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Wikipedia Articles on "Writing systems"

Spanglish is a constructed or invented script. It could be used as a teaching alphabet but there are probably simpler alternatives. Spanglish retains many tradspel redundancies: e.g., upper case, the letter C, ... It also uses traditional cumbersome devices: e.g., The double consonant to indicate relative stress. The morphemic past tense [d and ed] in place of the phonemic past tense [t/d, &d]. The rationale for this is that they are part of the traditional spelling system and do not degrade phonemicity that much. Spanglish is 86% phonemic, about the same as Spanish. With 12 exception rules, its spelling is about 96% predicable. Spanglish and Fanetik Notations

An artificial or constructed script (also conscript or neography) is term for new writing systems specifically devised by specific known individuals, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture like a natural script.

All scripts are constructed, the difference is in usage. Some scripts have more users and have been adopted by the schools to be taught to the young.

They are usually designed for use with conlangs, although several of them also are used in linguistic experimentation or other more pragmatic purposes. The most well-known conscripts are J. R. R. Tolkien's elaborate Tengwar and Cirth, but many others exist, such as the Klingon script and N'Ko.

Several neographies have been created for purely aesthetic reasons or to accompany conlangs or constructed langauges; others were invented with more practical goals in mind. Some, such as Shavian, Alphabet 26, and the Deseret alphabet were devised as English spelling reforms.

SB: I don't think that A26 or Deseret were devised as Spelling Reforms.

A26 is an all lower case initial teaching alphabet but unlike Unifon and i/t/a, it is not phonemic.
Many elementary classes introduce 3 ways to write a sound sign before the 1st way is overlearned.

Unifon T-shirt - $12

Unifon is an all upper case writing system that uses upper and lower case keyboard positions to extend the alphabet to 40 characters.

Others, including Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech and John Malone's Unifon were developed for pedagogical use. Blissymbols were developed as a written international auxiliary language. The Cherokee syllabary, N'Ko, the Fraser alphabet, and the Pollard script were invented to allow certain spoken languages that did not already have writing systems to be written. Shorthand systems may be considered conscripts.

By their very nature conscripts are not normally encoded in Unicode, but this has not deterred people from proposing them. Some have been rejected. Others are still under consideration. The one conscript which did make it into Unicode is Shavian, named after George Bernard Shaw.

A project exists to coordinate the encoding of many conscripts in specific places in the Unicode Private Use Areas (E000-F8FF and 000F0000-0010FFFF), known as the ConScript Unicode Registry.

Glagolitic alphabet

The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. It was created by Saint Cyril around 862-863 in order to translate the Bible and other texts into the Slavonic language (more exactly, Old Church Slavonic).

The name comes from the Old Church Slavonic glagolo, meaning word (which was also the name for the letter "G"). Since glagolati also means to speak, the Glagolitsa are poetically referred to as "the marks that speak".

The Glagolitic alphabet has around 40 letters, depending on variant. 24 of the original (Great Moravian, see below) 38 Glagolitic letters are derived from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, and they have been given an ornamental design. It is presumed that the letters Sha, Shta and Tsi were derived from Hebrew alphabet (Shin and Tsadi) - the phonemes that these letters represent did not exist in Greek but are quite common for all Slavic languages. The remaining original characters are of unknown oriental origin. Some of them are presumed to stem from the Hebrew and Samaritan scripts, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson.

Common characteristics of Semitic

Eastern: Akkadian, Central: Cananite: Hebrew, Phonecian, etc. Aramaic, Syriac, Ugaritic, South: Arabic, Maltese, Western: Ethiopic languages. These languages all exhibit a pattern of words consisting of triconsonantal roots, with vowel changes, prefixes, and suffixes used to inflect them. For instance, in Hebrew:

gdl means "big" but is no part of speech and not a word, just a root

gadol means "big" and is an adjective

giddel means "he magnified"

magdelet means "magnifier" (lens)

spr is the root for "count" or "recount"

sefer means "book" (containing tales which are recounted)

sofer means "scribe" (Masoretic scribes counted verses)

mispar means "number".

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Wikipedia Articles on "Writing systems"

Common characteristics of Semitic

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