Mongolian, Uighur, Tibetan and more. This was the 'Phagspa script which the MOngols call SQUARE script dorbeljin usug. This was used throughout the YUAN dynasty but mainly for isncriptions, seals, official tablets, and some printed texts. It is still used in Mongolia and Tibet but very rarely for signs, inscriptions, seals, and printing some Buddhist texts. The model for this script was Tibetan dhu can.
The Mongolian vertical script contiuned in use in Mongolia and areas where Mongolian was and Mongolian texts were also written using Arabic and Chinese.
Then came the twentieth century and the revolutions. Outer Mongolai became a Republic and had the use of Cyrillic imposed on its people. Inner Mongolia retained the Vertical script .
So Uighur Vertical sPhagpa Arabic Chinese Cyrillic that's six scripts in eight centuries.
What next for Mongolian? A new script combining features of the others? Our Western ABC adapted to Mongolian or something new?
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